Microsoft may be an awesome technology company, but they have often managed to screw up licensing and major marketing efforts. Remember when they thought that every product name should have .NET attached to it? Remember ActiveX? How about Licensing 6 and Software Assurance?
Astonishingly, they have completely botched the Visual Studio 2005 licensing model. I don’t even know where to begin.
First off, Microsoft partners, accustomed to getting almost any software they want, are the first casualty. Certified Partners receive only VS 2005 Professional, sans unit testing, static code analysis, deployment designer and more. Even a Gold Certified Partner only gets VS 2005 for Software Developers. Neither one gets Team Suite, let alone Team System. OK, they get a TRIAL version of Team Suite, for what that’s worth.
The incredibly confusing product names are the second part of the mess. Express, Professional, for Software Developers, for Architects, for Testers, Team Suite, Team System, each and every one a different SKU with different features included. Who signed off on this disaster? No one can understand what’s what without elaborate charts and pictures.
My current client was excited to move to VS 2005, but the managers certainly didn’t have time to negotiate this licensing maze. Fortunately, I discovered that they were about to order the wrong product SKUs and corrected their confusion on what was what in the product line. Imagine this scenario repeating itself across the globe.
Shame on Microsoft’s marketing department for this, the biggest Visual Studio launch in the history of Microsoft!
