When to buy Visual Studio Team System?

Question

We use Visual Studio Professional and we are quite pleased with it. We use Tortoise SVN, Visual VSN, NUnit and resharper. A combination that works very well for us.

Now we need to run load tests.

We looked at Visual Studio Team System, but frankly the pricing seems a bit lofty (obvious understatement). We are with a team of 6 developers.

I do want to 'get the best tools money can buy', still... Any advice? Are there alternatives?

EDIT: We develop a web application written in C#. We have been in business for more than three years thus we unfortunately cannot enroll in bizspark.

Answer 1

I don't really see how VSTS will help you with load testing.

Also, a 6 developer team is too small to benefit from VSTS.

Answer 2

If you fit the criteria for Microsoft Bizspark Program then you can have all their software for free including production licenses for 3 years:

http://www.microsoft.com/BizSpark/

Hop this helps:

Andrew

Answer 3

We have Visual Studio Team System Development Edition at work, and I have Visual Studio Professional at home (I have my own MSDN license). I don't know about load testing, but the two features I miss the most from Team System are the C++ code coverage tools and C++ static analysis.

Oh, and I kinda miss the FxCop integration, but that can be worked around.

If it weren't so expensive, I'd upgrade my MSDN subscription to include it. If I were setting up my own company, I'd be all over the BizSpark program.

Answer 4

I used the complete VSTS (Team Suite + Team Foundation) 2005 edition, I used different features (SC,Load Test, Unit Testing,Performance analysis,Code coverage) on different technologies and apps (C#,C++,ASP.NET), it was great and helpful but I dont know there is equivalent product in the market (even for Load Test feature)