VS 2005 Product Line-up :: A Picture Says 1,000 Words
We are getting a lot of questions on the Visual Studio 2005 product line-up and I though I would post a few pictures to clarify this. It’s a relatively long Blog post so first up here are the main headings:
- Extending the product offering…
- So What’s in The 3 Visual Studio Team System SKU’s
- Why would you move to VSTS?
- When will the product be released in NZ?
- I currently have an MSDN Subscription how does this relate to me?
- What is included in the new VSTS Subscriptions…
- How much will they cost?
- The Most Cost Effective Way to Get VSTS?
- How does it work for Partners (ISV/SI)?
So here goes…
First a few acronym busters:
- SKU – this is product speak for a product line such as a shirt in our case a version of Visual Studio 2005.
- VSTS – stands for Visual Studio 2005 Team System
Extending the Product Offering...
All of our products include support for version 2.0 of the framework and associated technologies such as ASP .NET and WinForms.
The Professional and Standard versions of Visual Studio 2005 are significantly more feature complete than ever before with refactoring support, debugging enhancements and the Class Designer.
We have extended the Visual Studio product family in two directions:
- Down: reducing some functionality to cater for enthusiasts, hobbyists and students with our Visual Studio Express editions
- Up: adding role based support to cater for Enterprise Development and team collaboration with Visual Studio Team System (VSTS)
Full size: click here
A lot of the questions I’m getting relate to VSTS so I’m going to focus on that a little.
So What’s in The 3 Visual Studio Team System SKU’s?
With the release of Visual Studio 2005 Team System we will move to a role based subscription service (Similar to MSDN Universal but one for each role). There are a total of three roles (Test, Developer and Architect) which are represented in the image below.
Full size: click here
On top of the three role based SKU’s there will be an additional subscription that covers all roles called ‘Team Suite’.
A lot of additional functionality (Reports, Builds, Work Items, Enterprise Source Control) depends on ‘Team Foundation Server’ which will be sold as a separate Server product with Client License Licensing (CAL) licensing for project managers and the like. Each of the three Team System SKU’s includes a client CAL for this product.
Why would you move to VSTS?
Besides the additional tools to assist you in being productive in your role e.g. Unit Testing, Code Coverage and Code Profiling, the increase in team communication and collaboration though out the SDLC will be a huge benefit to the team.
A simple example is the support for the project manager to see how the project is going though the reports and the ability to track work-items right through from the tester logging them to the developer fixing them.
For an overview of VSTS in action (from TechEd 2004) have a look at this slide deck. There are a number of good presentations and video’s on this page as well.
But don’t think that you need to move to VSTS – it’s an awesome product – but for a single individual you might want to continue using VS 2005 Professional or VSTS Developer Edition (so you get unit tests, code coverage, …).
VSTS in it’s entirety is really targeted at Medium to Large Development teams. There are other options to continue working as you do today.
Full size: click here
When will the product be released in NZ ?
The new subscriptions will be released in this calendar year… In the section on MSDN Subscriptions below I will tell you how to get the software as soon as it is released.
Remember you can go into production with .NET 2.0 and VS 2005 using Beta 2 and we have customers and partners who are doing this using the ‘go-live’ license option. I will provide the ability for you to get Beta 2 from our NZ Evaluation web site – watch for a post with these details soon.
I currently have an MSDN Subscription how does this relate to me?
We will look after our current MSDN Subscribers. If you have a subscription where you receive the Enterprise Developer toolset the details look like…
For no additional cost the following subscriptions will be upgraded:
MSDN Enterprise
> Visual Studio 2005 Team System Developer Edition + MSDN Premium
MSDN Universal
> Visual Studio 2005 Team System Developer Edition + MSDN Premium or
> Visual Studio 2005 Team System Test Edition + MSDN Premium or
> Visual Studio 2005 Team System Architect Edition + MSDN Premium
At a minimal cost MSDN Universal can be upgraded to ‘Team Suite’ which includes the tools for all three roles. However you still need to purchase ‘Foundation Server’ separately.
For MSDN OS and MSDN Library there are no changes. For MSDN Professional you will receive VS 2005 Professional in your subscription.
What is included in the new VSTS Subscriptions:
So the final subscription SKU line-up will look like this:
Full size: click here
How much will they cost?
I will publish NZ prices on 30th July 2005. In the interim look at the US process in this press release. Rest assured we will make the prices more comparable to the USD prices.
We will also be running a promotion to help people get onto MSDN Universal before product release so they get a no cost upgrade to one of the VSTS SKU’s. Watch my Blog for more details on this.
The Most Cost Effective Way to Get VSTS?
This is an easy answer. We provide a free upgrade to VSTS for all MSDN Universal subscribers who are subscribers before the launch of VSTS. It is therefore recommended that you should get onto MSDN Universal before the launch of VSTS to take advantage of this upgrade.
Getting onto MSDN Universal is a compelling option in any case as we have a great number of exciting products that will release during your subscription (SQL 2005, VS 2005, VSTS, BizTalk 2006, …). Don’t forget that MSDN Universal is a subscription service that will provide you with all of the new products for Development and testing purposes (Office System, Developer Tools, Windows Server System).
As I alluded to above we will run a promotion shortly that will make getting MSDN Universal more cost effective than ever in New Zealand!
How does it work for Partners (ISV/SI)?
Specifically in relation to VSTS this detail still needs to be worked out and we should have an answer on this within the next month.
Comments
- Anonymous
April 05, 2005
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
April 05, 2005
LOL
"Don’t forget that MSDN Universal is a subscription service that will provide you with all* of the new products for Development and testing purposes "
(*) At the moment of posting - all mean "all, but for only one Team System role".
In future - meaning of word "all" is subject to changes. - Anonymous
April 06, 2005
Hi Kevin,
The Class Designer is included in all versions of Visual Studio with the exception of the Express editions so Professional and Standard along with all VSTS SKU's will include it ;)
Here's a post from the product group themselves...
http://blogs.msdn.com/classdesigner/archive/2005/03/26/402319.aspx
Also a great Blog - I'd recommend it...
Cheers,
Sean - Anonymous
April 14, 2005
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
April 15, 2005
The second picture makes it look like the architect and tester editions are subsets of the developer edition. If this is the case, and all three editions are the same price, then why would anyone pick anything but the developer edition?
Or are there features in those two that aren't included in the developer edition and aren't shown on the chart? - Anonymous
April 15, 2005
I've been at Microsoft 3 weeks now and my new role is really kicking into gear. I have been on the road... - Anonymous
April 15, 2005
I've been at Microsoft 3 weeks now and my new role is really kicking into gear. I have been on the road... - Anonymous
April 15, 2005
Welcome to my new blog!
I've been at Microsoft 3 weeks now and my new role is really kicking into gear....