You read the title correct, I did say SERVICE and not SERVER. This new Team Foundation in the Cloud offers all the TFS Server functionality in a fully managed environment. Currently this is in preview mode, and is 100% free to sign up and get yourself a nifty subdomain:

yourdomain.tfspreview.com

It was incredibly easy to setup. You basically walk through a couple of web pages and link it in through your @live account. In a matter of minutes you are up and running with TFS and a project. You do need VS2010 with SP1 to get use of the Visual Studio Integration. Also, it is working out of the box with the VS11 Developer Preview, and apparently has some additional features you can take advantage of, though I’m not aware of what they are yet – Please let me know if you find them.

This version includes web-access to all files, including comparison mode (just like TFS). At first glance everything seems present that I normally use from day-to-day, including branching, merging, etc. You can even setup your own build server locally that will integrate with TFS in the cloud, and queue builds, etc, exactly as you would with a local TFS box – nicely done Microsoft!

Sign-up and Introduction URL: http://www.tfspreview.com

You will need an invitation code in order to sign-up (since it is in preview). I was lucky enough to find a fellow blogger who could part with one.

Although this product is currently free to use right now, upon final launch of it each account will be given 30 days to either begin paying for the account or retrieve all your code – no word on pricing yet. Microsoft has said that you can use this service in preview mode for Production code.

Looking forward to seeing the pricing on this service and where it goes in the future.