Licensing Azure Services for Development and Test

(This report has been superseded by an updated version “Licensing Azure Services for Development and Test“.)

• Visual Studio and MSDN Platforms subscriptions entitle users to individual and team discounts on Microsoft software used in Azure.
• Administrators can save money on Azure for developers by setting a configuration option on Azure subscriptions.
• Most options require all users other than those doing acceptance testing to be licensed subscribers of VS or MSDN.

Azure, Microsoft’s hosted application and storage services offering, provides discounts and financial credits on most Microsoft software and select services when used exclusively for software development (dev) and testing (test) purposes. All users benefitting from these discounted services and software must have Visual Studio (VS) or Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) subscriptions. A separate free tier of Azure could help small projects or students get started with Azure without requiring a VS or MSDN subscription, but limited duration and features limit the utility of the offering for commercial customers.