Thursday, September 09, 2010

Great Moves in Visual Studio 2010 Team System Licensing, as usual….for the benefit of the customer 2/3

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2- TFS Inclusion in all MSDN Subscriptions

"We focus on one end of the spectrum on our large enterprise customers where we offer a rich set of features, integration with other source code integration, back-end management tools, portfolio [tools and more], but our biggest vision at Microsoft is to bring the benefits of ALM to all developers," says Sean McBreen, senior director for Visual Studio and MSDN product management at Microsoft. "In this release we did a lot of things to help bring ALM to the masses. We reduced the price, we included TFS in all of our MSDN subscriptions and we've really focused on simplifying the experience as well."

Early on, those moves seem to be paying off. "It used to be reasonably hard to get, very expensive and reasonably hard to deploy as well," says Ben Day, a Visual Studio ALM MVP and head of Benjamin Day Consulting Inc. "Now that they've made the deployment a lot easier, the licensing is $500 retail and TFS comes with just about every MSDN license that's out there. So Microsoft is trying to make it so that no one has an excuse to go to Subversion or Git or any of those other free open source version control systems.

Since that has changed, I personally see a lot more people who are interested in moving to TFS off of Visual SourceSafe."

"TFS is ultimately going to replace Visual SourceSafe," agrees Gousset. "The fact is, TFS can be used whether you've got one person or whether you've got a shop of 3,000 or 30,000 people."

 

To be Continued Later……

Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Great Moves in Visual Studio 2010 Team System Licensing, as usual….for the benefit of the customer 3/3

3-Lab Management Inclusion into Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate

Lab Management enables organizations to use virtual labs to optimize the team development process. The goal is to help customers to manage their entire application lifecycle while achieving higher software quality and ROI. Lab Management is critical in realizing this vision. This change will dramatically reduce the adoption friction for Microsoft customers and increase the value of Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN and Visual Studio Test Professional with MSDN. Lab Management in Visual Stud in 2010 effectively democratizes virtual lab management.

Tuesday, September 07, 2010

Important Q&A about Visual Studio 2010 Microsoft Lab Management 2/2

Q: As a Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN and Visual Studio Test Professional 2010 with MSDN subscriber, where
can I get the Release-to-Web (RTW) version of Lab Management and when can I start using this functionality?

Answer: Active Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN and Visual Studio Test Professional 2010 with MSDN subscribers can
follow these simple steps to get the RTW version of Lab Management

1- Log into MSDN Subscriber Download.
2- Navigate to “Developer Tools” and then click on “Visual Studio 2010 Lab Management Deployment Guide” and
3-follow the instructions from the guidance document to set up Lab Management.

Q: In the SCVMM download details, why are there two hyperlinks? Which version of SCVMM should I download?

Answer: With this change in approach, Microsoft licensing documents are in the process of being updated to allow use of SCVMM
by Visual Studio Test Professional 2010 with MSDN and Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN subscribers as part of the
Lab Management functionality. The licensing changes are expected to be in place at the start of October, at which time all
subscribers can download and install the full version of SCVMM available from MSDN Subscriber Downloads. In the interim,
you may choose to evaluate SCVMM using the trial download link provided, or using the full version from MSDN Subscriber
Downloads if your Microsoft Volume Licensing agreement provides evaluation use terms (such as through the Enterprise
Agreement or Select programs). Retail subscribers may have these rights earlier than October.

Q: Does my Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN and/or Visual Studio Test Professional 2010 with MSDN subscription
include System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 (SCVMM)? What are the usage rights of SCVMM under this
release format?

Answer: SCVMM 2008 R2 will be included as part of your Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate or Visual Studio Test Professional 2010
MSDN Subscription. You may use SCVMM 2008 R2 solely for development and testing use rights as described in your Visual
Studio Ultimate with MSDN or Visual Studio Test Professional with MSDN Subscription EULAs. This allows you to use
SCVMM 2008 R2 for creating/configuring/removing virtual machines to use in development and testing scenarios allowed
by these licenses.

Q: What happens if my Ultimate or Test Professional with MSDN subscription lapses – do I lose access to Lab
Management or are the rights perpetual?

Answer: Since Lab Management is now effectively a benefit for Ultimate with MSDN and Test Professional with MSDN subscribers,
the “perpetual” use rights for it are the same as that of the respective MSDN subscription. However, the ability to download
new or updated software version and product keys ends when the MSDN Subscription expires. An expired subscriber can
only use software that was available during the subscription term for the subscription level purchased. See MSDN Licensing
for more details.

Q: Can I use my MSDN Subscription for the operating systems running on the Lab Management guest VM’s? Can I also use my MSDN Subscription for the operating systems hosting the Lab Management VM’s?

