About Licensing

Three main editions, namely Enterprise, Business Intelligence and Standard, will be available:

The Business Intelligence edition will include all of the Standard Edition’s capabilities, and Enterprise will include all of the Business Intelligence Edition’s capabilities.

With the release of SQL Server 2012, the following three editions will be retired:

Enterprise, Business Intelligence and Standard will be our main editions. The Web Edition will be offered only to hosters via the Services Provider License Agreement (SLPA). Developer, Express and Compact Editions will also continue to be distributed without licensing or pricing changes. We also offer a range of appliances including Parallel Data Warehouse, a BI appliance, and a database consolidation appliance.

With SQL Server 2012, we will offer the following licensing options:

Licensing changes will come into effect at the general availability of SQL Server 2012. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 is expected to release in the first half of calendar year 2012. Customers with licenses for prior versions with active Software Assurance should also refer to the Product List for additional information.

SQL Server 2012 will provide a variety of virtualization and cloud benefits that will help customers save money on database licensing and retain flexibility in their database deployments. Customers can:

The changes to SQL Server licensing reflect the evolution of the database industry along with new hardware deployment practices. Internal customer research with hundreds of customers has shown us that database customers are comfortable with core-based licensing and consider licensing by core simple and predictable. There is also great enthusiasm for our virtualization and cloud-friendly licensing to help customers save money as their deployment practices evolve. With these changes, we will continue to offer industry leading TCO.

We have put in place licensing models that are appropriate for the products based on industry and customer needs. The changes to SQL Server licensing are based on trends in the database industry and were developed with just the database business in mind.

With SQL Server 2012, we are delivering a more powerful Enterprise Edition and a new Business Intelligence Edition with innovative features. SQL Server customers who benefit from the new capabilities and who deploy mission critical databases may pay more, though we will continue to be the industry TCO leader.

At the same time, we are offering licensing benefits and flexibility to help customers save money and control costs with virtualization and consolidation. The net price impact to individual customers will vary based on how they deploy SQL Server 2012, their current capacity and their future needs.

We have been actively engaged in conversations directly with our customers and partners to ensure that they know how these changes may impact them.

Enterprise Edition includes the full capabilities of SQL Server 2012, so a customer who wants to license a BI Server on a per core basis can do so by buying Enterprise Edition. Enterprise Edition will be the preferred way to license advanced SQL Server BI capabilities when users are uncountable (e.g., external facing workloads) or when there is a very large number of users.

With SQL Server 2012, there is a single CAL for SQL Server 2012 for access to all the server editions.

No. All licenses under SA will be able to upgrade to SQL Server 2012 at no additional cost.

EA and EAP remain the best ways for customers to license SQL Server. EA and EAP offer extended transitions to help you plan for the new licensing model. Furthermore, EAP offers significant discounts to help you take advantage of the lowest TCO.

Licenses purchased with Software Assurance (SA) will upgrade to SQL Server 2012 at no additional cost. EA/EAP customers can continue buying processor licenses until their next renewal (after GA of SQL Server 2012). At that time, processor licenses will be exchanged for core-based licenses sufficient to cover the cores in use by processor-licensed databases (minimum of 4 core licenses per processor for Standard and Enterprise, and minimum of 8 EE core licenses per processor for Datacenter). Please refer to the Product List for further migration path details.

You can perform a “self-inventory” of your environment at the end of the Software Assurance (SA) term that will provide the basis for the core licenses you will own and for which you are eligible to renew SA. We will provide access to the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit as one way to help track and document deployments. This tool can help you plan the transition from processor-based licenses to core-based licenses by counting both processors and cores across your deployments. If you are not able to document your SQL Server deployments, we will exchange processors based on a standard conversion ratio. We encourage you to work with your Microsoft or Partner representative to determine an optimal transition plan.

Enterprise Edition will no longer be offered in the Server + CAL model for SQL Server 2012, however to help with the transition to the new licensing model, the SQL Server 2012 Enterprise Edition will be available under the Server + CAL model through June 30, 2012.

All existing licenses of the Enterprise Edition in the Server + CAL licensing model with Software Assurance (SA) can be upgraded to SQL Server 2012, and SA can be maintained to provide access to future software updates. These licenses will continue under the Server + CAL licensing model.

Existing Enterprise Edition licenses in the Server + CAL licensing model that are upgraded to SQL Server 2012 and beyond will be limited to server deployments with 20 cores or less. This 20 core limit only applies to SQL Server 2012 Enterprise Edition Server licenses in the Server + CAL model and will still require the appropriate number/versions of SQL Server CALs for access.