Development vs Production licensing terms

[RomAn2022]

Hi,

Licensing terms often distinguish products for development from those for production. The difference is quite clear for products used in projects where final result is targeted to people outside of the company-developer.
In case I develop software for end-users within company I work for and use such products as SQL server, Azure DevOps server (on prem) etc from Visual Studio subscription, installed in dedicated environment (not my laptop), can I use term "development" for that environment?
Once I deployed software for using by my end-users within the company, can I apply term "development" for that server as well, as it is not going to any users outside of the company?

Thanks.

[#2 · Accepted solution]

As far as I know, your company or end-customer should own visual studio subscription by developer first. Then the subscription includes development environment software licenses which are under this developer control for software development purpose.

Once the software is deployed, your company or end-customer should pay for production server license, such as SQL server, Win server etc., which depends on your commercial model with end customer.

You can refer to the following licensing white paper, it includes some outsourcing scenarios.
https://www.microsoft.com/licensing/docs/grid/Visual-Studio

[#3]

Thanks for your reply and reference, it matches my vision. One thing, as far as I understand in case developers need SQL server for development process, they can use SQL Developer Edition for free without Visual Studio.