Licensing Azure Services for Development and Test 

• Customers with Visual Studio and MSDN Platforms subscriptions are eligible for pricing and other benefits when hosting Dev/Test workloads on Azure. 
• Although prerequisites and rules are clearly stated, few are technically enforced. 
• Organizations risk noncompliance if users are not licensed correctly or if workloads configured for Dev/Test are used for production purposes. 

Organizations with Visual Studio (VS) or Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) Platforms subscriptions qualify for special Azure-related benefits, collectively known as “Azure Dev/Test.” Most notable are large discounts on several types of Azure services when used by technical teams exclusively for software development (dev) and testing (test) purposes, a benefit sometimes called “Azure Dev/Test pricing.” Cost savings range from 40 to 60% compared with charges for production workloads run in Azure. However, organizations may be at risk of noncompliance if users are not licensed correctly or if workloads configured for Dev/Test are used for production purposes. Also, Microsoft offers other Azure-related benefits for developers outside the scope of Azure Dev/Test pricing (see the sidebars “Visual Studio and MSDN Azure Credits” and “Free Option for Licensing Azure”).