November 24th, 2009

Can (and will) Microsoft keep Silverlight compatible across platforms?

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 6:47 am

Categories: .Net Framework, App Compatibility, Apple, Corporate strategy, Development tools, Linux, Novell, PDC 2009, Silverlight (wpf/e), Windows Mobile, Windows client

Tags: Microsoft Silverlight, Microsoft Corp., COM, ActiveX/COM/COM+/DCOM, Middleware, Microsoft Windows, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Enterprise Software, Software

As Microsoft made plain at its Professional Developers Conference last week, there’s no end in sight to the list of new features and functionality it plans to add to Silverlight.

Some developers who have been on the fence about whether they should be developing Windows applications using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) or Silverlight applications see a light at the end of the tunnel of confusion. Microsoft is adding more and more WPF features to Silverlight (and vice versa). But as Tim Anderson, an IT journalist/blogger noted last week, there is a downside to this strategy: By adding technologies like COM support to Silverlight, Microsoft is doing damage to its story that Silverlight is a cross-platform browser plug-in that supports Windows, Mac — and, thanks to the Mono folks at Novell , Linux — equally.

(The Register’s Gavin Clarke and I talk more about the risks of making Silverlight better on Windows than other platforms during our latest episode of the Microbite podcast.)

The COM object support that Microsoft is promising for Silverlight 4, the version of Microsoft’s Web application framework/plug-in due to ship by mid-2010, is applicable to Silverlight running on Firefox or Internet Explorer on Windows only. Neither Mac OS X nor Linux support COM.

Microsoft officials were quick to note that adding access to COM components was a customer request, not something Microsoft did in a vacuum. When I asked Microsoft about its plans to keep Silverlight in sync across platforms, a spokesperson sent me the following statements:

“In Silverlight 4 we addressed over 8,000 customer feature requests. One specific request was adding support for accessing COM components, enabling common enterprise scenarios such as automating Microsoft Office and providing developers easy access to hardware capabilities such as scanners and security card readers.”

But check this out: Microsoft officials say they are evaluating how to add some kind of COM component access to the Mac version of Silverlight. From the aforementioned spokesperson:

“Unfortunately, the Mac offers no support for COM interfaces and we’re actively evaluating options to get COM-like features on the Mac.”

There’s no further word on when or how Microsoft plans to add this kind of support to Silverlight for the Mac.

Meanwhile, it looks like Novell’s Developer Platform Vice President Miguel de Icaza is itching to create support for the new Silverlight 4 functionality to future implementations of Moonlight, the Novell/Mono team-developed implementation of Silverlight for Linux. After the PDC, de Icaza blogged:

“For the Moonlight team, this means that there is a lot of work ahead of us to bring every Silverlight 3 and 4 feature. I think I speak for the whole Mono team when I say that this is exciting, fascinating, challenging and feels like we just drank a huge energy boost drink.”

Microsoft’s latest Silverlight moves mean that Silverlight is evolving to become a universal run-time for Microsoft’s Common Language Runtime (CLR), the heart of .Net, according to de Icaza. Developing a desktop suite of Silverlight apps isn’t just a pipe dream, de Icaza said; it’s a real, doable project.

Some developers are already dreaming of the possibility of a Silverlight operating system. (For some reason, I think the Windows team might try to derail that effort before it could ever happen, but who knows?) Microsoft has more immediate and pressing concerns, though: It needs to keep Silverlight in sync across platforms if the company plans to play up the “available everywhere” piece of its Silverlight message.

November 20th, 2009

Will Microsoft's Silverlight dampen the appeal of Google's Chrome OS?

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 6:40 am

Categories: .Net Framework, App Compatibility, Corporate strategy, Development tools, Google, Internet Explorer, OEMs, Silverlight (wpf/e), Web 2.0, Windows client

Tags: Google Inc., Microsoft Silverlight, Operating System, Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation, Microsoft Corp., Google Chrome, Chrome OS, Web Browsers, Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems

I’m not one of those ready to write Windows an RIP certificate now that Google has finally taken (some of) the wraps off its Chrome OS. In fact, after reading through industry watchers’ questions and Google’s answers about it, I’m thinking that Chrome OS may not look quite so appealing by the time it rolls out in late 2010. Here’s why.

