A Vancouver, B.C.-based vendor of version control and issue-tracking technology for developers recently joined Microsoft’s Visual Studio Industry Partner (VSIP) program with the end goal of more closely aligning its products with the popular developer platform.
As a member of the VSIP program geared at independent software vendors, Dynamsoft Corp. will receive technology training, and assistance with sales and marketing opportunities, as well as shared expenses on advertising projects, said the company’s vice-president, Amy Gu.
The partnership also means working more closely with Microsoft to ensure applications integrate well, she said. “We can try betas and their new builder versions to see if our applications run smoothly on their Visual Studio, on SQL server.”
It’s an early adoption program that gives members access to material otherwise not disseminated to third parties, said Chris Oliva, ISV partner accounting manager with Microsoft. “It’s an incubation program for ISVs who would like to have their development lifecycle minimized by working closely with Microsoft.”
The relationship with Microsoft existed prior to this, however, as Dynamsoft has been integrating its source control technology with Visual Studio for the past three years, said Gu, adding that moving forward the change will be a deeper and more insightful view into the Visual Studio platform.
Dynamsoft Corp.’s SourceAnywhere product line – including SourceAnywhere Microsoft Visual SourceSafe (VSS), SourceAnywhere Standalone, and SourceAnywhere Hosted – are designed to assist developers manage multiple revisions of the same unit of information throughout the software development process.
Aligning the product line with Visual Studio makes sense considering most of Dynamsoft’s customers – situated globally with the majority in North America – are Visual Studio users, said Gu. “Visual Studio is very popular with the developer community and is also the main integrated development environment (IDE) we support.”
The relationship impacts the SourceAnywhere product line by allowing developers to access features without leaving Visual Studio, said Gu. “The ability to work within one program is a huge benefit for remote development teams who struggle with performance, security and multi-platform development challenges.”
Dynamsoft’s source control technology is available to Visual Studio users (versions 6.0 and above) as a menu option in the software, explained Gu. “Every file check out or edit will be automatically changed on the source control server.”
