Visio Customers Impacted by 2013 Release

While the basic Visio license model remains relatively unchanged for the 2013 version, Visio Standard 2013 and Visio Professional 2013 received price increases, and the Premium edition has been discontinued. The changes may have licensing and compliance impact for customers with existing installations.

Fewer Editions, Increased Prices

Visio is drawing software that customers use to manipulate and connect shapes, data sources, and process details to create flowcharts, diagrams, charts, and other business images. Visio 2013, the latest version, was released in conjunction with Office 2013 on Jan. 29, 2013, although it became available to volume licensing customers in Dec. 2012.

Many customers deploy a standardized Office image to everyone in the organization, but Visio is generally deployed only to creators and editors of documents, while others receive a Visio viewer or a browser with read-only capability.

Visio Standard edition, containing core-level functionality, is used for individual document creation where publishing through a server is not required. Visio Professional provides additional diagrams for project management, IT, and engineering purposes as well as enhanced capabilities such as real-time connection to external data sources, advanced programmability options, and publishing to browser users, known as Visio Services in SharePoint Server 2013.