What is an MSDN Subscription?

An MSDN Subscription acts as a life-line for software developers, testers, architects, IT professional, database engineers, and others, providing priority access to new and old versions of Microsoft products, including developer tools, operating systems, server software, and productivity applications.  As a subscriber you can use the software to design, develop, test, and demonstrate your applications on as many machines and devices as you need—saving you a bundle on software license costs during development.

You also get access to newsgroups with a guaranteed response by Microsoft engineers, access to the Online Concierge, an online chat service for help finding online resources, and a number of Technical Support Incidents for those tricky technical problems that we all encounter from time to time.

For your downtime, there is the MSDN Magazine, crammed full of the latest information on Microsoft tools, development environments, and technologies for Windows and the Web.

Extensive Software Collection

MSDN Subscribers say that the most important benefit of their MSDN Subscription is easy access to Microsoft’s extensive software collection.  There are literally thousands of downloads, covering different products, versions, and languages, plus tools, development kits, and other resources.  The latest Microsoft products are available for download, often with early previews during the beta. There is support for previous versions software titles as well, for those of you working in environments that do not always use the latest releases.

Software licensing is easy too, it’s licensed per user.  An MSDN Subscription entitles you to install and use the software as much as you need in your development projects and you can get as many product keys as you need.  You just need to get a subscription for each person on your team so they can use the software too and enjoy all the benefits.

As an MSDN Subscriber, you can receive regular updates to your software library on DVD if you wish, and there are online tools to help you manage this ever growing software library.

Support

MSDN Subscribers have access to a number of different types of support.  First, the managed newsgroups where you can post questions to be answered by a Microsoft engineer if the community doesn’t give you the answer first.  Naturally you can participate too and provide answers to help others.

You also get Technical Support Incidents, which entitle you to receive professional technical support for up to four incidents depending on your subscription level. These support incidents can be used for assistance with technical break-fix issues though Microsoft Technical Support.  You never know when you’ll need to use this, but the help is there when you do.

As an MSDN Subscriber, you can also chat with the Online Concierge. The Online Concierge is a one-to-one web-based chat service for all subscribers so you can get answers to non-technical questions about navigating the MSDN site, finding Knowledge Base (KB) articles, and using Subscriber Downloads. The MSDN Online Concierge is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

MSDN Magazine

MSDN Magazine is the publication to read for up-to-the-minute, comprehensive coverage of Microsoft technologies for the desktop, the Internet, and devices on the go. As part of the indispensable MSDN family of developer resources, MSDN Magazine brings you solutions to the real-world problems you face every day. Whether you're building Web Services, integrating legacy data stores, or mastering .NET, MSDN Magazine has it covered.

How to Get It

Interested? Subscribe now at Buy or Renew, either directly from Microsoft or through a software reseller.