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Moving to Visual Studio 2005
With the launch of Visual Studio 2005, Microsoft is taking the opportunity to revise its Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) offerings. Matt Nicholson examines your options when it comes to making the move from your existing licences to Visual Studio 2005 Professional and Team System.
Author: Matt Nicholson
Last updated: Nov 2005
Putting together a coherent pricing structure and licensing model for Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) is no mean feat, particularly when you consider the wide range of user needs and migration paths that must be satisfied. The task becomes even more complicated when you factor in the various MSDN subscriptions available, to say nothing of the Open and Select volume licensing programmes. First of all, with the exception of Foundation Server itself, none of the products that make up VSTS are available as standalone packages. The three role-based editions, together with the Team Suite which includes all three in one package, are only available in combination with an MSDN Premium subscription (see below). Foundation Server The new MSDN subscriptions
Making sense of the result, and working out the best migration strategy for your organisation, is almost as difficult. Nevertheless, certain details do stand out.
Secondly, if you need to support five or more licensed users, then you really need to talk to a reseller about taking out an Open or a Select volume licence.
If you already have an MSDN Enterprise or Universal subscription then you will be upgraded to VSTS automatically, and free of charge. As the diagram shows, all MSDN Enterprise subscribers current at the time of launch have been upgraded to Visual Studio Team Edition for Software Developers, with all its extra tools, and to MSDN Premium.
This is effectively the same for MSDN Universal subscribers, except that you get to choose which Visual Studio Team Edition you prefer. This route is particularly valuable if you have multiple licences, or a volume licence, as you can then choose who on your team gets which edition. If you had five licences you could, for example, elect to have one Architects edition, three Developers editions and one Testers edition.
Universal subscribers receive 180-day trial versions of all three editions but must make a choice before their existing subscriptions come up for renewal. If you want complete flexibility, so that anyone on your team can use any of the three role-based editions, then you will need to upgrade your whole team to the full Team Suite.
An important point to note is that, while the VSTS products do include a version of Foundation Server, this will only support up to five users (although it is fully functional in all other aspects). If you want to support more than five users then you will need to purchase Foundation Server separately. Upgrading is achieved by applying what amounts to a patch to the restricted version, so does not involve an installation or migration of existing data.
Furthermore, while each VSTS product does include a Client Access Licence (CAL) for Foundation Server, anyone else requiring access (from Microsoft Project for example) will need to purchase a CAL.
This might seem a little mean, particularly as MSDN Premium does include a wide range of application servers in the package. However the MSDN licence only allows their use for development, test and demonstration, and not for final production. Microsoft’s argument is that Foundation Server is in production use when supporting a team of developers, and so by its nature cannot conform to the MSDN licence.
Note also that Microsoft will be making the Team Explorer client available for Visual Studio 2005, and as a standalone product for use with other development environments. This means that anyone will be able to participate in a VSTS project once they purchase the appropriate CAL.
Visual Studio 2005 Professional with MSDN Professional includes all the current Windows operating systems, SQL Server Developer Edition, Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office (VSTO), older versions of Visual Studio, Visual FoxPro 9.0, Virtual PC, MSDN Library, two technical telephone support incidents and access to the subscriber areas of the MSDN Web site.
To this, MSDN Premium adds Office Professional, SQL Server (replacing the Developer Edition), Exchange Server, BizTalk Server, SharePoint Portal Server, Commerce Server, Host Integration Server, Visual SourceSafe, Microsoft Access Developer Extensions, and a number of other servers products. It also includes four telephone support incidents rather than two.
Some additional products are included for those subscribing to MSDN Premium in combination with a VSTS product, as opposed to Visual Studio 2005 Professional. These include InfoPath, OneNote, Visio Professional, Project and MapPoint. VSTS products also come with a Client Access Licence (CAL) to Foundation Server.
As before, each MSDN subscription is only licensed for use by one named subscriber, and the server components can only be used for design, development, test or demonstration purposes. These products are not licensed for use in production environments, and cannot be shared amongst developers unless each user has an MSDN subscription.
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