First, as others have noted, Google’s Chrome OS is a new windowing system layered on top of Linux that is being customized to run on netbooks. Chrome OS is an “extension to Chrome,” the company’s browser, in Google execs’ own words. Google officials are billing Chrome OS, among other things, as a way to provide Web applications with the functionality of desktop applications.

Microsoft offers an extension not just to its browser, Internet Explorer, but also to Firefox, Apple’s Safari and Google’s own Chrome. That extension is Silverlight. Among other things, Silverlight is a vehicle for providing increasingly complex consumer and business apps via a browser.

At the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) this week, Microsoft rolled out its strategy and plans for Silverlight 4, the version of its browser plug-in that is slated for final release by mid-2010. Silverlight 4 is adding support for data binding, enterprise networking and printing, and lots of other features that are likely to make the platform more appealing to folks writing not just single-function, lightweight Web apps, but enterprise apps, as well.

Silverlight is a slimmed-down, cross-platform version of Microsoft’s Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) programming model. Each successive iteration of Silverlight includes more and more WPF functionality (and vice versa).

Some day — Microsoft won’t say exactly when — Silverlight and WPF are going to merge into one Web programming and app delivery model that, most likely, will be known as Silverlight, Brad Becker, Director of Product Management for Microsoft’s Rich Client Platforms, told me this week at TechEd. Now that the two share the same compiled assemblies, tools and the like, that idea isn’t really so far-fetched. Until that happens, Microsoft plans to continue to offer both WPF and Silverlight, steering developers of more complex, resource-intensive applications toward WPF and Web-centric app developers toward Silverlight.

When Google execs were asked during this week’s press conference where they shared more information (but no code or systems) about the Chrome OS as to whether Silverlight would be able to work on Chrome OS, they said no comment. Maybe they see Silverlight might be more foe than friend of the Chrome OS.

I understand Silverlight is not an operating system. But some Google watchers are questioning whether the Chrome OS is actually an operating system, either, or just a glorified browser. Unlike Silverlight, which can run on a variety of PCs and soon, phones, Google OS is going to be a dedicated Linux-based netbook OS that will only work with certain predesignated peripherals. Microsoft already offers a netbook OS — Windows — which doesn’t force you to run all apps inside your browser — and which works with lots of different devices.

Would you go so far as to say the Chrome OS is going to be more of a Silverlight competitor than a WIndows one? I’m thinking right now that may seem a bit far-fetched, but as more and more apps are designed to run in Silverlight, maybe not….?

November 18th, 2009

Microsoft shares a few tidbits on IE9 and (lots) more on Silverlight 4

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 11:20 am

Categories: Corporate strategy, Development tools, Internet Explorer, PDC 2009, Silverlight (wpf/e), Windows client

Tags: Microsoft Silverlight, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Corp., Web Browsers, Internet, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft shared some information about what’s coming in Internet Explorer 9 and Silverlight 4 during its November 18 Professional Developers Conference (PDC) keynotes.

If you want to see a real example of the difference in disclosure policies between Microsoft’s Windows unit and its Developer Division, the level of information provided by execs with each division today made that quite clear.

As expected, Microsoft Windows President Steven Sinofsky shared a few tidbits about Internet Explorer (IE) 9. Sinofsky emphasized that Microsoft will continue to play up privacy, user choice and responsible development with the next IE release. But he offered no information on when the team is planning to release a test build or the final version of the browser.

Sinofsky said during the Wednesday morning keynote that the IE team is about three weeks into the IE 9 project. (I’ve been getting tips that there already is a build of the product out there that is being used inside Microsoft, but it’s not available to external testers yet.)

Sinofsky noted that Microsoft is fully aware that it needs to keep pushing on the standards front. He noted that IE 9 is currently passing 32 of 100 Acid3 tests (compared to Firefox at more than 70 and Opera at 100). He also made it clear that Microsoft is aware it needs to continue to do work to improve JavaScript performance with IE.

Sinofsky said IE 9 will support hardware-accelerated rendering and rounded borders, but didn’t say a whole lot more about it. There are a (very) few more specifics about IE 9 on the IE Team blog today.

Scott Guthrie, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President for .Net, had lots more to say about Silverlight 4, the next version of Microsoft’s browser plug-in that competes with Adobe Flash.

Microsoft is making a public beta of Silverlight 4 available for download today, November 18. A single, near-final Release Candidate will follow and then the final version of Silverlight 4 will be out in the first half of 2010, according to Guthrie.

