Visual studio 2013 Connected ecosystem

Collaborating systems are the next emerging buzz word in the technology community. From a consumer stand point, it is a MUST to have feature. However, for enterprises who are very strict with their IT policies, sharing "information" across the cloud or via the wire is a red flag.

I was working on a project that is intended to bring VS 2013 to the enterprise. The one annoying feature I found was the VS 2013 connected ecosystem. The VS 2013 connected ecosystem allows a user to sign in with his/her MSFT credentials. This will allow MSFT to control VS licenses and  a user can share VS settings across the wire. From an enterprise stand point, would this feature adds any value?? It creates a lot of issues with information sharing and data management.

Since I worked on Visual studio automation projects, I tried to shut down this feature using some registry hacks. The registry keys were generated on the fly and the values are created under 12.0_config settings. I tried to create some VS packages that will disable the registry values using a package definition file.

Another option I tried was to identify the Guid and the package id for the sign in menu. MSFT is very smart and they created the sign in button as a WPF component.

Since all are hacks, I don't prefer to implement it as an enterprise solution to disable sign-in button. So, I contacted MSFT and the answer was there is no standard way to disable the sign-in button.

Microsoft, when you create products you always hear from user communities. Have you ever tried to hear from enterprise communities?