MSDN Universal and MSDN Enterprise are being discontinued in lieu of five new MSDN Premium Subscriptions.
Here is basically how this thing works. There are five editions of Visual Studio aside from the Express and Standard Editions.
These editions are:
- Team Edition for Software Architects
- Team Edition for Software Developers
- Team Edition for Testers
- Professional Edition
- Team Suite
As a current MSDN Universal / Enterprise subscriber, you will have to choose between the three Team Editions listed above. Each edition contains different Visual Studio features (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnvsent/html/vsts-over.asp scroll down about half the way for the image). Most of you will probably take the Software Developer Edition. A few of you will have Software Architect. Software Architect does not necessarily contain all of the features that the Software Developer or Tester edition comes with. Now, if you want the features of all three editions, then that is where Team Suite comes in. That one costs extra. See the link below for the differences in editions.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/howtobuy/vs2005/compare/
Those of you with MSDN Enterprise (C2) will automatically be transitioned to the Software Developer Edition. If you have MSDN Universal, you will be given a choice of which version you would like to switch to. You will be able to make that choice in the future here.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/howtobuy/vs2005/request/
I'm sure we will here more about this in the future as Beta 2 and the final release nears.
Read the complete post at http://www.dotnettipoftheday.com/blog.aspx?id=157