Visual Studio business news

Thx to Chris Birmele, here is a view of the main capabilities in Visual Studio 2010. All of them are supported for .NET development and only the ones with Yes are for unamanaged (C++).

On November 9, 2009 Microsoft announced the acquisition of most of the technology assets of Teamprise, a division of SourceGear LLC, a provider of client applications for accessing Microsoft’s Visual Studio Team Foundation Server from the Eclipse IDE and from other operating systems, including Unix, Linux and Mac OS X. With this announcement Microsoft is proving our continued commitment to supporting interoperability and heterogeneous development environments.
The Teamprise technology will be available in the Visual Studio 2010 wave. Customers will be able to jointly purchase the Teamprise Client Suite technology, updated to work with Team Foundation Server 2010, and one Team Foundation Server client access license. Customers with Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN also will receive the Teamprise Client Suite technology as part of their original subscription purchase

• Press release
• FAQ
• Integration of Teamprise
  

Teamprise and Team Foundation Server facilitate greater collaboration for the building of higher-quality applications by teams currently using the Eclipse IDE or working from other operating systems such as UNIX, Linux or Mac OS X.

A good source of information on Visual Studio 2010 Test and Lab Management is the respective team blogs at VSTS Quality tools blog and Lab Management team blog.

J.

The next wave of the latest Microsoft technologies is about to land on our shores, providing new and exciting ways to develop custom applications.  Visual Studio 2010 is the upcoming release of Microsoft’s market leading integrated Development Tool Platform - specifically designed to leverage these new capabilities.

Come to this presentation to learn how Visual Studio 2010 has been enhanced to enable you to deliver modern, high quality applications to your organisation. We will tell you what you need to know before the launch of Visual Studio 2010 (March 22nd, 2010).
Don’t miss Readify’s demonstration of Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and MTLM, along with the enhanced capabilities of Team Foundation Server.

Agenda
Why Visual Studio 2010? (70 min)
           For the new Microsoft platform
           To minimise business risk and increase software quality
                   demo based on Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate
Why now? (30 min)
           Understand the new Visual Studio product family
           Learn about the new MSDN benefits!
           The ‘Ultimate offer’ – ending March 22nd 2010
Q&A and Close (10 min)

Dates

• Hobart           Nov 17  
• Melbourne     Nov 19
• Darwin          Nov 24
• Sydney          Nov 26
• Canberra       Dec 1
• Perth             Dec 3
• Sydney          Dec 4
• Adelaide        Dec 8
• Brisbane        Dec 10
         * Places limited or subject to availability

Please don't hesitate to contact me for any further information
Regards,

Here we go; we have 4 key announcements today to the developer community

Microsoft has also simplified the product lineup, customers will be able to choose from three main versions of Visual Studio 2010:

•        Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN. The comprehensive suite of application life-cycle management tools for software teams to help ensure quality results from design to deployment

•        Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Premium with MSDN. A complete toolset to help developers deliver scalable, high-quality applications

•        Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional with MSDN. The essential tool for basic development tasks to assist developers in implementing their ideas easily

 here is a video of Dave Mendlen (Director of Developer Marketing)

The “Ultimate Offer” is a current promotion to help customers upgrade to Visual Studio 2010 while getting the most value possible. The promotion is available to all MSDN Premium customers who purchase Visual Studio 2010 on or before launch on March 22, 2010. Eligible customers at the time of the launch will receive a product upgrade, as outlined in the Ultimate Offer chart below. This applies to current customers, as well as customers who upgrade to a Visual Studio 2008 product with a Premium MSDN subscription before the launch of Visual Studio 2010.

To maximize the benefits of the “Ultimate offer”, you should think about 2 scenarios before March 22^nd 2010

•        Scenario 1: do I need more Visual Studio licenses for my team in the next 12 to 24 months?

•        Scenario 2: do I need to “step up” some of my current licenses to a higher edition and benefits from the “free” product upgrade in March 22^nd 2010?

You can save a equivalent of 50% during the next months.
Example:

•        With an active Visual Studio 2008 Team Developer w/ MSDN (at the time of the launch) you will receive Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate. Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate includes the capabilities of Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite (and more). That means, you have Team Suite (and more) for the price of Team Developer

•        With an active Visual Studio 2008 Professional w/ MSDN (in march 22^nd 2010), you will receive  Visual Studio 2010 Premium. Visual Studio 2010 Premium includes the capabilities of Visual Studio 2008 Team Developer. That means, you have Team Developer for the price of VS Professional with MSDN Premium

Call to action: think about your current and future needs before March 22^nd 2010

 please review the Fact Sheet for more information

 how to download the beta: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-au/vstudio/dd582936.aspx 

•        Unlimited access to Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 (upon release), a server product that drives down the risks and costs of developing software by enhancing team collaboration

•        Azure Development, which enables MSDN Premium subscribers to develop on the Windows Azure platform (Microsoft’s cloud services platform) with compute hours, storage, data transfers, SQL Azure databases and .NET Services.

•        Complimentary e-learning, up to 40 hours per year, per subscriber

 You can found the official Press release here: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/oct09/10-19vsfinalstretchpr.mspx

Please contact me for any additional detail

 Cheers,

What a good suprise with this Microsoft Courier (still not officially confirmed)

I'm happy to see Microsoft moving forward on the Tablet concept with not only a technological platform but an end-user solution with the final experience "built right" (that means Microsoft don't rely 100% on partners to move the solution to the final stage and the consumer space).

