The Transition to Visual Studio 2010
In April 2010, we launched Visual Studio 2010. As part of the launch we consolidated the number of Visual Studio offerings from 7 to 4. (Ultimate, Premium, Professional, Test Professional). When this occurred, all active VS+MSDN users were automatically transferred to the corresponding new offering as seen below. In most cases, the new offering is an “upgrade” from your previous product because the included Visual Studio includes new features.
You are licensed to use the new/upgraded product until the end of your Microsoft Volume License Agreement (i.e. your renewal). At that time, you will be given the opportunity to “renew up” (i.e. keep your new offering) or “renew down” to a lesser featured product. For example… If you had VS Developer Edition with MSDN, you were granted up to VS Ultimate with MSDN on April 12th. At your next renewal, you have the option to keep VS Ultimate (for a slightly higher cost) or go down to VS Premium with MSDN (for a comparable cost to what you were paying previously). Note you are only paying the renewal cost and not the new-purchase cost at this time, so the cost to keep Ultimate is much less than if you were to buy it new.
For existing Enterprise Agreement Customers, this is a great situation. Because your EA locks you into pricing, you can continue to buy the previous offerings (and price) and each licensed purchased will auto-upgrade to the 2010 offering. So an EA customer can continue to buy VS Developer Edition and immediately get upgraded to a VS Ultimate license.
The 2010 features breakout per sku:
