14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has just unveiled the brand new Visual Studio 2013 development suite and together with it, the company also introduced cloud-based companion called Visual Studio Online.
This new service is based on Microsoft’s very own Windows Azure and comes with a freeware license for development groups of up to five users.
Visual Studio Online will, however, be offered in four different options, namely Visual Studio Online Advanced, Visual Studio Online Professional, Visual Studio Online Basic, and Visual Studio Premium with MSDN.
This last version comes with support for an unlimited number of users, as well as with integration with lots of development tools, such the desktop-based Visual Studio, Eclipse, and Xcode. It also includes support for Office 365 business apps and tools to host team projects on-premises and in the cloud.
At the same time, Visual Studio Online comes with support for Monaco, a new coding environment specifically designed for the cloud. According to ZDNet, Microsoft recently revealed that work on Monaco has started three years ago, as it’s based on a service providing users specific Visual Studio features right within a browser.
“Visual Studio Online, formerly Team Foundation Service, is the home for your project data in the cloud. Get up and running in minutes on our cloud infrastructure without having to install or configure a single server,” Microsoft said in the introduction of the new cloud-based service.
“Set up an environment that includes everything from hosted Git repos and project tracking tools, to continuous integration and an IDE, all packaged up in a monthly per-user plan. Connect to your project in the cloud using your favorite development tool, such as Visual Studio, Eclipse or Xcode.”
Along with Visual Studio Online, Microsoft has also revealed that Visual Studio 2013 and Net Framework 4.5.1 now bring improvements for XAML, HTML and JavaScript in order to build Modern apps, as well as asynchronous debugging for a number of languages.