14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft started rolling out the second beta development milestone of Visual Studio 2010 and.NET Framework 4 on October 19th, 2009. For the time being, Beta 2 of the company’s development platform and tools is available exclusively to MSDN subscribers, but the company will soon open up access to testers outside of its developer community. A critical aspect of the evolution of both Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 and .NET framework 4 Beta 2 is the fact that the two releases are accompanied by go-live licenses. In this context, early adopters can already leverage the development solutions for projects deployed into production environments.
“Developers face demanding, complex and fast-paced environments today; this next wave of tools and technologies will help simplify the development process from design to deployment and will enable developers to use their existing skills and knowledge to build better software, faster,” noted S. Somasegar, senior vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft. “Now is the time to test drive the new functionality and features in these releases, which address everything from Windows 7 and SharePoint support to collaboration and life-cycle management.”
Somasegar indicated that Microsoft worked to ensure that early adopters will not feel any impact on their current environments as they test drive the new technologies. Both Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 and .NET framework 4 Beta 2 can be installed alongside their precursors on the same machine without any issues. The Beta 2 releases of VS 2010 and .NET 4 will affect in no way current VS 2008 and .NET 3.5 deployments.
“The 2010 wave is not only about innovation but about helping our customers get significantly more for their investments,” added Dave Mendlen, senior director of developer marketing at Microsoft. “The Ultimate Offer and new MSDN subscriber benefits combine to give developers access to high-quality tools, training and community support while at the same time providing organizations with an immensely better value for their money.”
Microsoft has already revealed that it has taken the necessary measures to simplify the product lineup for Visual Studio 2010. At the same time, while the company announced that Visual Studio 2010 and .Net Framework 4 would be made available to customers on March 22nd, 2010, the pricing details for the next iteration of VS were also made public.
Here is the new Stock Keeping Unit strategy (SKU) for Visual Studio 2010, according to the Redmond company: "• 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."