News
Visual Studio Online Early Adopter Period Extended
The deadline was moved back from March 14 to May 7, at which time early adopters will be automatically enrolled as regular users.
If you're a Visual Studio Online early adopter and were preparing for the end of the free service, you've been given a reprieve for nearly two more months.
The Visual Studio blog announced that the early adoption period for testing out Visual Studio Online has been moved back from March 14 to May 7. The blog said the deadline was moved back to deliver more updates and get additional feedback from those early adopters about how well the service works.
Early adopters have access to the Visual Studio Online Advanced plan, which includes unlimited user plans and cloud Build and cloud Load Testing for free. After May 7, users will have to choose between a basic user plan or more robust paid plan. The free plan will offer up to five Visual Studio Online Basic user plans, up to an hour of build minutes monthly, and 15,000 virtual user minutes of Cloud Load Testing. Early adopters, the blog stated, will be automatically converted to free Basic user plans.
Developers with greater needs (and more funds) have access to more collaboration tools like Team Rooms, Work Item Chart Authoring and other features that are more like those available with Team Foundation Server. They will be automatically available for developers with higher-level MSDN subscriptions, including: Visual Studio Test Professional with MSDN, MSDN Platforms, Visual Studio Premium with MSDN or Visual Studio Ultimate with MSDN.
Visual Studio Online is Microsoft's cloud-based version of Team Foundation Service. Announced last November, it's an end-to-end set of services enabling developers to build apps in the cloud or on devices. Contrary to what some think, it is not a cloud-enabled version of Visual Studio, as columnist Mickey Gousset recently pointed out.
About the Author
Keith Ward is the editor in chief of Virtualization & Cloud Review. Follow him on Twitter @VirtReviewKeith.