Chris Menegay's WebLog

Team System Pricing

I've been seeing a lot of people complaining about the recently announced Team System pricing - I've been one of them.  Eric Bowen is concerned about not getting a version to just play with to test out the product.  I think its early to assume MS won't have some sort of trial version for this very purpose.  In addition, I've seen the pricing for Team Foundation (I have no idea why that wasn't in the press release), and it's not that huge of a price and you only need one server for your team (or teams).  For companies that already have MSDN Universal, adopting Team System will be relatively inexpensive, as the upgrade path is quite nice. The key thing is to be sure you don't ever pay retail price - retail price is expensive. If you work for a smaller company, you'll want to try and get into one of the Volume License plans that is most appropriate, as that will save you a lot of money.  The per developer retail pricing is frightening, but it looks like even for smaller teams 10 people or so, that this might be pretty affordable.

BTW, my Team System article is online now at http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/05/04/teamsystem/default.aspx let me know your thoughts. I originally wrote it back in October, so there is quite a bit that is stale, but hopefully it will give a good overview for those just getting started.

Posted: Mar 22 2005, 12:05 PM by cmenegay | with 8 comment(s)
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Comments

Brandon Tyler said:

That was a great article Chris! Hopefully, we can get you over here at Intervoice to give us some training on TeamSystem! Thanks for everything!
# March 22, 2005 12:11 PM

Adam Hill said:

You totally sidestep the single/two person dev shop. We are getting royally hosed.

2.5K + 3K is waaaaay too large of a percentage of my income.

MS needs a combined 'role' version for MSDN, VSTS server provided if they are feeling magnanimous or for an extra $1000.

$1000 is the price point to make a small dev think - 'Do I *really* need it?'
# March 22, 2005 6:22 PM

TrackBack said:

# March 22, 2005 6:35 PM

TrackBack said:

# March 22, 2005 6:37 PM

Chris Menegay said:

Umm, if you are a single person shop, do you really need the Team Foundation? Just use sourcesafe. If you want the built in unit testing, etc., then pay the extra money, if it's not worth it - nunit is still around. Or do you want better features and integration but at the same cost (free) as nunit. That doesn't seem realistic. At a $1000 price point, you aren't getting the full featureset today (MSDN-U is $2800).
# March 22, 2005 10:50 PM

Alex said:

Sourcesafe is so bad, people should be dicouraged from using it regardless of what their situation is.

In terms of unit testing... nobody expects it for free. But it shouldn't cost more either. The whole point of upgrading development enviroment is getting NEW features for the same cost. If I buy new version of Photoshop, it better damn have some new cool features and I'm not buy it if new interface is all there is to it.

Major new version of software demands new features and they have to be included in the package.

A better way would be to sell it as a separate package so people would buy it later when and IF they need it without having to go through yet another hard and costly upgrade.
# March 23, 2005 8:38 AM

Mickey Gousset said:

I remember reading and thoroughly enjoying that article in MSDN. Excellent!
# April 6, 2005 12:38 AM

TrackBack said:

^_^,Pretty Good!
# April 10, 2005 3:58 AM
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