Microsoft Enterprise CALs are a relatively new addition to the world of MS licensing, and from conversations I’ve had at work, I know some people are a little unsure as to what they’re for, how they’re licensed etc.
Why have they made more CALs?
A lot of people viewed the addition of these extra CALs as a way for Microsoft to make more money and make life more difficult, but that’s not the case at all. The Enterprise CALs actually give organizations more flexibilty and help reduce wasted expenditure on software.
What do they do?
The Enterprise CALs offer an extended range of features over and above the Standard CAL; this can be thing such as Unified Messaging, Call Management or Excel Services. I’ll give a breakdown of the complete differences later in this post.
How are they licensed?
There are 2 main points to this and not everyone is aware of them.
1) The Enterprise CALs are Additive, which means you must have the Standard CAL as well in order to be correctly licensed. So Std CAL + ENt CAL = 🙂
2) You aren’t required to have the same number of Enterprise CALs as you have Standard CALs. For example, if a company has 500 workers who use Outlook, all 500 will need an Exchange Std CAL. However if only 46 of those need Unified Messaging (Voicemail in their inbox etc), you would need just 46 additive Enterprise CALs so 500 Std + 46 Ent = 🙂
Which products have Standard & Enterprise CALs?
Exchange 2007, Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 and Sharepoint Server (MOSS) 2007.
Here is an explanation as to the differences between the Std & Ent CALs for the products listed above:
Exchange 2007:
Standard CAL gives:
- Email, Shared Calendars, contacts etc
- Outlook Web Access (OWA)
- ActiveSync
- Managed E-Mail Folders (Default)
On top of that, the Enterprise CAL gives:
- Advanced ActiveSync Policies (with Exchange 2007 SP1)
- Unified Messaging – A single inbox for mail, voice and fax
- Per User/Per distribution list journaling
- Managed E-Mail Folders (Custom)
Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007:
Standard CAL gives:
- Presence- Instantly find and communicate with fellow workers. Use presence to see people’s online status and initiate real-time conversations
- Federation-Establish trusted relationships between your organization and others, allowing workers to communicate via IM (Instant Messaging)
On top of that, the Enterprise CAL offers:
- Conferencing–Experience multi-party audio/video conferencing from within Microsoft Office Communicator.
Meeting scheduling–Instantly establish ad-hoc meetings from a variety of Microsoft Office applications.
Conduct online meetings–Use the power of the Live Meeting client to conduct conference meetings with participants inside and outside the organization with an on premise solution.
VOIP capabilities: Software-powered VoIP that works with your existing messaging and telephony infrastructure and can adapt to your changing business needs.
Call Management–Give users call management capabilities like call forwarding, hold, dynamic routing, and simultaneous ringing on all commonly used phones right from their desktop.
Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server (MOSS) 2007:
Standard CAL gives:
- Content Management–Out-of-the-box workflows initiate, track, and report common business activities such as document review and approval, issue tracking, and signature collection.
- Records Management–Record repository provides for the collecting, managing, and disposing of corporate records in a consistent and uniform manner based on the company’s policies.
- Portal Site Management–Site Manager tools help personalize, deploy, and maintain portals using drag-and-drop capability.
- Search–Extensible and customizable search of enterprise content and people.
- Portals–Portal sites provide convenient starting points to connect your people to business-critical information, expertise, and applications.
On top of that, the Enterprise CAL gives:
- Report Center–Broadly shares business data through personal or shared dashboards that include Microsoft Office Excel 2007 controls and key performance indicators.
- Business Data Catalog–Discover more information through the ability to index business data and access it through your portal and search capabilities.
- Excel Services–Help secure, manage, and control spreadsheets through a Web browser. Integrate Microsoft Office Excel as a part of your business intelligence infrastructure.
- Forms Server–Enables the storage and organization of rich, dynamic server-based forms to gather, share, reuse, and manage information.
Cloudy with a chance of Licensing 