VSTS is Microsoft’s planned integrated ALM platform, which is expected to provide software change management (SCM), modeling, requirements gathering and code construction features. It will combine products from Microsoft with the ability for partners, like Borland Software Corp, to plug their products in.
Microsoft has traditionally focused on the tools component of the ALM cycle, with Visual Studio, leaving ALM to ISV partners. Microsoft’s ALM products include Visual Source Safe, while Office products like Word and Excel have been stretched, by customers, to help capture application requirements.
Rick LaPlante, Microsoft’s VSTS general manager, told ComputerWire that ISVs have failed to create a mass market for ALM during the last 20 years – a fact Microsoft plans to rectify through VSTS. VSTS is due for release during the first half of next year
Price appears to be one way Microsoft believes it can grow the market, creating an opportunity for both customers and partners. LaPlante told ComputerWire during a recent interview: We will make it [VSTS] very interesting from a licensing and pricing perspective. We will make it very appealing to people.
LaPlante, who was unwilling to provide pricing details, is also banking on ease-of-use features, like wizards, together with a streamlined architecture to put increasingly sophisticated lifecycle management tools into the hands of coders, helping refine development processes.
One VSTS feature that LaPlante is enthusiastic about, is the ability for one developer to check unfinished source code into a central repository and for that code to be checked-out by someone else. This avoids the need to develop complex source trees, where unfinished code can be stored in a tangle of sub-branches, whilst also making it easier to share the code.
They [ALM providers] have had 20 years to create a mass market and they haven’t done that, and shame on them. If we haven’t created a mass market in 20 years time, then shame on us, LaPlante said. ALM [today] is for the priests. These guys get the high price points because they sell to the priests.
LaPlante said Microsoft expect to provide features in VSTS that will provide a competitive challenge partners, but by creating a mass market, Microsoft will grow the pie to everyone’s benefit, as partners turn to domain-specific tools, in particular.
Do I expect to build requirements management some day – absolutely, LaPlante said. We may cannibalize some of the market but the opportunity we create for everyone, further down, is huge.
