Visual Studio 2010 arrives to give Azure a boost

Suite benefits from advanced integration with Azure and comes with bundled cloud services

The Imperial War Museum is using Visual Studio 10 to enhance its web site

Microsoft has announced UK airline BMI, multimedia publisher Trader Media Group and the Imperial War Museum as early adopters of the Visual Studio 2010 integrated development environment (IDE), which was officially launched on Monday.

Visual Studio 2010 is key to the success of Microsoft’s cloud computing solution, Azure. The suite benefits from advanced integration with Azure and comes with bundled cloud services.

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said last month that he was “betting the company” on Azure.

Trader Media Group’s internal IT team is using Visual Studio 2010 to develop a new search engine.

The Imperial War Museum has contracted web design specialist Armadillo to implement applications for its exhibits using the IDE.

Visual Studio 2010 comes in four versions: Premium, Professional, Test Professional, and Ultimate.

All versions except Test Professional are geared up to support Azure. Ultimate users get 250 compute hours, 7.5GB of storage, 3GB of SQL Server database capacity and are allowed one million .NET messages per month. Premium and Professional users get proportionately less compute, storage, SQL Server storage and .NET messages.

Bundled in with each version of IDE is a copy of Team Foundation Server – Microsoft’s programming collaboration platform that will automate software delivery and management.

The Team Foundation Server is accessed through Microsoft’s Client Access Licences (CALs). Each copy of Visual Studio will come with one CAL, and project managers will need one CAL per programmer requiring access to the Team Foundation Server.