Today, as part of its official launch of Visual Studio 2013, Microsoft also announced Visual Studio Online, which is the new name for what the company previously called the Team Foundation Service. Microsoft"s Brian Harry talked a bit about Visual Studio Online in our Q&A with him earlier today and in a new blog post he offers up more details on the service.
The post has a statement from Harry on the company"s reasons for changing the name of Team Foundation Service. He writes:
The name change is not due to any one change we are making today but rather an indicator that Visual Studio Online is the services component of our developer tools. It will, of course, continue to support all the kinds of development you do – Windows, Azure, Java, iOS, etc. and the IDE you need – Visual Studio, Eclipse, XCode, Android Studio, etc. But the name does indicate a continued broadening of our offering – you’ll see some more on this below if you continue to read.
Visual Studio Online is currently in what Harry calls a "Commercial Preview” mode so that Microsoft can continue to work on the billing system and squash any bugs that might pop up. The service will have a general availability launch sometime later in 2014. Anyone who already has a subscription to Team Foundation Service will get free access to Visual Studio Online for 90 days. Harry writes, "This will give everyone a few months to look at and understand the plans, ask questions and decide what to do. And, of course, we’ll continue to have free accounts for small teams."
Microsoft has also announced it has launched a preview of what it currently calls "Monaco", which Harry says is for developers to create and maintain Windows Azure Websites. He says, "Monaco is a rich, browser based, code focused development environment optimized for the Windows Azure platform, making it easy to start building and maintaining applications for the cloud."
Don"t forget that Neowin readers will be able to ask questions to Harry live at 5 pm ET later today so you can ask him about Visual Studio Online, Monaco and more.
Source: Microsoft | Image via Microsoft