Microsoft Developer Network

There is no trick!

We’ve got a fantastic offer for you and it isn’t a scam:

Buy Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition with MSDN Premium, and you’ll get download access to Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition at no extra charge!

That means you can now get our most powerful tools for writing and collaborating on quality code from the user interface to the database—all at one price. You’ll spend more time writing code and less time solving problems. It’s a chance to increase productivity without blowing the budget.

This offer also applies to existing VSTS Development Edition customers with MSDN Premium – you can now download VSTS Database Edition from the MSDN Download site. And vice versa: VSTS Database Edition customers with MSDN Premium can download Development Edition.

Free trial!

But don’t just take our word for it – request your free Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite 90 day trial and try it out for yourself. VSTS Team Suite includes all 4 VSTS 2008 Team Editions: Development, Database, Test & Architect.

Got Visual Studio Professional? Add an MSDN Subscription and save hundreds of $$$!

MSDN subscriptions include invaluable development resources for developers and architects using Visual Studio Professional. With MSDN, you get priority access to new versions of Microsoft products, including developer tools, Microsoft operating systems, server software, productivity applications, exclusive access to pre-release products, technical support, upgrades to new versions of Visual Studio and more – for example:

Both MSDN Premium and MSDN Professional include development and test licenses for Windows Server products, Windows Vista, Windows XP and SQL Server products.
MSDN Premium Subscription also includes Office 2007 Ultimate, Expression Web 2 and Expression Blend 2 (with support for Silverlight™ 2 development) and a range of Microsoft server and Dynamics products.

For a limited time, save hundreds of $$$ when you add a MSDN Premium or MSDN Professional subscription to your Visual Studio 2005 or 2008 Professional license. Plus, if you start a new 2 or 3 year MSDN Premium or MSDN Professional Subscription today, you’ll get Visual Studio 2010 when it ships.

See a full list of MSDN Benefits
See a full list of software that comes with MSDN subscriptions

Terms & Conditions

From January 1 2009 Visual Studio Professional L-only customers will receive a discount on purchasing Visual Studio Professional + MSDN Professional Subscription, or on purchasing Visual Studio Professional + MSDN Premium Subscription. The discount is approximately equivalent to the cost of Visual Studio Professional licence-only. Note actual discount will depend on licensing agreement and length of time remaining on a customer’s volume licensing agreement. Available under the following licensing programs: Open, Open Value, Select & EA (excluding Government).

Special Offer for customers with Visual Studio Professional with MSDN Premium!

There has never been a better time to upgrade your development toolset. From 1 December 2008 to 30 June 2009, Visual Studio Professional customers with MSDN Premium will receive a 30% discount when they step up to Visual Studio Team System.

And of course, if the step-up is to VSTS 2008 Development Edition, customers will also receive access to VSTS Database Edition at no extra charge!

Terms & Conditions

30% discount is based on recommended retail prices and applies to customers with Visual Studio Professional 2005 or Visual Studio Professional 2008 with an active MSDN Premium Subscription who purchase the step-up SKU to Visual Studio Team System 2008 Developer Edition (or another Team Edition) under the following licensing programs: Enterprise Agreement, Select, Open Value (excluding Government). Discount applies to purchases made between 1 December 2008 and 30 June 2009.

In June 09, get 45% off when you step up from Visual Studio Team System to the complete Team Suite!

If your team is using any of the Visual Studio Team System 2008 roles (Development Edition, Test Edition, Architecture Edition, or Database Edition), now is the time to boost your team's productivity. Step up to the complete Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite, which includes all 4 Team Edition roles, and save 45%. That's a huge saving and will help your development team stay agile and collaborate more effectively. This discount is only available for step ups to Team Suite made in the month of June 09.

Terms & Conditions

45% discount is based on recommended retail prices and applies to customers with a Visual Studio Team System Team Edition role (Development, Database, Test or Architect) with an active MSDN Premium Subscription who purchase the step-up SKU to Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite under the following licensing programs: Enterprise Agreement, Select, Open Value (excluding Government). Discount applies to purchases made between in June 2009.

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How To Buy

Via your Microsoft Reseller

Contact your Microsoft Reseller for pricing information and to purchase Visual Studio 2008 and MSDN Subscriptions.

Alternatively, the following Microsoft Resellers are experienced in providing information on Visual Studio and MSDN Subscriptions:

Company Name	Location/Coverage	Contact Details
Developers Inc. (Specialist Developer Tools Reseller)	National Coverage	0508 DEV INC (0508 338 462) Richard Vowles
Axon	Auckland/Hamilton/Wellington/Christchurch	0800 80 60 90 Al Bush or Leanne Nydam
Datacom	Auckland & Wellington	04 463 7251 Margaret Bradcock
Fujitsu	National Coverage	04 495 0700 Karen Thorn or Gen Robinson
gen-i (a division of Telecom)	National Coverage	0800 800 334 software@gen-i.co.nz
Insight	National Coverage	0800 933 111 Simone Gould

Purchase online from Microsoft

Visual Studio 2008 with MSDN Subscriptions can also be purchased online directly from Microsoft. Note Volume Licensing purchasing options are not available for online purchases.

