Licensing Models

Cost is always one of the key questions that keep coming up when considering Team System. In this section, we provide guidance and a simplified view to help you understand the licensing model.

Important

The best source of information for licensing is a whitepaper published on MSDN. To access the whitepaper, refer to http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=55933.

Here are some practical guidelines to consider:

• If your team members perform specific roles without overlap, consider obtaining a specific Team Edition version of Visual Studio for each team member. For example, developers would obtain the Team Edition for Software Developers. If there is overlap between roles, you should perhaps consider obtaining the Team Suite.

  Important

  If you plan to use all the testing feature integration with Team Foundation Build, you should obtain a license for Team Edition for Software Developers and Team Edition for Software Testers (or Team Suite). The combination of these two products provides the necessary framework to run any of the tests commonly found in Team System. Note that both these products must be installed on the build server.

• Team Foundation Server requires a license, and every computer accessing the server using Team Explorer (or any other client) requires a client access license (CAL). In some instances involving a remote "non-employee," a connector can be purchased to allow them access to the server.

• Each instance of Team Foundation Server Proxy requires a Team Foundation Server license. A license is also required for "warm" failover instances of Team Foundation Server.