Team Foundation Server Gets Modern, Goes Cloud

Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2012 brings application life-cycle management capabilities that could help development, operations, and other personnel handle shorter development cycles and tighter integration between software development and other business processes. TFS is a server application that provides source code version control, project and build management, test execution, and centralized storage for collaborative software development. Team Foundation Service, a Microsoft-hosted cloud service offering TFS functionality, is also available and could dramatically cut server deployment time and costs, making it especially attractive to smaller teams.

ALM, Agile Methodologies Get Attention

TFS (sometimes referred to by the full name Visual Studio Team Foundation Server) handles application life-cycle management (ALM), which refers to the process of creation, deployment, and continual upkeep of software through collaboration among architects, developers, testers, project managers, operations personnel, and other stakeholders who design, code, test, deploy, maintain, and use applications. TFS supports ALM using a set of SQL Server databases that contain source code, work items, build information, user identities, and other project data. Team members use clients such as the Visual Studio integrated development environment (VS IDE), the TFS Team Web Access Web-based portal, and the test-focused Test Manager application to work with a TFS deployment.