The Challenge of Partnering With Microsoft
SourceGear latest company to alter its product plans to remain competitive
By Jennifer deJong
February 15, 2005 —
When a small company partners with Microsoft, it never calls the shots. But if it is willing to change its product line as Microsoft changes its own, new opportunities can arise.
The latest company to do just that is Champaign, Illinois-based SourceGear, which last month announced plans to develop an add-on to Team Foundation, Microsoft’s forthcoming source code control and bug-tracking offering expected in Visual Studio 2005 Team System.
Code-named Project Allerton, the planned add-on is a Linux, Mac OS and Solaris client for Team Foundation, said SourceGear’s Eric Sink, vice president of product marketing.
“Microsoft needs someone to provide access to non-Windows clients. [Otherwise], if you have even one Linux or Mac machine, Team Foundation is not right for you,” he said, noting that Microsoft is aiming Team System not just at all-Windows shops, but also at those with heterogeneous computing environments.
SourceGear is not the first company to have to adjust its product plans in the wake of actions by Microsoft. When Microsoft announced plans to include code coverage capabilities in Visual Studio Team System, expected this summer, Compuware recognized that the new features would compete directly with those offered by its own DevPartner Studio.
To compensate, earlier this year Compuware launched two new, noncompetitive offerings: DevPartner Fault Simulator, which tests error-handling code, and DevPartner SecurityChecker, which looks for vulnerabilities in ASP.NET applications.
Also, Citrix acknowledged Microsoft’s Longhorn will compete with its MetaFrame access infrastructure, but neither company has yet specified how.
Delivery of Allerton, for which pricing has not yet been announced, will coincide with Microsoft’s delivery of Team System, due this summer, with a beta version expected during the first quarter, a Microsoft spokesperson said. The company said in a statement that it is “pleased to see SourceGear building on Visual Studio,” but did not otherwise comment on SourceGear’s plans.
SourceGear is banking on Allerton to offset potential losses that could occur later this year when Microsoft adds remote access capabilities to Visual SourceSafe, its current source code management offering. When that happens, SourceSafe users who need to access version control data remotely will no longer have to rely solely on SourceOffSite, SourceGear’s remote access add-on for SourceSafe. “Being a Microsoft partner cannot happen without being a Microsoft competitor,” said Sink.
“The partnership relationship works, as soon as you start understanding it from their perspective,” Sink said. “If you don’t understand this, you get upset. But when you get it, you find out they are not a bad partner.”
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