Microsoft is in the final stages of making the first Visual Studio 2010 Beta build available to testers. Jason Zander, general manager, Visual Studio, Developer Division, confirmed on May 12, 2009 that the Redmond company was wrapping up the bits for the successor of Visual Studio 2008. A specific availability deadline has yet to be provided; however, Microsoft pointed out that the Beta development milestone for Visual Studio 2010 was about to drop.

“We are finalizing Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 as we speak. I hope you will install the builds and send us your feedback,” Zander stated on May 12. On May 14, Amit Chatterjee, general manager, Visual Studio Test Business, Microsoft India Development Center, stated that “the Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 release is just round the corner.”

Speculations indicate that testers will be able to get their hands on the next iteration of Visual Studio in Beta as early as next week, but no later than a couple of weeks. Microsoft has yet to make public the date at which it will start serving Visual Studio 2010 Beta. However, the software giant did manage to put a label on the codenamed “Camano” generalist testing tool: Microsoft Test and Lab Manager.

“Test and Lab Manager will be available with several of the Visual Studio Team System products including Visual Studio Team Test 2010,” Zander said. “We expect that there will be plenty of cases where generalist testers will want to manage and execute test cases without installing the entire Visual Studio system on each machine. To help make that easier, we will also release a scaled down edition for generalist testers called Visual Studio Team Test 2010 Essentials.”

Essentially, the Redmond company will provide a total of three offerings, including: Visual Studio Team Test 2010, Visual Studio Team Test 2010 Essentials and Visual Studio Lab Management 2010. Microsoft explained that it was viewing the new lineup of solutions as an addition to the Visual Studio Team System product family.

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 Community Technology Preview (CTP) is available for download here.