Microsoft Revamps, Renames Visual Studio .Net Integration Program

At its VSLive developer show in New York, Microsoft renamed the program it formerly called Visual Studio Integration Partner program to the Visual Studio Industry Partner (VSIP) program, according to the company.

The VSIP program broadens developer access to Visual Studio integration technology and provides partners with more co-marketing opportunities with Microsoft.

The new program has three tiers of membership: Affiliate, Alliance and Premier, which replace the previous program's single, fee-based membership level, according to Microsoft.

Software developers can join at the Affiliate level of partnership for free, and receive free access to the VSIP software developer kit (SDK) and related technologies. The VSIP SDK allows partners to integrate development tools, programming languages and other software components with Visual Studio .Net.

Affiliate members also receive a license agreement they can click through to activate, as well as royalty-free distribution for products integrated with Visual Studio, free newsgroup technical support and an online catalog listing for available .Net-related products, Microsoft executives said.

At the Alliance level, partners pay an annual fee of $3,000 for all Affiliate-level benefits plus a one-year MSDN Universal Subscription, access to the VSIP program logo and additional co-marketing activities with Microsoft. All current partners in the Microsoft .Net Component Builder Program now automatically are VSIP program members at the Alliance level, according to Microsoft.

Existing members of the Visual Studio Integration Partner automatically become partners at the Premier level, which costs $10,000 for annual membership. The Premier level includes all of the benefits of the Alliance level, but Premier partners also are eligible for participation in targeted marketing activities with Microsoft and a Visual Studio .Net redistribution license, and can distribute the new Visual Studio Premier Partner Edition software.

Visual Studio Premier Partner edition enables Premier-level VSIP program members to ship their products along with the base Visual Studio .Net development environment, according to Microsoft. The Partner edition consists of the Visual Studio .Net IDE minus the compilers, project templates and tools found in the Standard, Professional and Enterprise editions of the product.