Serving as a data warehouse and collaboration hub, Team Foundation Server complements Microsoft's already shipping Visual Studio 2005 Team System client components for ALM. Team Foundation Server ships later this month. Microsoft's Rick LaPlante, general manager of the company's Visual Studio Team System group, is expected to discuss the product on March 16 at the SD West 2006 conference in Santa Clara, Calif.

Team Foundation Server reports on static analysis of code, tracks the software build process, and furnishes a history of software engineering efforts. It is considered crucial to Microsoft's ALM platform.

"The unique thing there is it is a data warehouse. We've never had one of those before," LaPlante said in an interview on Friday.

The genesis of Microsoft's ALM platform began in 1999, when LaPlante met with Bill Gates, currently Microsoft's chairman and chief software architect, and Steve Ballmer, now serving as CEO, to talk about enterprise software development.

"I sat down with Bill and Steve and said we need to be in this business," LaPlante said.