Microsoft MSDN subscription changes..small developers are being screwed!
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[UPDATE] Ok, I think I've sorted it out, we're not actually being screwed, I take that back! ;) We're being bamboozled a little bit but it turns out that "Visual Studio 2005 Professional with MSDN Premium Subscription" is the most direct replacement for the old Universal and may or may not be cheaper than Universal was. Also apparently some rumours were wrong, you can actually downgrade to that subscription from Universal without having to pay the full price, only the upgrade price. [/UPDATE] We currently have an MSDN universal subscription, I got an email from Microsoft asking me to choose the new subscription I want to use as Microsoft change the whole plan in advance of the release of the new Visual studio team system stuff. I took a close look at it and my choices if I want to switch my universal are for three editions one for "Software architects", one for "Developers", and one for "Testers" (see here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/howtobuy/vs2005/editions/team/compare/Default.aspx[^]) The stunning part that I realized after picking through it is that Microsoft are restricting each edition based on the role it is intended for. With the old MSDN editions you picked the level of what you need, the more you paid the more you got up to Universal. With the new system there is sort of an equivalent of Universal but it's Double the price of any of the other editions and is triple the price of the current Universal subscription. The problem I have with this is that Microsoft is no longer targetting different sized customers, they are targetting different types of users. They are assuming that anyone purchasing MSDN subscriptions is fitting into a "role". What I liked about the MSDN universal is that as a small company we basically have the role of every department of a large company in a very few people, one license purchase allows me to fulfill all my roles in day to day work. On any given day I'm a software "architect", a "developer" and "tester". I need all the products that support those roles. Now I'm being forced to choose a single role as if I were a large company and could buy one subscription for my testing guy, another for my architect guy and another for my developer guy. This isn't realistic for smaller shops at all. T
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[UPDATE] Ok, I think I've sorted it out, we're not actually being screwed, I take that back! ;) We're being bamboozled a little bit but it turns out that "Visual Studio 2005 Professional with MSDN Premium Subscription" is the most direct replacement for the old Universal and may or may not be cheaper than Universal was. Also apparently some rumours were wrong, you can actually downgrade to that subscription from Universal without having to pay the full price, only the upgrade price. [/UPDATE] We currently have an MSDN universal subscription, I got an email from Microsoft asking me to choose the new subscription I want to use as Microsoft change the whole plan in advance of the release of the new Visual studio team system stuff. I took a close look at it and my choices if I want to switch my universal are for three editions one for "Software architects", one for "Developers", and one for "Testers" (see here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/howtobuy/vs2005/editions/team/compare/Default.aspx[^]) The stunning part that I realized after picking through it is that Microsoft are restricting each edition based on the role it is intended for. With the old MSDN editions you picked the level of what you need, the more you paid the more you got up to Universal. With the new system there is sort of an equivalent of Universal but it's Double the price of any of the other editions and is triple the price of the current Universal subscription. The problem I have with this is that Microsoft is no longer targetting different sized customers, they are targetting different types of users. They are assuming that anyone purchasing MSDN subscriptions is fitting into a "role". What I liked about the MSDN universal is that as a small company we basically have the role of every department of a large company in a very few people, one license purchase allows me to fulfill all my roles in day to day work. On any given day I'm a software "architect", a "developer" and "tester". I need all the products that support those roles. Now I'm being forced to choose a single role as if I were a large company and could buy one subscription for my testing guy, another for my architect guy and another for my developer guy. This isn't realistic for smaller shops at all. T
Truth be told, I don't think you're losing out all that much. All you are choosing is the version of Team System that's included in your subscription. From what I've read, all the other features of the subscription are as before; you're still getting all of the OS's, server's, Visual Studio, Office, and so on. I work in a small group, and we're not going to use Team System at all. Team System seems to be intended for managing large-scale software efforts, with dozens or hundreds of developers, testers, and managers.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
Truth be told, I don't think you're losing out all that much. All you are choosing is the version of Team System that's included in your subscription. From what I've read, all the other features of the subscription are as before; you're still getting all of the OS's, server's, Visual Studio, Office, and so on. I work in a small group, and we're not going to use Team System at all. Team System seems to be intended for managing large-scale software efforts, with dozens or hundreds of developers, testers, and managers.
Software Zen:
delete this;Perhaps I'm just confused by their incredibly confusing and limited info on this. I've just been reading other sites and there seems to be a whole tier below the team system tier that might be more of a match for what I need. It's bloody confusing and they aren't making much of an effort to give any real detailed facts about it, one chart, a few videos with developers rambling on about codenamed projects I've never heard of as the basic info for what you get in the features. Baaah!