Guthrie said Silverlight 4 will be a major new release of the plug-in. He said the upcoming version will incorporate nine of the ten most requested features by developers.

Guthrie itemized and demonstrated some of the new features of Silverlight 4 — which include everything from its support for webcam and microphone access, to the ability to run Silverlight inside the Google Chrome browser. Silverlight 4 also will include full support for Visual Studio 2010, native multicast support and improved printing, networking and reporting capabilities, company officials said. Silverlight Program Manager Tim Heuer has a full list of those Silverlight 4 features on his blog.

I’m interested in hearing from anyone who manages to download Silverlight 4 (servers are crawling, I hear) about what you think of the new beta of the product. Feel free to chime in in the talkbacks….

November 18th, 2009

Microsoft PDC Live Blog Day Two: IE, Silverlight 4.0 and more

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 8:17 am

Categories: Corporate strategy, Internet Explorer, Office, Office 2010/Office 14, PDC 2009, Silverlight (wpf/e)

Tags: Microsoft Silverlight, Keynote, Blog, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Windows, Blogging, Web Browsers, Microsoft Office, Operating Systems

The second day of keynotes at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference is about to begin, and expectations are running high that MIcrosoft might share some details on what’s coming with Internet Explorer 9, Silverlight 4 and Office 2010 Beta 2 today.

A bunch of us Microsoft bloggers will be live blogging this morning’s keynote, which are expected to feature Microsoft Windows President Steven Sinofsky, Senior Vice President of Office Kurt DelBene, .Net Corporate Vice President Scott Guthrie and more.

Join in with us on CoverItLive and discuss the keynotes live, starting at 8:30 am PT, along with ZDNet’s Ed Bott, LiveSide’s Kip Knicksern, Within Windows’ Rafael Rivera, Windows Supersite’s Paul Thurrott, istartedsomething’s Long Zheng and myself.

November 17th, 2009

Three new codenames and how they fit into Microsoft's cloud vision

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 2:09 pm

Categories: .Net Framework, Azure, Code names, Corporate strategy, Database, Development tools, PDC 2009, Red Dog, SQL Server, Utility/cloud computing, Windows server

Tags: SDK, Vision, Microsoft Corp., Dataset, Microsoft Windows, .Net, Operating Systems, Software, Software Development, Software/Web Development

Any Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) wouldn’t be complete without a few new codenames. On November 17, Microsoft introduced three new ones that all are related to Microsoft’s evolving cloud-computing vision and infrastructure.

During the Day One set of keynotes, Microsoft officials attempted to explain further how the company’s three-screens-and-a-cloud vision will take shape in product and service form.

Last year, when it rolled out its first Windows Azure Community Technology Preview, Microsoft showed a “layer cake” type diagram which showed all of the various Azure layers and components as a comprehensive whole. (See last year’s layer cake at right.)

This year, there was no diagram. The new message is that Microsoft’s cloud is comprised of Windows Azure (the Red Dog operating system), SQL Azure and a new AppFabric development platform. That’s it. Gone are the Live Services, .Net Services, SharePoint Services, and Dynamics CRM Services that wer all part of the original platform.

Did Microsoft decide its original vision was too ambitious? It seems more the case that it has decided some of the original pieces didn’t belong as part of the core Azure platform, such as Live Services, which are now part of Windows/Windows Live. In other cases, Microsoft has repackaged other elements of its original platform in different ways (example: the slimmed-down .Net Services is now part of AppFabric).

In the midst of all this movement, Microsoft introduced the three new cloud-related codenames today. How do they fit into Microsoft’s newly flattened cloud cake?

* Project Sydney: Technology that enables customers to connect securely their on-premises and cloud servers. Some of the underlying technologies that are enabling it include IPSec, IPV6 and Microsoft’s Geneva federated-identity capability. It could be used for a variety of applications, such as allowing developers to fail over cloud apps to on-premises servers or to run an app that is structured to run on both on-premises and cloud servers, for example. Sydney is slated to go to beta early next year and go final in 2010.

* Dallas: Microsoft’s “data-as-a-service” offering. Dallas is a new service built on top of Windows Azure and SQL Azure that will provide users with access to free and paid collections of public and commercial data sets that they can use in developing applications. The datasets are available via Microsoft’s PinPoint partner/ISV site. Dallas is hosted on Azure already and is available as of today as an invitation-only CTP. No word on when Microsoft is hoping to release the final version of the service.

