Rick Laplante - Talking about Visual Studio Team System (Licensing), Part II | TheChannel9Team

johngall

I know that this interview was supposed to help but...

I am one of those consultants faced with a hard decision. I am currently an MSDN Universal user but it expires at the end of May. I need to make a decision on direction very soon.

With each explanation, it is becoming less clear just what one will get with their choice. I thought I heard something to the effect that premium would have "all a developer needs". Yet there is a Team Developer version. What more is in there?

I have yet to find something that clearly points out what tools are in each VS2005 edition. (The interview seemed to suggest that this might not be fully decided upon.) I have also yet to see the extra dollar amount to get a Team Suite if one is a Universal subcriber altough this has been stated to be an option at that level.

So far, what I do see is that whether I am a Universal or an Enterprise subscriber, I can get the Team Developer edition. This would suggest that if I want that rather than the Architect or Tester version, I should step down in my renewal as there is no added benefit to being a Universal subscriber (other than being able to get Architect or Tester instead).
I have been on the phone with MSDN reps and they are just as confused as I am. Can someone put out something definitive soon? I would hate to make a wrong decision because I have incomplete information and also would hate to renew at Universal prices and get nothing more than at the Enterprise level which is a few hundred dollars cheaper.

pilotbob

Ok,

Ok, so for $3000 I can get the foundation server. I would want this to replace what I use now, PVCS Verion Manager and Tracker, with Team Foundation Server. Since I won't want to pay for two Source/Issue control products.

So, here is the question.

Can people that do not use Visual Studio 2005 access all the features of TFS also?

For example,

Developers not using Visual Studio still need a source control and issue tracking solution.

QA, I doubt my show will be VS Tester sku for QA people. How will the access TFS?

Support puts issues into our bug tracking system for maintenance to pick up. How will they access it?

In other words, are there font ends for TFS other than VS 2005, and if so what are they? Will I need to buy CALs for these people since they won't have one that comes with a VS.Net 2005 sku.

Thanks,
PilotBob

Prashant_Sridharan
Prashant

TFS has a pretty robust extensibility model (based on Web services). As such, it will let a bunch of third party products (including ones you can write on your own) connect to it.

Right now, we have a partner building a Unix connector, another building an Eclipse connector, and others looking at building connectors from other products/platforms.

Testers using other products: we have a number of third party testing tools vendors building connectors to TFS.

For the support question, if you built your own product for support engineers, you can modify it to store those support incidents into TFS. If you purchased one off the shelf from another vendor, please encourage them to build connectors to Team System. We're working with a number of different vendors on this, but I'm not sure we have any commitments in that arena right now.

Prashant_Sridharan
Prashant

RE: what's in the various SKUs. First, for VS overall as an aggregate, consult this link. For Team System itself, consult this whitepaper which has a diagram I built to describe what's in what. The whitepaper is a little bit old, and since it was published we've included Team Build (continuous build) in the Team Foundation Server. Everything else should still be accurate.

RE: Price for Universal -> Team Suite will be published shortly.

RE: Universal/Enterprise -> Team Edition for SW Developers. You are correct. As an MSDN/E subscriber, you would automatically transition to VS Team Edition for SW Developers. As an MSDN/U subscriber, you'd get a choice (Architect, Dev, Tester) AND you'd also likely get a better promotional upgrade price to Suite.

Prashant_Sridharan
Prashant

I also wanted to make sure everyone reads Rob Caron's Hitchiker's Guide to VSTS pricing.

Prashant_Sridharan
Prashant

No idea what's going on with the Beta ordering site. I'll go figure it out.

martindolphin
Martin

The beta website ordering process has been fixed and I was able to order this morning (already downloaded from MSDN but thought the training DVD might be interesting!)

ringi

If you live outside of the USA, you need to use "http://www.microsoft.com/betaexperience" to get your Beta DVD. However for some reason the web site will not allow you to order the DVD if your job title is "developer" you have to provide a "magic" set of answers for it to consider you "worthy" of getting the DVD.

This has now been fixed, thanks.

ringi

I live and work in the UK, the problem about saying "no one pays retail" is that a lot of the discounts are only for USA based developers. The discounts that are valid in the UK are very hard to find, just try finding out the prices of ISV advantage in the UK, they are not on the main English Microsoft web site. Unlike a developer from a none English speaking county, I normally only every use the Microsoft.com web size. (USA only content should be on “Microsoft.co.usa”)

I work in a small company (ISV); we have just moved to subversion (from CVS) for source code control and use an open source bug tracking system that we are not too unhappy with. We use CrouseControl.Net for automatic builds. Therefore it is the "desktop" tools that are of most interest to us. I think every developer should get basic testing tools.

a) A cut down web load testing tools, I don’t mind if it is limited to a few "virtual users", provided that the tool is very easy to use. I do not want to have to code “view state” into my test scripts. (50 "virtual users" is more then enough for a normal developer.)

b) A UI testing tools that works!. I do not mind having the test management framework in the "tester" version of MSDEV, provided a developer can records and playback a single UI test script. (I need to be able to replay a test script that the test team has recorded to demonstrate a bug.)

c) I do not care about unit testing, nUnit and TestDriven.Net is good enough! We are using it at present and it does the job. (However it would be good if all Microsoft based developers in the world know how to use the same unit testing framework, so as to cut down the cost of retaining as people move between jobs.) I hope that you have confirmed that TestDriven.Net works with MSDEV V2, as part of your testing!

The high level design tools are not of match interest, as it takes a long time to learn such tools and the fact that they are designed for in house development means they are not of match use to an ISV. Give the small size of our teams; if the system high level design is to complex to fit on a white board, then it is too complex for us to ship in a reasonable time frame. The class designer tools is great! I am very happy that it is included on all versions of MSDEV.

What I think I after for is a developer + small scaling testing package.

The fact that I could not even order a MSDEV beta 2 DVD in the UK at the same time as it started shipping in the US give me the message the Microsoft does not value me as I am a UK a based developer.

You can now order the DVD in the uk from www.microsoft.com/betaexperience

Ian Ringrose <- email address on web site