Microsoft Continues to Delight Developers

With Microsoft just coming off very busy back-to-back Professional Developers Conference and WinHEC events, you might think the company was done with big developer-related announcements for the year. But that proved not to be the case with the announcements coming out of Microsoft's TechEd EMEA 2008 Developers conference in Barcelona.

The TechEd EMEA conference, which focuses on the European, Middle Eastern and African market, opens Nov. 10. And one of the key announcements from the show is that with the struggling economy, Microsoft is giving its tools customers a break by allowing them to buy its Visual Studio tools at a reduced rate. And the company is making competitive offers to users of competing tools as well.

"We see the current economic climate as quite challenging," said Dave Mendlen, director of developer marketing at Microsoft. "For us, we're seeing that cost has become a barrier, so we're enabling people to get our tools at a lower price."

Among the key Visual Studio 2008 Price Promotions is that first-time purchasers who are currently using any other development tool—including competitor tools or Visual Studio Express—can get Visual Studio Standard Edition or Visual Studio Professional Edition at the upgrade price of $199 instead of the $299 price for Visual Studio Standard Edition, and $549 instead of $799 for Professional Edition. This offer is available to all customers purchasing in non-volume licensing.

Current customers who have Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition or Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition without an MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) subscription can add either an MSDN Premium Subscription or an MSDN Professional Subscription at a discounted rate. And customers starting a new MSDN subscription will receive Visual Studio 2010 when it ships.

MSDN Premium Subscribers also receive SQL Server 2008, Expression Web 2 and Expression Blend 2 with support for Silverlight 2 development. This offer is available Jan. 1, 2009, to June 30, 2009, to customers with the following Microsoft Volume Licensing agreements: Open, Open Value, Select or EA.

Current customers with a Visual Studio Professional with MSDN Premium Subscription license with active Software Assurance will receive a 30 percent discount when they purchase a Step-up license from Visual Studio Professional with MSDN Premium to any Visual Studio Team System role edition—including Development Edition, Test Edition, Architecture Edition and Database Edition—with MSDN Premium. Also, as announced on Sept. 29, Visual Studio Team System Development Edition customers now receive Visual Studio Team System Database Edition. This offer is available to volume-licensing customers from Dec. 1, 2008, to June 30, 2009.

Also, current Visual Studio Team System customers with any of the role-based editions with an MSDN Premium license with active Software Assurance will receive a 30 percent discount when they purchase a Step-up License for Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite. This offer is available from Dec. 1, 2008, to June 30, 2009.