"A preoccupation with the next world pretty clearly signals an inability to cope credibly with this one."
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[UPDATE] Ok, I think I've sorted it out, we're not actually being screwed, I take that back! ;) We're being bamboozled a little bit but it turns out that "Visual Studio 2005 Professional with MSDN Premium Subscription" is the most direct replacement for the old Universal and may or may not be cheaper than Universal was. Also apparently some rumours were wrong, you can actually downgrade to that subscription from Universal without having to pay the full price, only the upgrade price. [/UPDATE] We currently have an MSDN universal subscription, I got an email from Microsoft asking me to choose the new subscription I want to use as Microsoft change the whole plan in advance of the release of the new Visual studio team system stuff. I took a close look at it and my choices if I want to switch my universal are for three editions one for "Software architects", one for "Developers", and one for "Testers" (see here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/howtobuy/vs2005/editions/team/compare/Default.aspx[^]) The stunning part that I realized after picking through it is that Microsoft are restricting each edition based on the role it is intended for. With the old MSDN editions you picked the level of what you need, the more you paid the more you got up to Universal. With the new system there is sort of an equivalent of Universal but it's Double the price of any of the other editions and is triple the price of the current Universal subscription. The problem I have with this is that Microsoft is no longer targetting different sized customers, they are targetting different types of users. They are assuming that anyone purchasing MSDN subscriptions is fitting into a "role". What I liked about the MSDN universal is that as a small company we basically have the role of every department of a large company in a very few people, one license purchase allows me to fulfill all my roles in day to day work. On any given day I'm a software "architect", a "developer" and "tester". I need all the products that support those roles. Now I'm being forced to choose a single role as if I were a large company and could buy one subscription for my testing guy, another for my architect guy and another for my developer guy. This isn't realistic for smaller shops at all. T
I was pretty confused by the whole issue as well, and while the multihat roles "architect", "developer" and "tester" mean certain things to us (you left out "Project Manager", BTW), I think they mean different things to MS. After reading the summaries of the different tracks, I ended up choosing "architect". The other ones didn't sound right. Frankly, I'm not sure I actually care that much. MSDN is just about the last resource I go to for information, and I'm pretty burned out on trying out betas of software that doesn't work. In fact, I'm getting real leary of "version 1.0" of anything nowadays. So, I'm quite happy to be stuck in the stone ages with VS2003, SQL 2000, W2003/XP, etc. I certainly don't need to be fluffed (pun intended) by VISTA, VSTA, XAML, XOML, etc. Marc My website Traceract Understanding Simple Data Binding Diary Of A CEO - Preface
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I was pretty confused by the whole issue as well, and while the multihat roles "architect", "developer" and "tester" mean certain things to us (you left out "Project Manager", BTW), I think they mean different things to MS. After reading the summaries of the different tracks, I ended up choosing "architect". The other ones didn't sound right. Frankly, I'm not sure I actually care that much. MSDN is just about the last resource I go to for information, and I'm pretty burned out on trying out betas of software that doesn't work. In fact, I'm getting real leary of "version 1.0" of anything nowadays. So, I'm quite happy to be stuck in the stone ages with VS2003, SQL 2000, W2003/XP, etc. I certainly don't need to be fluffed (pun intended) by VISTA, VSTA, XAML, XOML, etc. Marc My website Traceract Understanding Simple Data Binding Diary Of A CEO - Preface
Marc Clifton wrote: mean certain things to us (you left out "Project Manager", BTW), I think they mean different things to MS. I just included their own definitions, but if we want to really get into it we could probably add: "Accountant", "CEO", "CTO", "purchasing", "marketing", "Website designer", "secretary", "HR" etc etc. ;) Actually from what I've since been reading, there is no need to go with any of the "team system" at all, it supersedes msdn universal and so we're going to "downgrade" from universal to VS Pro with MSDN Premium to get all that we get now. They really did a bad job of marketing it I think, there is a whole segment of smaller shops that probably never used source safe or some of the other top end features of MSDN that will think they are getting boned by the whole team system when in fact it's probably superflous.
"A preoccupation with the next world pretty clearly signals an inability to cope credibly with this one."
