MSDN/VSTS Details: First Sign of the Apocalypse
Actually, there have been many signs of the Apocalypse, most of which have involved Xtina, Gallagher, or both (and none of which involve the far superior Apocalypse 91 flavor of the end of time). But I digress and exaggerate, all without even breaking stride. The new MSDN/Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) pricing isn't the end of the world.
Frans Bouma's had one of the better elaborations I've seen because he makes the simple point that the enterprise developers using Rational's suite aren't the only people who want and need integrated unit testing, design, deployment, issue tracking, etc. And reading this it also occurs to me: the toolchain is a consideration, but the reason they're not a big fixture as a development platform in enterprise shops isn't really because they couldn't go toe-to-toe with IBM Rational. At the enterprise shops I've worked with, it runs a lot deeper and it's a lot more engrained than offering an integrated development suite. Enterprise shops look down on Microsoft's development tools because they look down on Microsoft's software and track record. This isn't universal but at a lot of financial institutions here in the capital of the world, there's a definite bias and it starts way before we get to "SourceSafe sucks, ClearCase costs US$ 9,000 per seat so it must be great..." (they don't use ClearCase either, so who knows who this hypercritical market Microsoft is chasing is...).
So, yeah, I get the tactics, I don't think the strategy is going to work. Microsoft thought the enterprise shops would kick J2EE to the curb when .NET rolled out. "It's like J2EE but from Redmond." Ummm, no. Today, nearly five years later, .NET has made a lot of inroads, at large and small enterprises. At large J2EE shops, this progress is frequently in the areas where J2EE isn't, it's around the margins. The main trading gateways still run on J2EE and don't need to be migrated. A new tier for the online retail banking application may use .NET to expose legacy data via ws. Which is all to say, no one threw J2EE out of bed just because Microsoft had a solid offering to compete with it at a highly attractive price.
It's likely VSTS will receive the same sort of greating. "Okay, thanks for coming, sorry you were running so late." So we'll see if this an ill-advised strategy or not--that's not really central to what I think is interesting.
I think two things are interesting. 1.) Microsoft is again out of touch with its developer base. The fact that there are three versions of VSTS is silly and that you need a different SKU to mix job functions that get mixed and matched in teams everywhere, everyday is even sillier still. The fact that Microsoft doesn't get why it's developers buy MSDN Universal subscriptions in the first place (as a catch all so they're covered in any scenario) and the fact that the left hands are actively not understanding why the right hands are doing this--well it seems to suggest this decision got made up at the Eric Rudder level or wherever and it got made by someone who doesn't understand what most of the existing MSDN subscriber base really does with their days.
The second thing this made me realize is a bit more surprising. This has probably happened elsewhere in small doses, but to me this seems to be one of the first times Microsoft is eyeballing it's loyal developers and seeing a direct revenue target instead of an indirect market opportunity.
Developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers.
Microsoft is looking to make serious money off of tools directly. Where it's historically focused on its tools to sell OS, Office and server licensing, now Microsoft seems like it's seeing developers as being more valuable as a direct revenue source than as market influencers.
I'm less worried though about the direct effects. It's always a market-based system, and I think there's every chance any gaps can be filled by better products from companies like JetBrains (who will, say, see this as an opportunity to provide some of the VSTS type functionality in an IDE that isn't stratospherically priced...). The market wants these things, it just doesn't appear Visual Studio will be the only place it looks for them. This is probably a good thing in terms of healthy ecosystems.
I am however worried about the shift in focus at Microsoft about the value of developers. The VB developers have a lot of alienated folks among their numbers. The aggregate number of pissed off developers seems to be increasing on a number of new fronts nearly every day now.