Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 – 4 major announcements today (what you need to know)

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

 

Information #1: Visual Studio 2010 (and .NET Framework 4) will be officially launched  on March 22^nd, 2010.

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

Information #2: from now to March 22^nd, you can benefit from massive saving  with the Visual Studio 2010 transition benefits (called “Ultimate Offer”).

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

  Information #3: Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Beta 2 will be available to MSDN subscribers on Monday, October 19th, with general availability on October 21st.

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

  Information #4: new benefits for MSDN subscribers, including these:

• 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

Microsoft Courier: not a new tablet … a Booklet :)

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.

Why building software solution during this (soon over) Global Financial Crisis (GFC) is a key priority?

Any enterprise, during a downturn or a slowdown, will focus on 2 priorities

• Growing the share
• Reducing the operational cost

Why growing the share?
          If you can’t increase your revenue with your customers as they are asking you to cost less, then you need to take on your competitor in order to maintain the same level of activity. This fiscal year, the market share will be a metric as important as the revenue growth.

Why reducing cost?
        Very obvious but you can’t cut in the muscle, you have to cut the fat.  That means turning off only any non-priority project and optimise the productivity by reducing the operation work force.
Ok, so how about the “custom development”? Where do/should I need some dev ?
Let think about why an enterprise needs to build a customer software solution and you will found 2 main reasons

• You need a competitive advantage.
        You can’t buy a COST (Commercial of the shelf) solution as you need one to fit and support your new business advantage. So if a software solution is needed as part of your business activity, you will have to do a custom development.
• You want to replace human activity/interaction with a software solution
        at least half of the value of any software solution is to replace human activity. You can call that evolution, complexity reduction … it’s about replacing people by software. As any company has his own process, you need a custom development to adapt a commercial software solution.

So you can see my point now:

What a company is looking at	Why  you need to build a software solution
Growing the share	Support Competitive advantage with a software solution
Reducing the operational cost	Replace human activity/interaction with a software solution

 

So now is the right time to engage your customers (or internal customers) around building custom development solutions to help them growing their share and reducing their cost.

 

Cheers,

Check the URL – “Wehatemanualtesting”

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

 J.

Visual Studio 2010 – Oracle database development support

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

August 6th: Windows 7 RTM bits on MSDN

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.

Windows Azure: Pricing and licensing

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

 …

Sketch flow … the missing link?

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) screen 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.

Moving from CVS or SVN (Subversion) to TFS (Visual Studio Team Foundation Server) ?

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.

Integration between Word and TFS (Team Foundation Server) with Team Spec

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.