By Greg DeMichillie [bio]
Posted: Oct. 31, 2005

Visual Studio (VS) 2005 is the most significant release of Microsoft's flagship developer tools since the introduction of Visual Studio .NET in 2002. It addresses longstanding weaknesses that have caused some customers to delay moving to .NET, and it introduces significant new features for teams of developers and extends the Visual Studio platform for partners and provides more services for them to build upon. Some partners, however, will find that the new team features of VS 2005 make Microsoft a competitor as well as a partner. Finally, VS 2005 is important to Microsoft because of its integration with SQL Server 2005—a product that is critical to the success of Microsoft's Server and Tools division—and because of the opportunity for increased tools revenue from higher-priced team editions of VS 2005.

This report outlines the new features of VS 2005 for individual developers using programming languages such as Visual Basic, C#, and C++, for Web developers building applications for ASP.NET, for developers building applications that access data, and for teams of developers, testers, and project managers. Finally, this report outlines changes in pricing and licensing that IT administrators need to understand.