14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has served over 100,000 Software Factories since the launch of the first such offer, approximately six months ago. A Software Factory, in Microsoft's perspective, is a structured collection of related software products designed for deployment in development environments. Currently, Microsoft is delivering four different bundles of software assets: Mobile Client Software Factory, Smart Client Software Factory, Web Client Software Factory and Web Service Software Factory.
"Over the last year Microsoft has been investing in Software Factories, which aim to bring the benefits of automation found in other industries to software development, resulting in improved quality, consistency and time-to-market. A software factory is an installable package of tools, processes and guidance that extends Visual Studio and optimizes it for developing a specific type of application, like an occasionally connected client or a WCF-based service," revealed S. "Soma" Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft.
Each of the four software factories provided by Microsoft offers wizards, templates, designers, code generation and documentation, capabilities designed to provide a guide through the development process.
"In the 6 months since the release of our first software factory there have been over 100,000 downloads of four different software factories. In addition to us delivering this, many of our partners including Infosys, EDS and Avanade are starting to build factories and include them in their technical strategies. In addition, tools such as GAT and DSL Tools enable anyone to build their own factories, either using existing factories as a starting point, or starting from scratch," added Somasegar.
The four software factories Microsoft is currently offering are but the initial steps of the Redmond juggernaut toward realizing the vision of streamlined software development projects.