Since .NET is a managed environment, there is always the downside of having your code open to anyone using Reflector or Refractor.
Skater TOTAL converts the decompilable Microsoft Intermediate Language code (MSIL or CIL) of your assemblies into native format while keeping all .NET metadata intact, that provides the same level of protection as native C/C++ code.
Software protection programming is a very important field for most software developers. Software protection techniques are not like obvious features that can be seen and compared. Because of this most software protection vendors could introduce impressive techniques that are included deep inside the protection scheme, when many times most of these techniques hardly exist or they are much simpler than what they seem.
The nature of .NET is to be able to install apps that have been compiled to MSIL, then either by JIT or Ngen, MSIL is compiled to native code and stored locally in a cache. It was never intended on generating a true native .exe that can be run independently of the .NET framework. There are too many dynamics that require the framework, such as: dynamic assembly loading, MSIL code generation, etc.
You can use ngen.exe to generate a native image but you still have to distribute the original non-native code as well, and it still needs the framework installed on the target machine.
Obfuscation is one way, but it cannot protect from breaking the piracy protection security of the .NET application. How do you make sure that your .NET application is not tampered with, and how do you make sure that the source code cannot be reverse engineered?
Skater TOTAL is a right tool to native compile .NET executables. Properly speaking it means converting the MSIL code of a .NET assembly to native machine code and then removing the MSIL code from that assembly, making it impossible to decompile it in a straightforward way.