There are some changes to Visual Studio licensing for November 2015 – let’s take a look!

Firstly, Microsoft’s Brian Harry confirms that Visual Studio Online is now Visual Studio Team Services. Hurrah! I’ve long wanted this to happen so that this hosted service more closely matches its on-premises cousin’s name – Visual Studio Team Foundation Server.

This page is a useful resource on Visual Studio Team Services pricing (http://bit.ly/1PNQbks) with the following points of interest:

• As many stakeholders as you want can be added to a Visual Studio Team Services account free of charge
• The first 5 additional users that you add are free
• Any users with active Visual Studio with MSDN subscriptions have free access
• You can’t buy Visual Studio Team Services subscriptions through an Enterprise Agreement but you’re eligible for special pricing
• All Visual Studio Team Services subscriptions include a Visual Studio Team Foundation Server CAL

Secondly, Visual Studio Cloud Subscriptions are now available enabling you to buy either monthly or annual subscriptions to Visual Studio Professional and Enterprise. Monthly subscriptions are $45/$250 and the annual ones $539/$2,999, and this page is useful for the details (http://bit.ly/1R6emKm).  It’s also worth knowing the following:

• The Cloud Subscriptions can only be purchased through the Visual Studio Marketplace rather than through a Volume Licensing agreement
• The full MSDN benefits are only available if you commit to an annual subscription

Brian Harry’s blog post is here (http://bit.ly/1NcIRg2) with a complete list of what’s new technically for Visual Studio and its friends in November 2015.