Microsoft partner Xamarin buys Clarius Consulting's Visual Studio division

Microsoft development-partner-in-arms Xamarin has acquired the Visual Studio division of Clarius Consulting, giving Xamarin even deeper ties to Microsoft's development suite.

No, there's nothing new to report about previous rumors that Microsoft might be interested in buying Xamarin. It's still a no comment/nothing new to report situation on that front.

But the increasingly tight partnership between Microsoft and Xamarin is likely even tighter after the Clarius deal, given Clarius' expertise and history in developing extensions for Visual Studio. (Microsoft itself is one of Clarius' biggest customers.)

Xamarin and Clarius officials are not disclosing financial terms of the deal. About 10 Clarius employees will be joining Xamarin.

Xamarin officials also announced on May 28 the release of Xamarin 3, the third release of Xamarin's core development platform for building apps for iOS and Android using Microsoft's C#.

Xamarin 3 adds an integrated Xamarin Designer for iOS as an alternative to Apple's Xcode Interface Builder. It also includes a new Xamarin Forms programming interface; support for shared projects for building Universal Windows/Windows Phone apps, as well as for sharing code across iOS, Android and Windows in Xamarin Studio or Visual Studio; built-in support for Portable Class Libraries and NuGet packages; and F# support.