Watch this video of a late prototype" stage of development.

J.

Cheers,

Jihad Dannawi

Funny URL but a good reference page
http://wehatemanualtesting.spaces.live.com

J.

In Visual Studio Team System 2010, Microsoft made this area of the product extensible in order to support 3rd party databases. Quest Software is hard at work on a database schema provider to support Oracle database development from within Visual Studio Team System 2010. In this 10-4 episode Brian Keller sat down with Daniel Norwood of Quest Software to get an early look at "Project Fuze."

http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/10-4/10-4-Episode-30-Database-Schema-Extensibility/

To access more information about Project Fuze, visit:
http://www.teamfuze.net/
For more 10-4 episodes, be sure to visit:
http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/10-4

from the Windows team blog
' Here is a good news, who are eagerly waiting for Windows 7 RTM. Today Microsoft stated, Windows 7 RTM will be available on Microsoft Connect, MSDN and TechNet  on August 6th.
Windows 7 RTM will be available to download from Microsoft Connect, MSDN and TechNet on August 6th in English only. By October 1st, the remaining languages will become available to download.

Here is the time-line for Windows 7 RTM availability:

• For Partners & OEMs: ISV (Independent software vendor) and IHV (Independent hardware vendor) Partners will be able to download Windows 7 RTM from Microsoft Connect or MSDN on August 6th.
• For Business Customers: August 16th. By October 1st, the remaining languages will become available to download.
• For Developers and IT Professionals: August 6th and remaining languages by October 1st.
• For Beta Testers: Beta testers will not automatically receive a free copy of Windows 7.
• For Consumers: Windows 7 will be in retail stores and shipping on new PCs starting October 22nd. If you pre-ordered Windows 7, it should be delivered sometime around the October 22nd.'

'

so, once again, the MSDN subscribers will be the first to have access to the new Windows 7 RTM (Released To Market)

J.

Pricing and licensing overview:
http://www.microsoft.com/azure/pricing.mspx

ex:
Windows Azure: 

• Compute = $0.12 / hour
• Storage = $0.15 / GB stored / month
• Storage Transactions = $0.01 / 10K
• Bandwidth = $0.10 in / $0.15 out / GB

 SQL Azure: 

• Web Edition – Up to 1 GB relational database = $9.99
• Business Edition – Up to 10 GB relational database = $99.99
• Bandwidth = $0.10 in / $0.15 out / GB

 …

How are you capturing the business needs when building a software application? Data diagram, requirements? Can your business contacts (the one requesting a new solution through a software application) understand and read these “pre-technical” documents? Can you capture properly their demands and visions?

We know the answer … the standard process is to capture the business requirements in some kind of Word document, to let them sign off and then handover to the developers … crossing the fingers that the result is align with the business needs and expectations

Is there another way to capture or “visualise” the business needs prior to any technical activity? … What about sketchflow?

 Instead of building documents, can you draw some quick and dirty (sketch) screens and ask the business to validate them?

(Can be done with some sketch controls or by drawing on a tablet)

 Then you could wire-frame these screens and build a first level of navigation

And send the “draft” for feedback as a running workflow to your stakeholders or users (Draft actually behaves like an application)

(Feedback gadget included – left hand toolbar)

And then only start to capture requirements starting with what the business signed off

Looking for more info about SketchFlow? you’ll have to wait for Expression Blend 3!
                  I recommend the session with Matt Morphett at Remix Australia

cheers,
J.

Best of breed open source solution will not help you in supporting the best practices when building application software. Even if you invest a lot of time (and money), you will only acheive a minimum level of integration (source control and project management or source control and code quality checks …).

For that reason, many teams are moving from CVS or SVN (Subversion) to TFS (Visual Studio Team Foundation Server). Not because CVS or SVN is not doing a good job for source control management but because they need to integrate all the components (and tools) used by the application development team.

To support this move from CVS and SVN to TFS,  you could use Timely Migration

Timely Migration is a suite of tools designed to be the complete solution for moving detailed history from your existing source control system. Timely Migration aims to eliminate roadblocks for transitioning your organization to Team Foundation Server caused by the lack of viable migration tools.

J.

Have you heard about TeamSpec ?
Team Spec provides rich team project artifact management directly inside Microsoft Office Word allowing specification, requirement, and other document content to maintain integrity with TFS (Visual Studio Team Foundation Server) content.
Most of the DEV teams are using Word as the primary tool for authoring requirements and then use TFS to manage them (thru work items). Team Spec offers a smooth integration between Word and TFS.

ex: TeamSpec enables you manage changes made to requirements in your document or on the Team Foundation Server, click to watch the video
For more information, please refer to the Team Solution web site.

J.

Despite all of the advances in automated testing tools and frameworks over the last decade, manual testing still constitutes the lion's share of testing effort within most software development organizations.
This episode of 10-4 will introduce the new capabilities in Visual Studio Team System 2010 for supporting manual testing. You will see how these capabilities will not only help manual testers do their jobs more effectively, but this approach also helps developers by providing detailed diagnostics information about tests when they fail.

J.