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The team has been hard at work on the next version of Solver Foundation.  Here are some early details.  We hope to release 2.1 later this spring and we'll be updating all the SKUs, including the brand new Academic version available on MSDNAA.  Our focus for this release is on improving the development experience for Solver Foundation Services programmers: better performance, more control over the solution process, better reporting, and integration with the latest and greatest tools.  Specifically:

• The Report class will be greatly enhanced so that you can programmatically access report information (including solver-specific information such as sensitivity information).
• The amount of overhead (measured in memory usage and CPU time) to create models using OML/SFS will be significantly reduced.
• The SFS will include events that will allow you to get and set model and solver parameters before and during a solve operation.
• Improved performance for data binding input and output values in the Excel add-in.
• Visual Studio 2010 / .Net 4 support. 
• Office 2010 support.

All of these improvements are based on feedback from partners and customers.  Thanks for your suggestions, keep 'em coming.

Microsoft Solver Foundation is now available for professors, students, and researchers through the MSDN Academic Alliance site.  If your academic institution has a Developer AA subscription then you will be able to download the unthrottled Enterprise edition of Solver Foundation (and tons of other stuff) at no cost.

Visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/academic/default.aspx for more information.

UPDATE 4/28/2010: We are no longer seeking new applicants for the position. Perhaps next summer! 

The Solver Foundation team is looking for an intern for this summmer! A short description is below – this is a software development position, where the focus is on practical application of numerical optimization techniques. I believe in a practical, challenging, and hopefully rewarding experience where interns work on real code that relates to their areas of interest. If you're interested, here's what you should do:

• Apply for the position here. Make sure you apply under the “Software and Hardware Development” category. 
• After you have applied, send a resume to natbr at microsoft dot com. We cannot guarantee a response to every inquiry due to volume.

A word of warning - this position is not for everyone. If things like simplex, L-BFGS, and KKT conditions are unfamiliar to you, this position might not be the best fit.

Microsoft Solver Foundation (MSF) is a business planning and optimization framework being developed within the Numerical Libraries group. MSF is a managed code set of framework services and "smart runtimes" for what is usually termed mathematical programming or operations research. We are looking for a technically gifted, highly motivated intern to work on high performance and high numerical accuracy software for linear programming, nonlinear programming, and simulation to solve practical problems such as production planning, job scheduling, etc. Interested in extreme algorithm design? Looking to apply your knowledge of numerical optimization on a product with worldwide reach? If so, an internship on the Solver Foundation team may be right for you.

Interns on the Solver Foundation team contribute to our core engineering effort:

• Design and implement core algorithms and framework services using .NET
• Design for scalability, performance, embedding and post-deployment monitoring/instrumentation/servicing (writing software that can be embedded successfully in everything from Excel to ERP systems to large scale Web Services)
• Interact with the development team, QA staff and management on a daily basis

Bachelor’s, MS, or PhD students with deep knowledge of numerical optimization methods and software are particularly encouraged to apply.