S. "Soma" Somasegar, Developer Division VP, explains the broadened range of tool choices Microsoft is bringing developers of all stripes with the advent of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005.

With the much-anticipated release of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 coming later this year, PressPass spoke with S. "Soma" Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Developer Division, to learn more about how customers will benefit from the newest additions to Microsoft's developer tools product line. Somaasegar also explained how customers will continue to receive MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network Subscription benefits after Microsoft ships Visual Studio 2005. PressPass: What was Microsoft's intent with Visual Studio 2005? Somasegar: Our primary goal with Visual Studio 2005 was to execute on what we call "personalized productivity"--the notion that we should build tools tailored for the way our developer-tools customers actually do work. If we take a step back and look at our product line in Visual Studio .NET 2003, we have a lot to be proud of. According to Forrester Research, the Microsoft .NET Framework is chosen more often than J2EE in large enterprises. Our customers rave about the .NET Framework and Visual Studio .NET, and the benefits both the platform and tool have brought to their overall productivity and enterprise capability. But, we can do better. We know that our customer base is pretty diverse. It runs the gamut from kids learning how to program in high school to decades-long veterans of enterprise development. We know intuitively that the right product for the high-school kid is definitely not the right product for the enterprise architect, and vice versa. We know that while we have much to be proud of, we can still do a lot better. In Visual Studio 2005, our goal is to build "the right product, for every customer, at the right price." To that end, we're delivering a range of tools to satisfy the needs of our wide and varied customer base.