Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2015 released, Azure Data Factory goes GA

Microsoft has announced today that Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2015 and Azure Data Factory are now both available. There is also a new technical preview (2.2) for SQL Server 2016 that adds enhancements to security policies, Master Data Services and SQL Server Reporting Services. All of these updates are available now and are ready for use (or testing, in the case of the technical preview).

Team Foundation Server 2015 brings several key updates that have a focus on DevOps capabilities and below are a few of the updates in this release:

Agile Project Management: The main improvements include hierarchical backlog management, customizable cards, swim lanes, definition of done, split columns, inline edit, search and filter, among many others.
Build.vNext: The build system overhaul addresses numerous points of customer feedback like a web UI, change auditing, better agent pool management, among others. TFS 2015 also has a dramatically simpler extensibility model, providing tasks for building almost anything you want – Java, Android, iOS, Node.js and more, and a cross platform agent that enables you to build on any platform you choose.
Continuous Delivery: With the new Build pipeline, extensibility model and cross platform agents, Microsoft has further enabled continuous delivery with Team Foundation Server 2015. You can choose from a wide variety of tasks that will provision Microsoft Azure infrastructure for your application, deploy the app, run load tests and more. This enables you to create an automated continuous delivery pipeline and monitor your code from creation to deployment.

Also available today is Azure Data Factory, this is Microsoft’s fully managed cloud-based data integration service, which orchestrates and automates the movement and transformation of data. If this is your cup of tea, you can read more about it here.

All of these announcements are targeted towards the enterprise and developers around the world. These types of solutions round out Microsoft's portfolio of tools, alongside Visual Studio, that allow the company to offer the ability to not only create applications but also scale and manage them too.