Investigating Team System - Licensing FAQ

We've been looking at this new beast called Team System for some time now and the time has come to jump in and start working with it. Due to the complexity and 'newness' of Team System we've decided to evaluate it by using it to develop an internal application. Also, since we are planning on using the 6-month demonstration version of Team Foundation Server we thought it was best not to undertake a customer engagement and run the danger of our demo expiring before we delivered!

But, perhaps I'm jumping ahead of myself. My goal with this blog over the next few weeks is to record the trials and tribulations of our Team System evaluation. Perhaps it will be useful to readers but more likely it will be a record of our discoveries for posterity.

There seem to be a couple of big challenges when starting a Team System evaluation. These are (1) Licensing, and (2) Application Topology.

Team System Licensing FAQ
Well, you know this is a bit complicated when MS has to release a 'white paper' describing how Team System (TS) licensing works! Here's a licensing FAQ based on what I've translated.

Q: Where do I get information regarding Team System Licensing?
A: Check out the Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005Team System Licensing White Paper.

Q: I have MSDN Universal, surely I get Team System with it?
A: Short answer: 'not all of it'. Long answer: You do get Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 Team Edition for Software Developers and Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 Team Foundation Server Workgroup Edition. Unfortunately, these two products are really only suitable for small development shops and leverage only part of the Team System feature set. You need MSDN Premium to access more of Team System.

Q: Can I upgrade MSDN Universal to MSDN Premium in order to score Team System?
A: Short answer: "yes". Long answer: There are some options for upgrading your current MSDN subscription. Check them out here. Note: It looks like the best promotion ends on June 30th, 2006.

Q: What do I need to buy to use Team System?
A: You need one or more client licenses (Visual Studio), a Team Foundation Server License, sufficient CALs to support your user base (one for each user), and a non-MSDN Windows 2003 Server license. The client licenses come in a variety of flavours based on the 'role' of the team member. The best one is Team Suite since it covers all of the others but you can also get a Developer, Tester, Architect, or Database version.

That covers the main questions I had. Hopefully this helps!

I'll talk about Team System Application Topology in a future post.