Last October, we announced a new packaging lineup and licensing options for Visual Studio 2010 to provide customers with simplified ways to purchase and license Visual Studio. The new lineup includes three main versions of Visual Studio with appropriate MSDN subscriptions to go with Ultimate, Premium and Professional.
Many of you have asked what this meant for Standard Edition customers looking to upgrade.
Today, I’m announcing our Standard Offer promotion to ensure current Standard Edition customers can easily and affordably move up to Visual Studio 2010. The Standard Offer enables customers who purchased Visual Studio 2005 or 2008 Standard Edition to upgrade to Visual Studio 2010 at the previous Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition $299 retail price. Standard customers can take advantage of this offer April 12-October 12, 2010.
Visual Studio 2010 provides significant new benefits, such as the ability to optimize your development environment with multi-monitor support, and the ability to target multiple versions of the .NET Framework with one tool. For Standard customers this functionality represents a substantial step up in tooling.
Today, we’re also unveiling an offer for customers who purchase Visual Studio Professional at retail. To help these developers fully realize the power and benefits of a MSDN subscription, I am announcing MSDN Essentials, a one-year trial MSDN subscription that will be included with every retail copy of Visual Studio Professional sold.
MSDN Essentials subscribers will have access to three of the latest Microsoft platforms: Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise, and SQL Server 2008 Datacenter R2 for development and test use, as well as 20 hours of Windows Azure. Subscribers will also have access to MSDN’s Online Concierge, Priority Support in MSDN Forums, and will be included in special offers from partners.
For the first time ever, we are giving developers the opportunity to pre-order Visual Studio 2010. The Microsoft Store and select online resellers will pre-sell Visual Studio 2010 Professional with MSDN Essentials from March 9th until the product launch.
Namaste!
Will Ultimate cover Lab & Test Management?
Will VS.NET 2010 support Silverlight 3 and 4 by the time it is released? Please - no more goof-ups like the release candidate version.
If Silverlight 4 is still in beta in April how can we expect VS2010 to support it (a product that will most likely not even be feature-locked at the time?) I would much rather have VS2010 with all the great new stuff it brings now, and then have the Silverlight 4 tools later when Silverlight 4 itself is no longer in beta.
I always wanted to ask this question since the last 15 years. Why not include Office in the MSDN Professional subscription? There are a bunch of developers like me that do not need any server (Exchange, Biztalk, etc.) for testing or any of the Dynamics products, but have end users that need solutions using Office.
What about VS Professional users? Do we pay 549 or 299 to upgrade?
Does the VS Professional Retail + MSDN Essentials include a source code repository solution?
Hi Betty,
Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN includes Microsoft Test Manager and Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010. Together these enable the user to manage Test cases and Virtual Lab Images.
To license the physical lab machines you will however require licenses of Visual Studio Lab Management 2010 for each physical Lab Server CPU (this includes a limited use version of System Center Virtual Machine Manager).
You can find more details on Visual Studio 2010 licensing here:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/B/1/7B18407A-AC79-4949-A318-A6636D96F497/Visual%20Studio%202010%20Licensing%20-%20Feb-2010.pdf
-somasegar
Hi, whats the update price for VS2008 and more importand, does the update also contain MSDN Essentials?
Please, PLEASE just make one dream come true - GET RID OF CRYSTAL REPORTS!!! In over 25 years in the biz, I have never seen such a horrible product, so horribly supported, so weakly documented, and so completely unknown to the very people who sell it (SAP). I have lost not hours, not days, not weeks, but MONTHS of productivity due to Crystal Reports. I strongly urge MS to consider this sad fact - everything you do to help us be more productive is squashed by this dinosaur of a product that you include. Not to mention that VS with Crystal included is like ordering Filet Mignon with a side order of swamp weeds. Dump the darn thing!
Hi Rich,
MSDN Essentials does not include a copy of Team Foundation Server 2010 (TFS). The MSDN Essentials offering is primarily targeted at individual developers who want to work against the latest Microsoft platform offerings.
However, in the 2010 release we have done a lot of work to make TFS more accessible to everyone – two critical changes were to significantly lower the price of the product and include in that price access for the first 5 users without the requirement to purchase additional Client Access Licenses (CALs).
Another significant change was to streamline the install process so that TFS could work on the desktop as well as the largest scale out server configurations.
Hi Donald,
Our SKU structure is geared towards having tiers of product value with different price points.
At the core is VS Pro with MSDN Essentials (just the latest core platforms), VS Pro (all the core platforms), VS Premium (all the servers and client software), VS Ultimate (Everything).
Can you keep this offer open until VS 2010 SP1 is released? I have bugophobia.
Ron: Current Visual Studio Professional users, as well as users of other development environments can upgrade to Visual Studio 2010 Professional with MSDN Essentials for $549, which is the same price as the Visual Studio 2008 Professional upgrade. Here is a quick list of our estimated retail prices (ERP) in US Dollars for the Visual Studio family.
Visual Studio 2010 upgrade for Visual Studio 2005/2008 Standard customers: $299 ERP (until 12-Oct). This version does *not* include MSDN Essentials
Visual Studio 2010 Professional with MSDN Essentials: $799 ERP/$549 ERP Upgrade
Visual Studio 2010 Professional with MSDN: $1199 ERP/$799 ERP Renewal
Visual Studio 2010 Premium with MSDN: $5469 ERP/$2,299 ERP Renewal
Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN: $11,899 ERP/$3,799 ERP Renewal
Visual Studio 2010 Test Professional with MSDN: $2,169 ERP/$899 ERP renewal
Team Foundation Server 2010: $499 license (per server)ERP/$399 upgrade (per server)ERP
Test Load Virtual User Pack (1000 virtual users) $4,499 ERP
More information about pricing, as well as information on how to get Visual Studio, will be available on http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio as we get closer to launch.
Thanks,
Matt Carter
Microsoft
It would be nice to have an upgrade path from Visual Studio 2008 Professional to Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate (without MSDN Essentials). Will this be offered?
Hi Sam and William,
Thanks for the feedback. Our plan is to make SL4 tools for VS 2010 available at the same time as SL4 is available.
We know that we need to provide updated SL4 tools that works with VS 2010 RC in the interim and we are looking to delivering that later this month.