* AppFabric: AppFabric is a collection of existing Azure developer components, including the “Dublin” app server, “Velocity” caching technology, and .Net Services (the service bus and access control services). The version of the Windows Server AppFabric on-premises version of the product is available for download today, with final availability slated for 2010. Community Technology Previews (CTPs) of the Windows Azure AppFabric version are slated to be available during 2010. No word on when the final Azure-based version will be out. (Note: The CTPs of the Access Control and Service Bus technologies are still available separately in CTP form today.)

Microsoft made available last week a November release of its own Windows Azure SDK and related tools. The new releases include an update to Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio, which extends VS 2008 and VS2010 Beta 2 so they can create, configure, build, debug and run Web apps and services on Windows Azure.

Roger Jennings, a cloud computing expert and author of the Oakleaf Systems blog said that the November release of the Windows Azure SDK includes “something Azure devs have been asking for and needed to compete with AWS EC2 (Amazon Web Services’ Elastic Cloud 2): Variable-size virtual machines (VMs). Using that featue, Azure developers may now specify the size of the virtual machine to which they wish to deploy a role instance, based on the role’s resource requirements. The size of the VM determines the number of CPU cores, the memory capacity, and the local file system size allocated to a running instance, Jennings noted.

In a similar vein, Amazon quietly released on November 11 version 1.0 of its Amazon Web Services (AWS) software development kit for .Net. The SDK allows developers to “get started in minutes with a single, downloadable package complete with VIsual Studio project templates, the AWS .Net library, C# code samples and documentation,” according to a note Amazon forwarded me over the weekend.

November 16th, 2009

Microsoft makes available new high performance Windows Server test build

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 10:00 am

Categories: Azure, Channel, Corporate strategy, OEMs, Office 2010/Office 14, Red Dog, Resellers, System builders, Utility/cloud computing, Visual Studio 10 ("Hawaii"), Windows Server 2008 R2 /("Windows 7 Server"), Windows server

Tags: Microsoft Windows Server, High-performance, Server, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Corp., Beta, Supercomputing, HPC Server, Leadership, Management

Microsoft made available on November 16 a code-complete beta of Windows HPC (High Performance Computing) Server 2008 R2 to selected testers.

The company made the announcement at the Supercomputing 2009 show in Portland, Oreg., where officials said they planned to provide all of the 4,500 or so of the attendees with the bits today. Microsoft also will be providing select testers with access to the downloadable beta via the Connect site today. Microsoft is expecting to release at least one more beta of HPC Server 2008 R2 before rolling out the final version some time in 2010.

HPC Server enables cluster supercomputing on x64 versions of Windows Server 2008 R2. The new release that is in testing is Microsoft’s third iteration of the product.

With the HPC Server 2008 R2 beta, testers can run the test builds of Excel 2010 and Visual Studio 2010, supporting the development and use of parallel and scalable applications, Microsoft officials said.

Microsoft and its partners have been making a concerted effort to increase the appeal of its HPC Server product beyond the small segment of scientists and engineers who typically use supercomputers. Last week, Dell announced it would be the exclusive distributor of the Cray CX1 supercomputing workstation, which runs Windows 7 integrated with HPC Server on a single box.

“We’re trying to make HPC more mainstream and accessible” to more engineers, financial quants and others in a variety of large and mid-size organizations, said Vince Mendillo, Microsoft Senior Director of High Performance Computing. To do this, the team is focused on providing new tools and techniques making HPC Server easier to set up and deploy, Mendillo said.

When Microsoft introduced the first version of HPC Server, Linux dominated the supercomputing market. Since then, Microsoft has been making inroads in market share and performance. Last year, Microsoft added “thousands of customers in large scale organizations” for the product, Mendillo said. (He declined provide any more specific data.) Microsoft now has 159 independent software vendor partners developing applications for HPC Server, Mendillo added.

Because HPC Server is part of the overall Windows Server family, MIcrosoft will fold back into the core Windows Server codebase new developments made by the HPC team. Mendillo said that some of the new parallel enhancements in the new HPC Server release would likely be useful to the Windows Azure team, which is building MIcrosoft’s cloud-computing offering.

