Microsoft has announced that it is joining the Eclipse Foundation as a Solutions Member. The move - announced at EclipseCon - will see Microsoft maintaining its current plugin set that it provides for Eclipse users. Additionally, it has introduced some new tools and services for the IDE.

Prior to the announcement, Microsoft delivered several tools for Eclipse users including: Azure Toolkit for Eclipse, Java SDK for Azure, and the Team Explorer Everywhere plugin. All of these tools will continue to be maintained and shared through the Eclipse Marketplace.

Here are the main highlights of today's announcement:

The Team Explorer Everywhere plugin for Eclipse has been open sourced and is available on GitHub today.

Eclipse's Kura will gain Azure IoT Suite support, Microsoft will contribute an Azure IoT Hub Connector to Kura that will allow to easily connect gateways running Kura to Azure IoT Suite.

The Azure Toolkit for Eclipse will get Azure Java WebApp support, enabling programmers to take a Java web app and have it running in Azure "within seconds".

Azure Java Dev Center has been refreshed and updated.

Announcement of the Java Tools Challenge, where participating Java devs will build apps and extensions for Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS).

Eclipse is one of the most widely used Integrated Development Environments (IDE) amongst Java developers. Its extensive extension system allows users to expand the functionality of the IDE as well as make it support other languages such as Scala, Python, and Ruby, among others.

Image via Eclipse