Visual Studio 2010 enhancements

Today, I have the privilege of keynoting TechEd Middle East in Dubai for the second year in a row.

TechEd Middle East debuted last year, and this year the event has grown significantly. TechEd provides a nice opportunity to show off some of the cool work that teams at Microsoft do. I love connecting with customers and hearing how they're using our products, and for me, TechEd is a great way to get that.

I'm sharing several pieces of news with the live audience in Dubai that I want to share with you as well.

Visual Studio 2010 SP1

Visual Studio 2010 shipped about 11 months ago, and we continue to work on it and respond to customer feedback received through Visual Studio Connect. This feedback has guided our focus to improve several areas, including IntelliTrace, unit testing, and Silverlight profiling.

You can learn more about how we're improving Visual Studio 2010 on Jason Zander's blog later today. On March 8th, MSDN subscribers will be able to download and install Visual Studio 2010 SP1 from their subscriber downloads. If you're not an MSDN subscriber, you can get the update on Thursday, March 10th.

TFS-Project Server Integration Feature Pack

Also available for Visual Studio Ultimate with MSDN subscribers via Download Center today is the TFS-Project Server Integration Feature Pack. Integration between Project Server and Team Foundation Server enables teams to work more effectively together using Visual Studio, Project, and SharePoint and coordinates development between teams using disparate methodologies, such as waterfall and agile, via common data and metrics.

Visual Studio Load Test Feature Pack

We know that ensuring your applications perform continuously at peak levels at all times is central to your success. Yet load and performance testing often happen late in the application lifecycle. And fixing defects and detecting architectural and design issues later in the application lifecycle is more expensive than defects caught earlier in development. This is why we've built load and performance testing capabilities into the Visual Studio IDE itself.

Today, we're introducing a new benefit - Visual Studio 2010 Load Test Feature Pack - available to all Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN subscribers. With this feature pack, you can simulate as many virtual users as you need without having to purchase additional Visual Studio Load Test Virtual User Pack 2010 licenses. For more information regarding this new Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN benefit, visit the Visual Studio Load Test Virtual User Pack 2010 page.

Visual Studio LightSwitch Beta 2

Visual Studio LightSwitch offers a simple way to develop line of business applications for the desktop and cloud. Since the launch of Visual Studio LightSwitch Beta 1, we have seen over 100,000 downloads of the tool and a lot of developer excitement. In the coming weeks, we will make available Visual Studio LightSwitch Beta 2. With this second beta, we will also enable you to build line of business applications that target Windows Azure and SQL Azure.

In the meantime you can learn more about LightSwitch and follow the @VisualStudio Twitter account for announcements.

Namaste!