Visual Studio 2010 Preorder Savings / AppFabric Commercial Availability

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional will launch on April 12 but you can beat the rush and secure your copy today by pre-ordering at the affordable estimated retail price of $549, a saving of $250.

If you use a previous version of Visual Studio or any other development tool then you are eligible for this upgrade. Along with all the great new features in Visual Studio 2010 (see www.microsoft.com/visualstudio) Visual Studio 2010 Professional includes a 12-month MSDN Essentials subscription which gives you access to core Microsoft platforms: Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise, and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Datacenter.

So visit https://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/pre-order-visual-studio-2010 to check out all the new features and sign up for this great offer.

Windows Azure platform AppFabric includes Service Bus and Access Control services. AppFabric Service Bus connects services and applications across network boundaries to help developers build distributed applications. AppFabric Access Control provides federated, claims-based access control for REST web services.

Starting April 9, 2010, Windows Azure platform AppFabric will be commercially available on a paid and fully SLA-supported basis.
In order to help you get familiarized with AppFabric billing, the team will release the AppFabric Billing Preview on March 9, 2010. With this billing preview, you will be able to download a usage summary from the AppFabric Developer Portal, with information similar to that of the “daily usage summary” currently available to you for Windows Azure and SQL Azure. The summary will include AppFabric usage starting with the billing preview release date.

If you are already using AppFabric, Microsoft will begin charging as of April 9, 2010 at 12:00 AM GMT. You can find the pricing for AppFabric here. You can also go to the pricing section of the FAQs for additional information as well as the AppFabric pricing blog post.

Enjoy!