Jeff Beehler recently posted a blog about the topics he plans to write in near future. I would like to see few blogs on opportunities of Solution Integrators. There are so much of documentation available on how to deploy and use VSTS. But what’s Microsoft’s plan. Do they expect customers to deploy VSTS on their own or they expect customers to engage Solution Integrators (SIs) for the purpose? However, is only deployment of development environment (can we address VSTS as that) large enough opportunity for SIs to pursue. Would they put money to define service offerings around this small opportunity? In this case, what a SI can offer?
- Physical Deployment of TFS (but how hard is it – would customers really buy that?)
- Customization of Process Templates as per customer needs
- Training workforce on using VSTS
Somehow, I feel that such a huge product with great extensibility options is being targeted to a smaller domain as compared to its capabilities. I feel Microsoft can do much better in selling VSTS, if it can come up with scenarios or solution that use VSTS as one key component of overall solution than just as a development environment. They can come up with many more examples like The Requirements Authoring Starter Kit that i wrote about in one of my earlier blog.
