Exchange 2010 � Enterprise Client Access Licenses

Some customers have asked about what an Enterprise CAL in Exchange 2010 grants you compared to the standard CAL. It is important to know that Exchange CAL's are additive (this was also true in exchange 2007) so an Enterprise CAL is not a "covers all" - you need the Standard and the Enterprise CAL.

The most complete licensing comparison on Exchange 2010 is here:
http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/2010/en/us/Licensing.aspx

And from the CAL chart there, we can see the detailed parts that are granted with an Enterprise CAL.

So let's detail these.

Advanced Activesync Policies
Within Organization Configuration, Client Access, Exchange ActiveSync Mailbox Policies, anything changes from the defaults on the Device, device Applications, or Other tab require an Enterprise CAL











You can see in these screenshots, that pretty much anywhere Enterprise CALs are being used there is an icon and a reminder.

Premium Journaling

If you have ever used an archiving product, you have probably used standard journaling. This is where every email written to a particular database is also copied to a single mailbox. Typically, then the 3rd part archive product picked up those emails and wrote them elsewhere. Premium journaling is under Organization Configuration, Hub Transport, Journal Rules. When you go to create a new journal rule, you see the same Enterprise CAL notification.

Unified Messaging

If you enable UM for a user, you need an Enterprise CAL.

Retention Policies

There are two different Managed Folders.. Default and Custom. Default folders are your Calendar, Contacts, Inbox, Draft, Sent Items, Tasks, Etc. Custom is anything you want to create and deploy to your users outside of this. When you create a new Custom folder policy, you see the Enterprise CAL notification.

Integrated Archive

Integrated Archive mailbox is new for Exchange 2010. When you attempt to enable archive for a mailbox, you get the Enterprise CAL notification shown below.



Multi-mailbox search and legal hold

This is the Discovery Management role within the RBAC (Role Based Access Control) that can be controlled via the ECP (Exchange Control Panel) This one does NOT give an Enterprise CAL notification when you add a user to the role group.

IPC, Transport Decryption, etc

This is a multifaceted one, that is not highlighted as Enterprise CAL required when you configure it either. I will default to Technet for descriptions of each of these features, as they have them neatly collected here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd351035.aspx

Exchange 2010 Standard to support High Availability DAGs

From the Unified Communications blog, there is this post on 2010 licensing.


From there:
"On the server side, Exchange Server Standard will now support high availability, so all customers can take full advantage of the new database availability group capabilities. Exchange Server Enterprise enables configurations with up to 100 databases per server."

Still looking for some documentation on the maximum number of databases in a DAG that Standard edition will support, but my presumption is 5 (Similar to the 2007 Standard limitation on DB's)

Update: Scott Schnoll has confirmed this is accurate. Exchange 2010 Standard can have up to 5 DAG databases!

This is HUGE news for small customers wanting HA (the difference between $550 per Exchange Standard and $3200 for Enterprise) - for a 3 server DAG, that's $8k in licensing savings on Exchange ALONE.

Awesome news for small businesses wanting HA and DR for Exchange!

OCS PIC changes coming

From the MS OCS Team blog comes this announcement:

• Starting October 1, 2009, the following licensing changes will be made:
  A PIC License will no longer be required for federation with American Online (AOL). Customers qualify for federation with AOL if they have Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Standard CAL or active Software Assurance on their current LCS/OCS license.
• Customers who want Yahoo! federation will continue to purchase PIC licenses. The price of PIC will be reduced by 50%, effective October 1, 2009, to reflect this change.
• New XMPP Gateway released that will allow presence and two party IM with Jabber based services, most notably, Google Talk

This also comes on the heels of their June announcement that Windows Live did not require a PIC license. 2009 has been a good year for federation to public instant messaging platforms!