Before I can get into the meat of this post I need to make sure you’re up to date on a couple items:
Item 1: In case you missed the news yesterday, Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 was released for download. You can get it here.
Item 2: Microsoft has announced that VS 2010 will be released on March 22, 2010.
What I think is one of the more significant items to come out of this announcement is that Microsoft has simplified the product marketing structure for Visual Studio 2010. Instead of the myriad ( yeah, I said myriad! :-) ) of choices with prior versions of MSDN and Visual Studio, customers will be able to choose from three versions of Visual Studio 2010 with MSDN. What is also significant is this quote taken from Soma’s blog posting announcing VS 2010 B2:
“Team Foundation Server is now included in all versions of Visual Studio 2010 with MSDN. For small teams that need only core development features such as source control, bug tracking, and build automation, TFS Basic offers a simple, streamlined install and runs on server or client machines.”
This is fantastic news! I think Microsoft has overlooked smaller dev teams in the past by pricing Team Foundation Server out of their reach. I am very pleased to see that TFS Basic has been created to provide small dev teams with the source control, bug tracking and build automation tools they need.
Here are the three versions of VS 2010 to choose from:
Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate
This the “yeah, it’s in there” version. It includes a comprehensive suite of application lifecycle management tools for teams to ensure quality results from design to deployment.
Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Premium
Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Premium is a complete toolset for developers to deliver scalable, high quality applications.
Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional
Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional is the essential tool for basic development tasks to allow developers to implement their ideas easily.
Head over to the Visual Studio Products Roadmap page for feature details on each of the three versions. I welcome the marketing changes and think it will make selecting the right version of Visual Studio much easier for developers.
Update: Here is another page outlining the differences between the three VS 2010 versions. Check out the “Compare 2010 Products” tab.
Have a day. :-|