November 12th, 2009

PDC 2009: Tune in for our live blogging frenzy next week

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 6:31 am

Categories: .Net Framework, Azure, Corporate strategy, Development tools, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Big Brains, Multicore/distributed computing, Office 2010/Office 14, PDC 2009, Red Dog, Research, Silverlight (wpf/e), Utility/cloud computing, Virtualization, Visual Studio 10 ("Hawaii"), Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 /("Windows 7 Server")

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Professional Developers Conference Keynote, Blogging, Internet, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2009 kicks off the week of November 16. Like we did last year, a handful of us Microsoft watchers will be live blogging the keynotes as a group.

The PDC keynotes are slated for Tuesday November 17 from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. PT and Wednesday November 18 from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. We’ll be using CoverItLive to blog, so the more of you who chime in and comment along with us, the merrier. Your group-blogging hosts (besides me) will be Ed Bott, Kip Kniskern, Paul Thurrott, Rafael Rivera, Tom Warren and Long Zheng

Come back here next week and watch along with us as Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie; Server and Tools President Bob Muglia; Kurt DelBene, Senior VP of Microsoft’s Office Business Productivity Group and more talk about what’s coming for developers in the next year. (I’ll post the CoverItLive viewer on my site during keynote viewing hours next week.)

There will be new info on Microsoft’s Azure cloud operating environment, .Net 4.0, Oslo, Office 2010, Silverlight, SQL Server and more. And more than a few of the “Big Brains” — Microsoft’s Technical Fellows — are on tap to present during the four-day confab.  I’ve already posted about some of what’s on tap (and not on tap) for PDC 2009 over the past few weeks. Expect lots more PDC news on my blog throughout the week next week.

Hope to see you (virtually) and/or live in Los Angeles next week!

November 10th, 2009

Microsoft whittles away at Oslo; now plans to fold it into SQL Server

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 11:23 am

Categories: .Net Framework, Code names, Corporate strategy, Database, Development tools, Oslo, PDC 2009, SQL Server, Visual Studio 2008 (Orcas), Windows server

Tags: Oslo, Microsoft SQL Server, Server, Microsoft Corp., Databases, Research & Development, Enterprise Software, Software, Data Management, Business Operations

There are few initiatives at Microsoft that have undergone as many twists and turns as Oslo, Microsoft’s modeling platform/strategy.

On November 10, Microsoft announced the latest Oslo shift: Oslo’s three main remaining components are going to be be renamed “SQL Server Modeling” and be folded into some future release of Microsoft’s database.

In 2007, Microsoft first discussed publicly its plans for “Oslo” — an amorphous multiproduct effort that encompased future releases of .Net, Visual Studio, BizTalk and SQL Server. By the fall of 2008, Microsoft had decoupled .Net, VIsual Studio, BizTalk and SQL Server from Oslo. When officials said Oslo, they meant Microsoft’s evolving modeling strategy and technologies, specifically the M language, the Quadrant tool and the metadata repository. This past summer, as part of one of Microsoft’s countless reorgs, the Oslo team was combined with Microsoft’s Data Programmability team (which manages Astoria, Entity Data Model (EDM), Entity Framework (EF), XML, ADO.Net and tools/designers).

Going into the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2009 next week, Microsoft is planning to make available a new Community Technology Preview (CTP) test build of Oslo, which will be its first since May 2009. This new CTP will be known as the SQL Server Modeling CTP.

According to a November 10 blog posting by Product Unit Manager Doug Purdy, this new CTP “will begin to demonstrate how developers will use these (Oslo) technologies in concert with things like T-SQL, ADO.NET, ASP.NET and other parts of the .NET Framework to build database applications.”

“All of these components are now part of SQL Server and will ship with a future release of that product,” Purdy blogged this week. (Purdy doesn’t specify a ship date target, but I’m doubtful it will be in time for the next version of SQL Server, SQL Server 2008 R2, which is due out in the first half of 2010.)

As of next week, Microsoft also plans to integrate the Oslo” Developer Center and the Data Developer Center into a new site, http://msdn.microsoft.com/data.

On Twitter, the overwhelming sentiment about the latest change in Oslo’s direction are largely negative. Here are a few reactions:

Scott Banwart: With this announcement, I no longer see the point of Oslo.

Tomas Restrepo: Cynical thought of the day: Oslo == Longhorn. OK, could’ve been worse (i.e. Cairo).

James Hart: Any expectations anybody had for what Oslo might turn out to be came from their own imagination. Disappointment was inevitable.

Ryan Rinaldi: The Oslo story just got more confusing.