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[UPDATE] Ok, I think I've sorted it out, we're not actually being screwed, I take that back! ;) We're being bamboozled a little bit but it turns out that "Visual Studio 2005 Professional with MSDN Premium Subscription" is the most direct replacement for the old Universal and may or may not be cheaper than Universal was. Also apparently some rumours were wrong, you can actually downgrade to that subscription from Universal without having to pay the full price, only the upgrade price. [/UPDATE] We currently have an MSDN universal subscription, I got an email from Microsoft asking me to choose the new subscription I want to use as Microsoft change the whole plan in advance of the release of the new Visual studio team system stuff. I took a close look at it and my choices if I want to switch my universal are for three editions one for "Software architects", one for "Developers", and one for "Testers" (see here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/howtobuy/vs2005/editions/team/compare/Default.aspx[^]) The stunning part that I realized after picking through it is that Microsoft are restricting each edition based on the role it is intended for. With the old MSDN editions you picked the level of what you need, the more you paid the more you got up to Universal. With the new system there is sort of an equivalent of Universal but it's Double the price of any of the other editions and is triple the price of the current Universal subscription. The problem I have with this is that Microsoft is no longer targetting different sized customers, they are targetting different types of users. They are assuming that anyone purchasing MSDN subscriptions is fitting into a "role". What I liked about the MSDN universal is that as a small company we basically have the role of every department of a large company in a very few people, one license purchase allows me to fulfill all my roles in day to day work. On any given day I'm a software "architect", a "developer" and "tester". I need all the products that support those roles. Now I'm being forced to choose a single role as if I were a large company and could buy one subscription for my testing guy, another for my architect guy and another for my developer guy. This isn't realistic for smaller shops at all. T
John Cardinal wrote: 'Microsoft MSDN subscription changes..small developers are being screwed! Well, any smaller developer who has kept a subscription over the last two years has already been pretty well screwed. Has there been any real useful additions to MSDN in the last two years. I let my subscription lapse because I couldn't see anything coming that would justify the costs to my small development shop. I'll have to investigate the pricing again once VS 2005 is released but for now I'm not missing much. Michael CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]
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John Cardinal wrote: 'Microsoft MSDN subscription changes..small developers are being screwed! Well, any smaller developer who has kept a subscription over the last two years has already been pretty well screwed. Has there been any real useful additions to MSDN in the last two years. I let my subscription lapse because I couldn't see anything coming that would justify the costs to my small development shop. I'll have to investigate the pricing again once VS 2005 is released but for now I'm not missing much. Michael CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]
That's totally true now that I think about it. We've just kind of blindly upgraded every time, but if we could skip two plus years we would save money if it keeps up the way it's been going.
"A preoccupation with the next world pretty clearly signals an inability to cope credibly with this one."
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[UPDATE] Ok, I think I've sorted it out, we're not actually being screwed, I take that back! ;) We're being bamboozled a little bit but it turns out that "Visual Studio 2005 Professional with MSDN Premium Subscription" is the most direct replacement for the old Universal and may or may not be cheaper than Universal was. Also apparently some rumours were wrong, you can actually downgrade to that subscription from Universal without having to pay the full price, only the upgrade price. [/UPDATE] We currently have an MSDN universal subscription, I got an email from Microsoft asking me to choose the new subscription I want to use as Microsoft change the whole plan in advance of the release of the new Visual studio team system stuff. I took a close look at it and my choices if I want to switch my universal are for three editions one for "Software architects", one for "Developers", and one for "Testers" (see here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/howtobuy/vs2005/editions/team/compare/Default.aspx[^]) The stunning part that I realized after picking through it is that Microsoft are restricting each edition based on the role it is intended for. With the old MSDN editions you picked the level of what you need, the more you paid the more you got up to Universal. With the new system there is sort of an equivalent of Universal but it's Double the price of any of the other editions and is triple the price of the current Universal subscription. The problem I have with this is that Microsoft is no longer targetting different sized customers, they are targetting different types of users. They are assuming that anyone purchasing MSDN subscriptions is fitting into a "role". What I liked about the MSDN universal is that as a small company we basically have the role of every department of a large company in a very few people, one license purchase allows me to fulfill all my roles in day to day work. On any given day I'm a software "architect", a "developer" and "tester". I need all the products that support those roles. Now I'm being forced to choose a single role as if I were a large company and could buy one subscription for my testing guy, another for my architect guy and another for my developer guy. This isn't realistic for smaller shops at all. T
The real question here is, are any of the things in VSTS better than their open source counterparts? Is the source control system better than Subversion? Is the unit testing better than NUnit or mbUnit? Or the code coverage better than NCover? Do they even have a counterpart for CruiseControl.NET? How about the code analysis tools; better than FxCop? I haven't read up on the whole thing yet, but I can't see that there's much benefit to moving to VSTS if you've already got these things in place. And if the biggest advantage is that they enforce the fact that you run tests or adhere to certain policies before you checkin your code...then I think that you (not necessarily you, John, but everybody) have deeper problems with the mindset of the developers in your shop... But like I said, I haven't looked too closely at the whole thing. I'm pretty content with my current Subversion, CCNet, mbUnit, FxCop setup.
