Yesterday, out of the blue, TechNet subscribers received a notification that the TechNet Subscription service is going to be retired. I am one of those subscribers, and have been for many years now.
From my perspective this is very bad news: my entire demo/lab environment is running on software I retrieve using the subscriber downloads. This environment is my main source for learning products and technologies and also to demonstrate them to customers. In the long run I would assume this is also beneficial for the vendor in many cases – hence I find it very difficult to understand the motivation behind this decision.
End of this year my subscription expires. It seems an MSDN subscription is being proposed as an alternative by some, but from a pricing perspective this is really not an option for me. The package including the same products as my current TechNet subscription would cost 6551 EUR!
I sincerely hope Microsoft will come forward with a more affordable alternative or reverts the decision for retiring the TechNet subscription service. Although I do realize that the chances of the latter happening are extremely small.
Looking at social media today it seems a lot of my fellow TechNet subscribers feel the same way. I see many tweets and blog posts on the subject and there is even an online petition asking for a comparable (affordable) MSDN subscription.
To be continued …
Tim
