Visual Studio 2010 is about to come in few months (March 22nd) and it has been receiving many, many, many questions around the new product family and the transition benefits.

As you already know, Visual Studio is the main developer tool to build software applications on the Microsoft platform. At the end of the day, we don’t really care about the IDE but more about the solution you are building, Visual Studio will come automatically if you have decided to use part of the Microsoft platform (from .NET to C++, Office to Sharepoint, embedded to Azure….).

People were a bit confused between the different editions of Visual Studio. As an example, does a developer need Visual Studio professional (the main IDE to write code) or a Team Developer? A developer may need some testing or modelling capabilities only available in the Team Test or Team Architect edition, so what is the recommended SKU ? As Visual Studio 2010 is extending the capabilities (test management, code visualisation ….) the right move was not to add more editions but to simplify the product family.

We’ll have 3 levels of Visual Studio:

• Visual Studio 2010 Professional – the basic one


• Visual Studio 2010 Premium – the standard one


• Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate – the advanced one

You can notice that no edition contains “Team System” in the description or a job role (like Developer, Tester …).

The idea is that any edition can suit your needs. It’s up to you to look at the capabilities, what you want to achieve and your team maturity to point out the right level.

This "Auto upgrade" means you will get an edition with many more features than you have with your current Visual Studio edition for the duration of your subscription.

Different scenario to optimize this “Ultimate offer” - transition benefits

Scenario 1 - Do I have the right level of Visual Studio to maximise the benefits of the transition?

• Who will need the Ultimate capabilities? Make sure they have a team edition today


• Who will need Premium level? They should have a VS Pro w/ MSDN Premium license today

So, if you licensing model support the step-up mechanism (Open Value, Select and EA), please check if you should step up to the next level. Look at all your licenses and make a decision before March 22nd (specifically for Open and Select customers)

Scenario 2 – anticipate your needs

Looking at the next 12 to 24 months, if you think you will use more of the MS platform or your team will get bigger (including dev's, testers and architects), you should plan for your growth by anticipating your needs. Even if you will not use the additional licenses at launch, it will be a cost effective solution to benefit from this automatic upgrade.