TeamPrise Assets Purchased by Microsoft

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard this suggestion from people: “Microsoft should just buy TeamPrise and make the Eclipse and non-Windows clients just part of the TFS product.”

That day is finally here. Microsoft has purchased the TeamPrise-related assets from SourceGear. More details about the acquisition announcement are available at Microsoft’s PressPass site and also the Pathways site for TeamPrise and Visual Studio.

Also, in addition to purchasing the TeamPrise assets, Microsoft has also hired a majority of the development team including, most notably, Martin Woodward who has been an absolutely fantastic part of the “Team System” MVP group. It will be really sad to see Martin leave the group (as of today) but something tells me that he won’t be hiding :) Congratulations to him and the entire team!

Now the one thing that i think people might be worried about will be what will happen to the future of the TeamPrise clients and will that development team be able to innovate as quickly as they had before? I’m pretty sure the same “mission” will be in place and the team will be able to more closely leverage the other team members and assets within the Team Foundation Server product team. As far as speed of innovation, that’s tough to tell. Most other Microsoft products have tons of release requirements that slow them down such as localization, security reviews, etc. All of which are great things but do end up slowing you down if you have to support those requirements. Who knows if the TeamPrise development team will have to support them? My guess is that if they’re going to be part of the “Visual Studio” product line that they will have the very similar if not the same requirements as the rest of the stack. We will definitely see… Another possible hang up is that Microsoft (specifically Developer Division) will have to learn how to sell & market a Java/non-Windows based product. I can only imagine there will be some growing pains.

As far as licensing, right now you’ll need to still purchase the TeamPrise clients and get support from TeamPrise directly. A Microsoft-branded “TeamPrise” client will become available with the 2010 release. If you own a current license of the TeamPrise 3.3 software it looks like you’ll be upgraded to the new version when it is released. Also, if you own a Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN license at the time you’ll get access to download the new clients from MSDN Subscriber Downloads. After the 2010 release, it looks like there will be a new SKU available to be able to purchase just the new clients that will also include a CAL for Team Foundation Server that will run somewhere around $799 retail.

I’m excited about the decision and it looks like both Martin and Brian Harry are as well. I’m excited to see the platform broaden and truly support teams who have heterogeneous development environments!

Ed Blankenship