Steve Bohlen: good lord; Oslo follows in the footsteps of WinFS; big (if nebulous) idea degenerates into dull implementation w dubious value

Sean Munger: Friends dumbstruck at flying saucers descending over Oslo. (Oops. Maybe a different Oslo)

Any developers out there see a silver lining in the latest Oslo moves? Or is it time for the aliens to rush in and take over?

November 10th, 2009

New tool aids .Net developers in writing Linux, Mac OS X apps

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 8:48 am

Categories: .Net Framework, App Compatibility, Apple, Corporate strategy, Development tools, Novell, Open source, Visual Studio 10 ("Hawaii")

Tags: Mono, Developer, Linux, Tool, Teamprise Add-on, .Net, Development Tools, Microsoft Visual Studio, Productivity, Open Source

Not all .Net developers are writing Windows apps. Some (besides Miguel de Icaza and his merry band of Mono folks) may be interested in writing Linux, Unix and Mac OS X apps, too.

On November 10, Novell rolled out the final version of a new Visual Studio add-on aimed at these developers. Known as Mono Tools for Visual Studio, the product comes in three flavors: A Professional Edition (individual) for $99; Enterprise Edition (for one developer in an organization) for $249; and Ultimate Edition for $2,499 which includes a limited commercial license to redistribute Mono on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X and includes five enterprise developer licenses.

Mono Tools for Visual Studio allows developers to port their existing .Net Windows apps to non-Windows operating systems, as well as to write brand-new apps. The new product is based on Mono — which is an open-source implementation of .Net — but doesn’t require it.  Novell has been testing externally Mono Tools for Visual Studio since September.

The goal of Mono Tools for Visual Studio is to make it easier for programmers to use Visual Studio’s testing, debugging and deployment features, which may be more familiar to some developers than the open-source-specific tool alternatives, said de Icaza, Mono project founder and Vice President of Developer Platforms at Novell.

The new Mono Visual Studio Tools also enables integration with SuSE Online, a tool for building and testing turnkey virtual appliances that are based on SuSE Linux Enterprise Server or openSuSE.

Yesterday, Microsoft announced some tool-interoperability news of its own; the Redmondians are buying Teamprise and plan to make it an add-on to Visual Studio. The Teamprise add-on is designed to allow Java developers using Eclipse-based development environments to collaborate with .Net developers via Team Foundation Server.

November 9th, 2009

Microsoft 'builds a branch to Java developers" with Teamprise buy

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 4:45 am

Categories: .Net Framework, Corporate strategy, Development tools, Visual Studio 10 ("Hawaii")

Tags: Java Developer, Java, Microsoft Corp., Eclipse, Teamprise, Java Development Tools, Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft Development Tools, Open Source, Development Tools

Microsoft has bought the Teamprise assets from SourceGear LLC for an undisclosed amount, company officials announced on November 9.

Teamprise allows developers using the Eclipse integrated development environment (IDE) running on operating systems including Unix, Linux and Mac OS X to build applications with Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server. (Team Foundation Server is Microsoft’s team-collaboration tool for developers.)

Microsoft plans to release a Microsoft-branded and -updated version of Teamprise that will plug into Visual Studio 2010 on or around the same date that it launches Visual Studio 2010, which is March 22, 2010, officials said.

“We just built a branch to Java developers,” said Dave Mendlen, Senior Director of Developer Marketing. “Many customers have developers targeting Java using Eclipse, as well as .Net using Visual Studio. They need a common repository and source-control tool. This is unified through Team Foundation Server” with the Teamprise add-on.

Microsoft is acquiring three Teamprise technologies as part of the arrangement: A plug-in for Eclipse that integrates into the Eclipse IDE; the Teamprise Explorer user interface; and a command-line client. The plug-in supports Eclipse and Eclipse-based  IDEs, such as Rational Application Developer, JBoss, BEA Workshop and Adobe Flex Builder. Microsoft also has hired some of the Teamprise developers as part of the deal, Redmond officials said.

Under terms of the agreement, Teamprise — a Microsoft partner — will continue to do sales and support for Teamprise until Microsoft releases the Microsoft-branded version of the product. After that point, existing Teamprise users will be upgraded to the Microsoft-branded product.

New users will be able to buy Team Foundation Server plus Teamprise shipped as a single package. The bundle will be offered as part of Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate SKU or at retail for approximately $799.