&quot;Visual Studio 2012 and MSDN Licensing White Paper&quot;

Microsoft Downloads - Visual Studio 2012 and MSDN Licensing White Paper

This white paper provides an overview of the Visual Studio 2012 product line, including MSDN subscriptions, and the licensing requirements for those products in common deployment scenarios.

Version:1.0
Date published: 10/3/2012

Language:English

Visual Studio 2012 and MSDN Licensing Whitepaper - October-2012.docx, 453 KB
Visual Studio 2012 and MSDN Licensing Whitepaper - October-2012.pdf, 790 KB
Visual Studio 2012 and MSDN Licensing Whitepaper - October-2012.xps, 1.0 MB

This white paper provides an overview of the Visual Studio 2012 product line and the licensing requirements for those products in common deployment scenarios. For a definitive guide to licensing terms and conditions for products licensed through Microsoft Volume Licensing, see the Microsoft Licensing Product Use Rights (PUR) document and applicable licensing agreements. For retail customers the license terms are specified in the End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) included with your product or with your MSDN subscription.

Snips and snaps from the DocX;

Microsoft^® Visual Studio^® 2012 provides a comprehensive, highly flexible set of application lifecycle management (ALM) tools. With the introduction of Visual Studio 2012, Microsoft made significant changes to simplify the product line and make improvements in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server licensing. Important new capabilities have been introduced, including storyboarding, end user feedback, sprint planning and backlog management, production load testing, use of IntelliTrace in production, and more.

The remainder of this paper provides an overview of the Visual Studio product line and the licensing requirements for those products in common deployment scenarios. If you’re a volume licensing customer for a definitive guide to licensing terms and conditions, see the Microsoft Licensing Product Use Rights (PUR) and Product List, and the licensing program agreement. For retail customers the license terms are specified in the Retail Software License Terms included with your product.

Visual Studio 2012 Licensing Overview

With Visual Studio 2012 there are essentially two things for which you purchase licenses:

1. Users.

2. The Visual Studio Team Foundation Server environment.

Users

The primary way to license users is by purchasing the appropriate level MSDN subscription for each user who will be participating in software development projects. The software, services, and support included with MSDN subscriptions varies by level, so you should consult the MSDN subscription comparison to determine the right level for the needs of each team member. The Visual Studio and other Microsoft software that the MSDN subscriber can install and run is defined by what is available for that MSDN subscription level in MSDN Subscriber Downloads while the user’s subscription is active.

MSDN subscription options:

Visual Studio Ultimate with MSDN

Visual Studio Premium with MSDN

Visual Studio Test Professional with MSDN

Visual Studio Professional with MSDN

MSDN Operating Systems

Alternatively, for users who do not need to use any Microsoft platforms like Windows, Windows Server, SQL Server, etc. as part of their development efforts, who do not need use of Windows Azure, who do not need technical support, who do not need e-learning, who do not collaborate with other development team members via Team Foundation Server, and who do not need access to new versions of the software, you can purchase a stand-alone Visual Studio Professional license.

The Team Foundation Server Environment

The Team Foundation Server environment is where the software developers, testers, project managers, stakeholders, and other participants in the software development team collaborate, manage source code, manage and prioritize work, generate builds of the application, and much more. You purchase Windows Server and Team Foundation Server licenses for each server in this environment, plus Windows Server and Team Foundation Server Client Access Licenses (CALs) for each user connecting to these servers. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Standard is included with the Team Foundation Server license for use with Team Foundation Server.