News

VS2010 ALM Acquires Teamprise Clients

• By Kathleen Richards
• 11/09/2009

As the world celebrates the 20th anniversary of the "fall of the wall," Microsoft announced today in Berlin that it has acquired the Teamprise Client Suite, which supports Eclipse and other cross-platform environments for Team Foundation Server.

The announcement was made during the Developer Session keynote by Jason Zander, general manager of Visual Studio for Microsoft's Developer Division, on the first day of Tech Ed Europe 2009, Nov. 9 – 13.

The Teamprise Client Suite consists of an Eclipse plug-in, a standalone explorer client (outside of the IDE) that provides similar functionality and a command-line client for scripting. According to Microsoft, the technology enables source control, work-item tracking, build and reporting by integrating the Team Provider menu into Eclipse 3.0 and higher, and popular Eclipse-based IDEs--Adobe Flex Builder, BEA Workshop, JBoss and Rational Application Developer. The Teamprise explorer and command-line clients work on Windows, Mac OS X and Unix (Linux and Solaris).

"This is a brilliant move by Microsoft," says Al Hilwa, program director, Application Development Software for IDC. It enables cross-pollination in companies that have Java and .NET environments or ALM standardization in enterprises that want to adopt Microsoft's Visual Studio Team System.

"In a way you are seeing .NET maturing in the enterprise," he says, with more professionalized development and serious testing around it. "This is a milestone in maturation."

It is also important, according to Hilwa, "because Microsoft has been cranking most of its revenue in the team space." According to IDC estimates, Microsoft's application development (Visual Studio, ALM, SCM) and IT portfolio management software (Microsoft Project) represented a $1.271 billion business in the 2008 calendar year. Enterprise sales are the primary driver.

Brian Harry, Microsoft technical fellow and TFS product unit manager for TFS, explained in his blog today how Teamprise will fit into the Visual Studio ALM offerings going forward:

"With the transaction complete, we are turning our attention to creating the first “official” Microsoft version of the Teamprise Client Suite (new brand TBD). We expect to release an update this coming spring that will support a large portion of the TFS 2010 feature set while still being compatible with TFS 2005 and 2008 servers. When the Microsoft branded release is available, we will be providing free upgrades for all customers who own a Teamprise client product and an associated TFS CAL and will begin full Microsoft support for the product."

Teamprise will be included In Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN, the successor to Visual Studio 2008 Team System Team Suite. It will also be sold for $799 (U.S.), separately.

The Teamprise technology was purchased from the Teamprise division of SourceGear, the company that develops SourceOffSite for Microsoft Visual SourceSafe. Teamprise v3.3 will continue to be sold and supported by the Teamprise division of SourceGear until the first Microsoft version is released. The Microsoft-branded product is expected in the same timeframe as the planned VS2010 launch, which is scheduled for March 22, 2010.

Microsoft has worked closely with the Teamprise developers since TFS originated in 2002, according to Harry. Most of the Teamprise development team has been hired by Microsoft. Former Teamprise lead architect and the Team System MVP of 2009, Martin Woodward, is the Microsoft program manager for Teamprise. Woodward will continue to work out of Northern Ireland.