VSTS... one of those truly "Well its about time" products out of Redmond...  While still in Beta 3, and with a few kinks left to work out, is a great product that is long overdue.

 

There are lots of great blogs from folks talking about how great the source control is, the Methodology support, Testing tools, MSBuild.... and so on, so I won't get into that debate here....

 

Let me tell you what is really and truly great about VSTS.

 

For the first time we have a platform that will unify the groups involved in developing quality software.  That extends from the developers, to the application architects to the testers, to even include the PMs and the Infastructure Architects (Yes, Infastructure Architects are people too)

 

For the first time the Infastructure and Solution architects have a tool to document each other's respective sides of the house, and a tool to find the places where the two aren't compatable.  Don properly, gone are the days where an application is pushed into production and just not work on the production servers because of configuration differences... gone are the days of racheting down the security on the production servers just to make an application work in the 11th hour.....

 

About time Microsoft, about time.