November 2014 Visual Studio and MSDN Licensing Whitepaper

There’s an updated (November 2014) Visual Studio and MSDN Licensing Whitepaper, so here’s a summary of those November changes and you can download the document here: http://bit.ly/1JQmpGU.

  • There’s a section added for Visual Studio Community 2013 which is the new collection of the Visual Studio Express SKUs. It’s free to download and any individual developer can use it to create their own free or paid apps. Businesses are also allowed to use it with various restrictions in place for commercial activities, but all organisations are able to use it for a classroom learning environment, for academic research, or for contributing to open source projects. There are a couple of useful scenarios on page 10 to clarify the usage rights
  • There are some changes to the licensing of the Release Management solution. Previously, each node or endpoint to which an application was deployed needed to be licensed with either Visual Studio Deployment 2013 Standard or Datacenter. However, from 1 January 2015, target servers receiving automated deployments from Release Management Server will no longer require a Visual Studio Deployment licence as per page 32

The last time we reviewed this document was July 2014 and there were further releases (it transpires) in August and October 2014, so the following changes may also be interesting to you:

  • Visual Studio Online: there is clarification on page 6 showing how the different MSDN subscriptions correlate to the various Visual Studio Online plans, and confirmation that an unlimited number of stakeholders can join a Visual Studio Online account to carry out tasks such as entering and editing work items and submitting feedback. Details on purchasing Visual Studio Online via an Azure subscription are also confirmed on page 12
  • The MSDN Cloud Use Rights are updated throughout to allow the running of MSDN software on Azure VMs only rather than also on VMs run on shared servers owned by third parties – previously known as Qualified MSDN Cloud Partners. See page 16 for example
  • There are some enhancements to the rules around assigning MSDN subscriptions to external entities on page 22 and new text states that customers must track assignments for all external entities and could be asked to provide a “Declaration of MSDN Licenses” amendment that is signed both by the customer and its outsourced entity
  • There is also clarification throughout that MSDN Subscriptions obtained as benefits of the Microsoft Partner Program can’t be used for direct revenue-generating activity and that organisations must purchase subscriptions – see page 22 for example
  • And finally there is some relaxation of the rules for when a Team Foundation Server CAL is required: page 26 confirms that one is not required for entering, viewing or editing any work items (previously it was just ones you had created) and on page 32 the requirement for having a CAL for anyone triggering the release pipeline sequence is removed

Licence Reservation FAQs

Licence Reservation is a great way for EA customers to place mid-term orders for Online Services without a PO. If the prices are locked for the services, great, otherwise the QuickStart facility is there to order services before the price is locked.

This is a useful page on some of the most frequently asked questions on Licence Reservation and QuickStart: http://bit.ly/1xrQg1W.

Upcoming Changes to Visual Studio Licensing

There are a number of changes coming to Visual Studio licensing – most from 1 Jan 2015 – and this excellent Microsoft blog takes you through the detail in a delightfully readable way: http://bit.ly/13vrp29.

If that still hasn’t tempted you then here’s the overview: there’s a reduction in licences required for release management, test execution rights are added to Visual Studio Online Basic and the Team Foundation Server CAL, prices are reduced for cloud load testing and the VS Online build service, spending caps can be applied for load testing and build, and the ten user limit is removed for Visual Studio Online Professional. It’s all go in the Visual Studio world!

Updated MPSA Licensing Manual

An early Christmas present for you – an updated (December 2014) MPSA Licensing Manual.

There aren’t huge changes – the language for the Home Use Program and System Center Global Service Monitor has been changed to match that in the November 2014 Product List and you can see our corresponding blog post if you need to know the details (http://wp.me/p3K5IZ-bd).

Then there’s some clarification added on page 5 to make it really clear that a product must be ordered in the month that it is first used, and there’s streamlining of the text used for CustomerSource throughout.

Finally, on page 16, the Companion Subscription Licence is removed from the list of licences a customer may have to purchase MDOP. Get the updated document here: http://bit.ly/1zKwj7m.