Microsoft revamps enterprise tool portfolio

Microsoft yesterday unveiled enhancements to its enterprise software range, centring on web services development and improvements to its Visual Studio .Net development platform.

Chief executive Steve Ballmer lifted the lid off Visual Studio 2005 Team System, an expansion of the Visual Studio product, which features a suite of extensible life-cycle tools designed to enable firms to improve collaboration when developing service-oriented applications.

Ballmer also indicated that Web Services Enhancements 2.0, an add-on to Microsoft Visual Studio .Net and the Microsoft .Net Framework, was now available.

Designed to allow developers to more easily build security-enhanced web services, Enhancements 2.0 is a free add-on to Visual Studio .Net and the .Net Framework.

In addition, the software giant unveiled a technology preview of BizTalk Server Adapter for Web Services Enhancements 2.0, which aims to allow developers to orchestrate security-enhanced web services and design business process flows as secure web services.

Ballmer also showed off a technical beta release of the Microsoft Office Information Bridge Framework, an integrated set of tools and components designed to enable developers to build metadata-driven smart client systems that can interact with data from disparate enterprise systems.

"In order to take advantage of new business opportunities and effectively manage upfront and lifetime IT costs, it is important for customers to look at the entire IT life cycle - from application development to operations and management - and to choose a software platform that provides strong tools, ecosystem partnerships, security and support," said Ballmer in a statement.