Microsoft online purchase site

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Visual Studio 2008

Visual Studio 2008 has arrived! With more than 250 new features, Visual Studio 2008 includes significant enhancements in every edition, including Visual Studio Express and Visual Studio Team System. Developers of all levels – from hobbyists to enterprise development teams – now have a consistent, secure and reliable solution for developing applications for the latest platforms: the Web, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, the 2007 Office system, and beyond.

Develop at Light Speed

New and improved visual designers, the ability to target different versions of the .NET framework and the introduction of LINQ for building data-driven applications make developers more productive than ever before.

Build Next Generation Applications

With built-in support for Windows Vista, the Microsoft Office system, ASP.NET AJAX and Silverlight, developers can build a broad spectrum of rich interactive applications using the latest technologies.

Work Collaboratively

For development teams, Visual Studio 2008 Team System provides the tools, processes, and guidance to help everyone on the team improve their skills and work more effectively together.

What’s New in Visual Studio 2008?

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Visual Studio 2008 Product Line-up

Visual Studio is available in a variety of configurations ranging from top-of-the-line Visual Studio Team System for development teams, through to Visual Studio Professional for individual developers and Visual Studio Express for hobbyists.

Visual Studio 2008 Product Comparison

For a comprehensive overview of the technical features available in the different versions of Visual Studio, visit the Visual Studio 2008 Product Comparison.

For more information :

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MSDN Subscriptions

The best way to buy Visual Studio 2008 Professional or Visual Studio 2008 Team System is with an MSDN Premium or MSDN Professional Subscription.

An MSDN Premium or Professional Subscription provides upgrade rights to the next release of Visual Studio, technical resources and support, and continuous access to an extensive range of Microsoft software for development and testing purposes - in short all the tools you need to develop great software applications!

Highlights of an MSDN Premium Subscription include:

All of the Microsoft Windows Operating Systems
A broad range of the latest Microsoft Windows Server System products
Office 2007 (full production license)
Four technical support incidents per subscription
SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server Reporting Services
Unlimited use of MSDN Managed Newsgroups
Free access to MSDN Online Concierge
Over 1,800 royalty-free code samples
Sample applications
Technical product documentation and articles

MSDN Comparison

For a comprehensive summary of MSDN benefits: Compare MSDN Subscriptions

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New Zealand Resources

What customers are saying

"e-Spatial have developed a spatial analysis workbench solution using Visual Studio 2008 and Virtual Earth services. Building the solution using the Visual Studio 2008 package framework and standalone Shell helped reduce the build time and enabled the publishing of the solution as a developer enhancement to Visual Studio 2008."

Matti Seikkula
Chief Information Officer
e-Spatial Limited

"We are now using Visual Studio Team System 2008 to both functionally and load test websites developed in both ASP.NET and MOSS 2007. Although its predecessor VSTS 2005 did an excellent job in these areas we have found that VSTS 2008 provides some significant improvements in terms of ease of use, scalability and test result diagnosis."

Doug Taylor
Chief Architect
Provoke Solutions

"The new LINQ to SQL functionality in C# 3.0 is a great time saver. Prior to LINQ, we had to develop and support a lot of infrastructure to provide access to our databases. With LINQ, much of this infrastructure is provided out of the box, leaving more time to focus on implementing business intelligence."

Myles Henaghan
Senior Software Engineer
Broadcast M.A.P.

"We recently engaged Microsoft partner Datacom as a supplier to leverage the latest development technologies available from Microsoft, including Visual Studio 2008 to further expand our supporting systems capabilities. The latest Microsoft technologies provide the kind of scalable, secure, open standards based and reliable technologies that we demand for our systems."

Phil Purchase
Business Development Manager
Paymark

"Using Visual Studio 2008 Datacom can develop open standards based systems with the required levels of security and performance in shorter time periods than before and with higher levels of functionality leveraging Microsoft latest platform technologies including the .NET 3.5 framework and LINQ."

Phil Purchase
Business Development Manager
Paymark

"Given the considerable experience we have acquired in using Windows Communications Foundation and Windows Workflow in mission critical SOA systems, we have been following their support in Visual Studio with keen interest. We expect the recent designer changes released in Visual Studio 2008 will make it both easier and faster to develop using WCF and WF. Of particular interest to us is the ability of Visual Studio 2008 to multi-target .NET versions - .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0 and .NET 3.5. We also see many potential uses for the new LINQ functionality being released in Visual Studio 2008."

Bohdan Szymanik
Enterprise Architect Manager
Kiwibank

"For Kiwibank Visual Studio Team System 2008 is a logical progression of Microsoft’s Team development offerings. We will be able to leverage the new development toolset’s added functionality – including improved designers, LINQ for data access, multi-targeting and Office development features with little or no disruption as we continue to upgrade from earlier versions of Visual Studio. The addition of Continuous integration in Visual Studio Team system 2008 is a welcome addition as are a number of other new Team system features which will further enhance our software development teams productivity."

Bohdan Szymanik
Enterprise Architect Manager
Kiwibank