Release Management vNext Plans

This post announces the upcoming vNext version of the Release Management Service in Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS), which will be publicly available later in the year. It highlights the limitations of the current WPF client-based service (no browser interface, Azure-only deployments) and details the improvements in the vNext service: a web-based interface, simplified concepts (Release Definitions, Environments), distributed task execution infrastructure shared with Build vNext, and integrated security permissions. It also covers deployment capabilities for Azure resources (websites, cloud services, resource groups), on-premises resources via agents, Linux deployments (Shell scripts, DSC, Chef), and integration with Jenkins and on-premises TFS builds. Traceability features for work items, commits, and test results are also mentioned, along with continuous deployment setup.