This week Microsoft provided preliminary pricing for its upcoming Visual Studio release, which Microsoft executives blogged to be March 22. The new packaging is a return to a small-medium-large model, and the 2010 names are Professional, Premium and Ultimate. We knew this in the past as Standard, Professional and Enterprise. Gone are products aimed at specific roles like Architect and Database Professional.
On first read, the document Visual Studio 2010 Packaging and Licensing Fact Sheet dated Oct. 19, 2009 made me suspect the US pricing was changing. After a little Excelery, I believe the cost of ALM in 2010 products will be lower for most teams, substantially for some.
Here’s the analysis.
The Question: Does the cost for software licenses needed to outfit a team with ALM enabled development tools change from 2008 to 2010?
I chose to model a progression of team sizes: 5, 10, 25, and 50. The mean and median sizes of teams tend to fall in this range.
For each team size, I define a basket of products that reasonably support that team. Microsoft is making a significant change packaging Team Foundation Server with the desktop tools, so the contents of the baskets change between the two versions too. Finally, I separate the baskets into two tiers, ALM Tooling and High-End Tooling. The ALM Tooling includes core Visual Studio connected to Team Foundation Server with all team collaboration scenarios enabled. High-End Tools add to ALM scenarios the special purpose tools like test impact analysis and code profiling.
I ignored TCO, like the cost of servers and rack space, and maintenance cost. Microsoft licenses come with one year of maintenance. I also ignored the upgrade promotions, assuming Microsoft is doing right by current customers.
I tried to be sensible with product mix in each basket and you may get different values when you model your own choices and discounts, particularly in the small team sizes. Mine is a simple model. I used the prices listed in the earlier linked document. If you’d like my XLS file feel free to contact me directly. If you tell me who you are, a little about your team and what you’re doing with ALM tools I’ll be happy to send it to you.
Table 1: ALM Tooling Costs with VS 2008 and VS 2010
Figure 1: ALM Tooling Costs with VS 2008 and VS 2010
Table 2: High-End Tool Costs with VS 2008 and VS 2010
Figure 2: High-End Tool Costs with VS 2008 and VS 2010
With this analysis, it looks like the cost of acquiring software licenses for ALM enabled Visual Studio is coming down. Don’t be surprised to see Microsoft fine tune packaging and pricing before going final, so build a model to make it easier to keep track!
-k2
0 Responses to “ALM Costs Going Down in Visual Studio 2010?”