Many of our clients are adopting Team Foundation Server(TFS) as an ALM solution from Microsoft. With the cloud adoption and new business strategies, clients’ ask for a TFS in cloud. When we recommend Visual Studio Online (VSO) to address the client needs, most of the clients turn back and tell us; ” No, we don’t want Visual Studio in browser, we will use the IDE from our desktop. But, we want TFS access through cloud based services”.

The confusion created by the name Visual Studio Online is there in every end user. People are reluctant to accept the fact that VSO is a SaaS offering from Microsoft for TFS services. They always think, there is some relation with VSO and Visual Studio; not with TFS.

Microsoft addressed all these confusions yesterday in Connect event, by announcing the new name for VSO – Visual Studio Team Services; better than the previous name. Hope, now I will be able to convince the clients that VSTS is the SaaS offering of TFS. Oh! sorry, we should not use that short form, which will make more confusion. Those who remember Visual Studio 2005 and 2008, we used to have special editions of Visual Studio called Visual Studio Team System(VSTS) targeting different groups.

Now, what will be the short form of the new Visual Studio Team Services ?