Picture a huge catholic cathedral. In it there's many people, including a gregorian monk choir. You know, those who sing beautifully. Then they start singing, in latin, as they always do: "Ad hominem..." -Jörgen Sigvardsson
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[UPDATE] Ok, I think I've sorted it out, we're not actually being screwed, I take that back! ;) We're being bamboozled a little bit but it turns out that "Visual Studio 2005 Professional with MSDN Premium Subscription" is the most direct replacement for the old Universal and may or may not be cheaper than Universal was. Also apparently some rumours were wrong, you can actually downgrade to that subscription from Universal without having to pay the full price, only the upgrade price. [/UPDATE] We currently have an MSDN universal subscription, I got an email from Microsoft asking me to choose the new subscription I want to use as Microsoft change the whole plan in advance of the release of the new Visual studio team system stuff. I took a close look at it and my choices if I want to switch my universal are for three editions one for "Software architects", one for "Developers", and one for "Testers" (see here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/howtobuy/vs2005/editions/team/compare/Default.aspx[^]) The stunning part that I realized after picking through it is that Microsoft are restricting each edition based on the role it is intended for. With the old MSDN editions you picked the level of what you need, the more you paid the more you got up to Universal. With the new system there is sort of an equivalent of Universal but it's Double the price of any of the other editions and is triple the price of the current Universal subscription. The problem I have with this is that Microsoft is no longer targetting different sized customers, they are targetting different types of users. They are assuming that anyone purchasing MSDN subscriptions is fitting into a "role". What I liked about the MSDN universal is that as a small company we basically have the role of every department of a large company in a very few people, one license purchase allows me to fulfill all my roles in day to day work. On any given day I'm a software "architect", a "developer" and "tester". I need all the products that support those roles. Now I'm being forced to choose a single role as if I were a large company and could buy one subscription for my testing guy, another for my architect guy and another for my developer guy. This isn't realistic for smaller shops at all. T
I've been looking at the MSDN sub a fair bit lately, this is what i've come up with: - the team stuff is for integrating larger teams (surprise), not for a small shop (although the marketing implies small shops can benefit as well). - there is still come confusion on things like the code profiler which is listed in the team developer package - does this mean the basic compiler doesn't have a profiler any more ? - those with existing subscriptions (like yourself) don't need to choose a path right away - you should wait until you get the test versions (will be good for a couple months) and play with the features of each team version before locking yourself into a role. - it looks like you can still buy the old ent/uni sub until oct.31 at the current prices, and you will be auto-upgraded to a team version for no extra cost (ent -> dev, uni -> choose). - i'm looking at getting a new msdn enterprise subscription (via upgrade from VS6) for US$ 1599, this should auto-upgrade me nov.7 to the team developer sub for no extra cost, if i wait then i'll have to pay the US$3k+ for a new team dev sub (wtf!). - you can no longer buy these through the web, you have to call - i haven't verified this will work, but that's how it reads on their website ...cmk Save the whales - collect the whole set
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[UPDATE] Ok, I think I've sorted it out, we're not actually being screwed, I take that back! ;) We're being bamboozled a little bit but it turns out that "Visual Studio 2005 Professional with MSDN Premium Subscription" is the most direct replacement for the old Universal and may or may not be cheaper than Universal was. Also apparently some rumours were wrong, you can actually downgrade to that subscription from Universal without having to pay the full price, only the upgrade price. [/UPDATE] We currently have an MSDN universal subscription, I got an email from Microsoft asking me to choose the new subscription I want to use as Microsoft change the whole plan in advance of the release of the new Visual studio team system stuff. I took a close look at it and my choices if I want to switch my universal are for three editions one for "Software architects", one for "Developers", and one for "Testers" (see here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/howtobuy/vs2005/editions/team/compare/Default.aspx[^]) The stunning part that I realized after picking through it is that Microsoft are restricting each edition based on the role it is intended for. With the old MSDN editions you picked the level of what you need, the more you paid the more you got up to Universal. With the new system there is sort of an equivalent of Universal but it's Double the price of any of the other editions and is triple the price of the current Universal subscription. The problem I have with this is that Microsoft is no longer targetting different sized customers, they are targetting different types of users. They are assuming that anyone purchasing MSDN subscriptions is fitting into a "role". What I liked about the MSDN universal is that as a small company we basically have the role of every department of a large company in a very few people, one license purchase allows me to fulfill all my roles in day to day work. On any given day I'm a software "architect", a "developer" and "tester". I need all the products that support those roles. Now I'm being forced to choose a single role as if I were a large company and could buy one subscription for my testing guy, another for my architect guy and another for my developer guy. This isn't realistic for smaller shops at all. T
