Today, Microsoft announced the editions of Visual Studio 2015 that will be available when Visual Studio 2015 is made available later this summer. You might recall that they announced Visual Studio Community Edition last November (read more about its features here). They have now gone a step further and revamped the remaining Visual Studio editions for the 2015 release.
The short version of this announcement is that Visual Studio Premium and Visual Studio Ultimate are being combined into a singled, new edition – Visual Studio Enterprise with MSDN. With this change, the three primary Visual Studio editions are:
- Visual Studio Community 2015
- Visual Studio Professional 2015 with MSDN
- Visual Studio Enterprise 2015 with MSDN
As noted in this Visual Studio blog post Microsoft will continue to offer the following products in addition to those listed above:
- Visual Studio Professional
- Team Foundation Server
- Team Foundation Server Express
- Visual Studio Express
- MSDN Platforms (as a part of the complete Visual Studio 2015 and MSDN portfolio)
So, right about now you might be wondering what happens to your Visual Studio Premium with MSDN or Visual Studio Ultimate with MSDN subscriptions? Well, that part’s easy… Assuming you have an active subscription, once Visual Studio Enterprise 2015 is available, you will be automatically updated to the Enterprise edition. If you currently have a Visual Studio Ultimate with MSDN subscription, your price for Visual Studio Enterprise with MSDN will be “significantly less” than the current price of Visual Studio Ultimate with MSDN! Sweet!
If nothing else, having one less edition to choose from only helps to clarify things (for me, at least)!
If you would like to read more about the pricing for Visual Studio 2015, click here. To view a full comparison between the various Visual Studio 2015 editions, click here.
Lastly, you can try Visual Studio 2015 now by downloading Visual Studio 2015 CTP 6. If you do, be sure to send any feedback that you might have via UserVoice, Send-a-Smile or Connect.
All in all, I think this is a great move and am excited to (hopefully) see Visual Studio Enterprise 2015 get used by more developers than was previously possible with the Ultimate edition.
Now, go forth and code!
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