Answer: Yes, in both cases, as long as the usage is strictly for development and testing of your applications

Q: Does my SCVMM administrator need Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN or Visual Studio Test Professional 2010
with MSDN in order to administer my SCVMM deployment for Lab Management?

A: Yes.

Q: How does Lab Management support VMware?

Answer: Today, you can already create environments on the VMware platform and do your testing on those environments using
Visual Studio 2010 testing tools, just like you can create environments that are based on physical machines. However, Lab
Management features such as snapshots and self-service creation of environments are currently only supported on Hyper-V
using SCVMM 2008 R2. We have not made plans to extend the support of these additional features to VMware at this point.

Q. What additional resources exist to help me educate my customers about Lab Management?

Answer: The following resources are available for you today to help customers understand Lab Management and deploy it.

Sunday, September 05, 2010

Great Moves in Visual Studio 2010 Team System Licensing, as usual….for the benefit of the customer 1/3

RDLogo

During the Last 6 Months, Microsoft has released great bulk of ALM Products. This is normal, expected and old news…

I know :)

But during these releases, one shared thing has to be noticed by the customers, which is, How do Microsoft tries to regroup products for the benefit of the customer with a target of less expensive offer with More productive solutions. We can see that at the following points:

1- Integrating DB Professional Features into the Developer Features:

         - On Feb 2007 Microsoft has released the DB professional Edition. During this time there was a free Add-On for the Super Mega Suite of Team System which was Team Suite. Every other single user for VSTS had to pay for that as separate version.

         -On November 2008, Microsoft has released the DB professional as part of the Team System 2008 Editions.

 

since this date, Lots of MVPs, Customers, and Partners called for availing these great tools with less expensive schema and easier licensing way.

on March 2010, Microsoft Launched VSTS 2010 and included the DB Professional features as part of the Dev Tools.

 

To be Continued….

Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Important Q&A about Visual Studio 2010 Microsoft Lab Management 1/2

These are some Common Q&As about Visual Studio 2010 Lab Management. Hope to be quiet helpful

Q: What is Visual Studio 2010 Lab Management?

Answer: Microsoft’s Visual Studio Lab Management solution extends the existing Visual Studio Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) platform to enable integrated Hyper-V based virtual machine management. Lab Management automates complex build-deploy-test workflows to optimize the build process, decrease risk and accelerate your time to market. Organizations can use it to reduce development and testing costs associated with setup, tear down and restoration of virtual environments to a known state. Lab Management helps to streamline the collaboration between development, Quality Assurance and operations to help organizations achieve higher ROI and realize the benefits of Microsoft’s entire ALM solution. Lab Management also enables testers to file rich bugs with links to environment snapshots which enable developers to quickly debug complex environments.

Q: Who is Lab Management intended for? How will it benefit me?

Answer:: Lab Management is intended for anyone involved in the application development and testing process. Lab Management helps to reduce costs associated with setup, tear down and restoration of complex virtual environments to a known state for build automation, test execution and build deployment. This eliminates waste across the entire application lifecycle by allowing development and QA to work together to effectively optimize the build process and minimize regression testing efforts. Lab Management also enables customers to easily file ‘rich actionable bugs’ with links to environment snapshots that developers can use to recreate the tester’s environments and identify issues. Lab Management enables the automation of build-deploy-test workflows to reduce overall risk and accelerate time to market.

Q: As an inclusion to Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN and Visual Studio Test Professional 2010 with MSDN subscriptions, is Microsoft divesting the Lab Management functionality going into the next release of Visual Studio?

Answer:: No, quite the opposite. This move represents a conscious decision to equip a much larger set of our customers with the ability to use virtual labs to optimize the team development process. Our goal is to help our customers better manage their application development and testing lifecycle while achieve higher software quality and ROI. Visual Studio Lab Management is critical to realizing this vision. Q: Which licenses are required to enable the Lab Management functionality? A: You must have at least one team member with one of the following licenses so that he or she can download required software from MSDN Subscriber Downloads to configure Lab Management: 1)Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN, or 2)Visual Studio Test Professional 2010 with MSDN Once Lab Management is configured, any team member with an active MSDN subscription containing the software being used (for example, if the lab is running Windows Server and SQL Server then Visual Studio 2010 Professional with MSDN would be sufficient, but the subscriber would need Visual Studio 2010 Premium with MSDN if the lab uses Microsoft Office SharePoint Server or Microsoft Dynamics software) can leverage the Lab Management infrastructure. For example, team members can enable Build-Deploy-Test workflows through Team Explorer once Lab Management is configured. However, team members still need Microsoft Test Manager to file bugs and debug issues with environment snapshots.