For many of us smallers developers, we might be able to get along without any of the "team" solutions. It depends on what value you have for: * Class Designer * SOA Modeling * Deployment Design * Static Code Analysis * Profiling * Dynamic Code Analysis * Built in Unit Testing * Test Case management * Load Testing * Virtual Server (how many of us use this?) This is what you get for $3,000 (only a portion of the above) - $8,400 (Team Suite) above a $2,499 Visual Studio 2005 Professional with MSDN Premium Subscription. I am sure there is a bunch of little things that they do not mention which we will run into and find it is only available under a Team Solution, but is that stuff really worth up to $8,400 more per year? Not for me.. I can get along with a VS2005 premium subscription. If it was not for the Viso, Source Safe (Yes, I use it and happen to like it) and server software, I could probably get along with a Professional Subscription at $1,199. In many small shops, a person could probably get by with one Premium and multiple Professional subscriptions. A huge savings over the Team solutions subscriptions. Recently, I have thought of the subscriptions on a monthly cost basis. For Team Suite you are looking to justify over $900 per month for the use of the tools or around $200 for a premium subscription. If they help you save over $900 per month in time or bring in that on revenue, then it is a no brainer :) Rocky <>< My Blog[^]
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The real question here is, are any of the things in VSTS better than their open source counterparts? Is the source control system better than Subversion? Is the unit testing better than NUnit or mbUnit? Or the code coverage better than NCover? Do they even have a counterpart for CruiseControl.NET? How about the code analysis tools; better than FxCop? I haven't read up on the whole thing yet, but I can't see that there's much benefit to moving to VSTS if you've already got these things in place. And if the biggest advantage is that they enforce the fact that you run tests or adhere to certain policies before you checkin your code...then I think that you (not necessarily you, John, but everybody) have deeper problems with the mindset of the developers in your shop... But like I said, I haven't looked too closely at the whole thing. I'm pretty content with my current Subversion, CCNet, mbUnit, FxCop setup.
Picture a huge catholic cathedral. In it there's many people, including a gregorian monk choir. You know, those who sing beautifully. Then they start singing, in latin, as they always do: "Ad hominem..." -Jörgen Sigvardsson
I had to look around my office to see if you were using my development system. Then I noticed you said mbUnit. I use nUnit. I'm not even going to test Team System, as I am very happy with my open source, free tools. Jeff Martin My Blog
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Perhaps I'm just confused by their incredibly confusing and limited info on this. I've just been reading other sites and there seems to be a whole tier below the team system tier that might be more of a match for what I need. It's bloody confusing and they aren't making much of an effort to give any real detailed facts about it, one chart, a few videos with developers rambling on about codenamed projects I've never heard of as the basic info for what you get in the features. Baaah!
"A preoccupation with the next world pretty clearly signals an inability to cope credibly with this one."
That's another reason we dismissed using it; the bilge factor in the materials put out by Microsoft about Team System was way too high.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
The real question here is, are any of the things in VSTS better than their open source counterparts? Is the source control system better than Subversion? Is the unit testing better than NUnit or mbUnit? Or the code coverage better than NCover? Do they even have a counterpart for CruiseControl.NET? How about the code analysis tools; better than FxCop? I haven't read up on the whole thing yet, but I can't see that there's much benefit to moving to VSTS if you've already got these things in place. And if the biggest advantage is that they enforce the fact that you run tests or adhere to certain policies before you checkin your code...then I think that you (not necessarily you, John, but everybody) have deeper problems with the mindset of the developers in your shop... But like I said, I haven't looked too closely at the whole thing. I'm pretty content with my current Subversion, CCNet, mbUnit, FxCop setup.
Picture a huge catholic cathedral. In it there's many people, including a gregorian monk choir. You know, those who sing beautifully. Then they start singing, in latin, as they always do: "Ad hominem..." -Jörgen Sigvardsson
You're right of course. I'm a bit "old school" in that I prefer my development package to contain everything built in and that's probably the attitude they are marketing to. My rant came before I fully realized that T.S. is really a bunch of stuff that I wasn't using right now anyway. The features that I liked the look of in particular coverage, standards analysis and bottleneck detection, but I guess it's time I start looking into those tools you mentioned. Cheers!
"A preoccupation with the next world pretty clearly signals an inability to cope credibly with this one."