Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Licensing
With the launch of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 comes the exciting opportunity to figure out licensing for the new products. In my role as business development manager, I get to help our customers figure out what products are best for their environment and in many cases that means figuring out how people should select products.
The first part of this series will begin with a comparison of previous products to new products.
Windows SharePoint Services v.2 > Windows SharePoint Services v.3
At the most attractive of all price points, WSS will fit in the same spot as the previous version. It will continue to be a valuable part of our toolbox. Previously, WSS had a number of advantages over the Portal Server - namely ease of customizing the interface. These advantages have largely been added to the portal set (along with a few other pros and cons).
SharePoint Portal Server 2003 > Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
The new Office SharePoint Servers (both Standard and Enterprise) will be licensed through a combination of a server license and client access licenses. In many cases this means that licensing may be a little bit more efficient for organizations looking to implement SharePoint on a portal level. As far as I can tell, the server will be the same price - it will be the CAL that determines the level of functionality derived from the server product.
For example, if I was a user in an organization looking to use Excel Services, I would require: a) a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 license (installed on Windows Server 2003 alongside Microsoft SQL 2000 or 2005), b) a Standard SharePoint CAL and c) an Enterprise SharePoint CAL. Not everyone in the organization needs the Enterprise CAL - only people accessing the enterprise-level features.
Content Management Server 2002 Enterprise Edition > Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet
Microsoft’s release to market for web content management is interesting, and probably the product that I have the biggest issue with right now. While this may be because I don’t understand the licensing model, but I highly doubt that.
One of the advantages to the original CMS product was the two flavours: standard and enterprise. The difference in features was significant: if you wanted to host multiple sites or if you needed more than five authors or moderators, you needed the enterprise edition. That meant that, for smaller organizations who needed something basic, we had an offering.
Today, we don’t have something to offer our small and mid-market clients who are looking for something to manage a website. Granted, MOSS for Internet will provide a bunch of other functionality: more power over workflow, search, extranet capabilities, however (and unfortunately), many mid-market customers do not need this type of functionality for external parties. Yes, they may need them internally. In fact, I can guarantee that any business will benefit from the implementation of SharePoint in their environment, but the license states:
“Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet Sites is for running extranet and Internet sites and should not be accessed by employees creating, sharing, or collaborating on content which is for internal use only (for example as a corporate intranet).”
Source: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Frequently Asked Questions
According to the people I spoke to at Microsoft, this means that an organization that wants to run SharePoint internally and externally, they need two licenses, which in many cases may be outside what a smaller organization is willing to spend.
And this doesn’t solve my problem of the missing link - what happened to Standard Edition?
SharePoint Portal Server 2003 > SharePoint for Search
Now, don’t let the product name fool you: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server for Search is just for that - searching an organization’s enterprise content. This comes in the two flavours: standard and enterprise. I won’t go into the specifics of the two different products but the basic premise is that SharePoint for Search is just for searching within your organization. There is not traditional “SharePoint” functionality. It’s really just there to give your organization and option for search for documents, records or your website.
It would be more realistic to call this product Microsoft Enterprise Search Server, but the SharePoint label was attached to let people to know that there is an upgrade path to the big league SharePoint server.
The reason I bring this up was because prior to this release, there really was no other option than SPS for search. For many of our clients’ web content management needs, it became a combination of CMS 2002 and SPS 2003 to create a successful solution. Now, Microsoft has embraced the search revoluton and created a product which will actually make a different in how people work.
Obviously, licensing is always one of the most difficult aspects of selecting an enterprise content management solution. While Microsoft has made some things a little easier (SharePoint Server 2007 will probably be cheaper for many organizations), some things have become/will become more difficult to recommend to customers (SharePoint for Internet is a lot more expensive than it used to be, regardless of the additions to the feature set).
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I was under the impression during a recent installation that you must have sql2005 as the back end if you want excel services and other workflow functionallity. From your post you are suggesting that you don’t. Could you please clarify why you should use sql2005 and not stick with sql2000 ?
Cheers
You can use SQL 2000 with Service Pack 3A, or SQL 2005.
In order to use any of the business intelligence functionality, or any of the Enterprise features, you’ll need SQL 2005.
My small company (2 document creators) wants to create rights-management protected word docs. internally on our in-house server, and post them to SharePoint sites for our 50 clients to access and edit via their web browsers. No other functionality is required. Will SBS Server 2003 work for this? If not, will Server 2003 standard R2 with SQL Server 2000? What types of CALs will I require? Thanks for your help!
You can use SBS 2003 for what you want to do, but there are some licensing limitations. You will need to have Windows CALs for all users who will be accessing the system. Alternatively, you can use MOSS 2007 for Internet, which will account for users who will be accessing the site from outside your network.
You may want to look at Rights Management Server as well, since to have true rights management outside your firewall, you’ll need to have an infrastructure to support that.
I understand the SBS licensing fine, but how about the SQL licensing … do I need one SQL CAL only for the link between SQL and SBS or do I also need a SQL CAL for each user connecting to SBS. would I also need a Windows CAL … ( for the last one I assume not as it is web access) ??
Regards,
There are a variety of ways that you can licence SQL, for whatever purpose you’re looking for. You can licence SQL either on a processor basis, or on server + client access licence basis.
For the processor licence, it wouldn’t matter how many users were accessing the SQL server. The only requirement would be one licence per processor in the machine. This applies to virtual machines as well.
For the server + CAL licences, you would need a CAL per user accessing the SQL server regardless of how they are accessing the SQL instance.
For example, if you were working with Workgroup Edition, you could purchase the processor licence for ~$3,900, or you could purchase the server licence for ~$740, which includes 5 client access licences. For every user above and beyond the original five, you would need an additional license.
[...] my most popular blog post of all time happened to be the one on licensing for SharePoint 2007, I thought it may be valid to put together some information for people trying to understand how to [...]