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| Communications Server 2007 Packaging, Licensing, Pricing |
| Aug. 13, 2007 |
Office Communications Server 2007 requires users to have two different Client Access Licenses (CALs) to access all product features—a notable difference from the product's predecessor, Live Communications Server (LCS) 2005. Even though first time customers will find Communications Server 2007 substantially more expensive than its predecessor, customers with Software Assurance (SA) on LCS 2005 will receive licenses to both CALs while their SA payments stay constant for the remaining term of their volume purchase agreement—a more generous arrangement than Microsoft has offered in the past under similar circumstances. Features and Costs Since its introduction in 2003, Communications Server has been the cornerstone of Microsoft's real-time communications efforts. Communications Server and its associated Communicator client maintain users' presence information and let users send instant messages (IMs) and use their computers for voice and video calls. The 2007 version can route both outgoing and incoming Private Branch Exchange (PBX) and Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) calls to Communicator and offers many other call-control features such as call forwarding. In addition, Communications Server 2007 includes on-premise Web conferencing, capabilities inherited from Microsoft's existing subscription-based Live Meeting service. Communications Server 2007 was released to manufacturing in late July and will be available through all traditional channels in September. As with LCS 2005, use of Communications Server 2007 requires both clients and servers to be licensed. However, most customers will find that most of their Communications Server licensing costs—typically at least 80%—are client-related. (For a chart detailing all the licenses available for Communications Server 2007, see "Communications Server 2007 Licenses". For an illustration showing which licenses are necessary in a demonstration scenario, see "Communications Server 2007 Licensing".) Besides software licensing fees, the largest other component of overall system cost is likely to be system integration, which is outside the scope of this article. Communications Server 2007 is quite complex and most organizations will need the assistance of an experienced Microsoft partner—or several partners—to help design and deploy the system. Licensing Clients Client-side licenses must be purchased for each user of the system, and include the following:
If external users such as business partners, suppliers, and customers must be accommodated and purchase of CALs is impractical, separate server licenses called External Connectors are required. CALs are required to access Communication Server 2007's features, regardless of the device used to access them, whether it is a PC running Communicator 2007, a browser accessing Communicator Web Access, a mobile device running Communicator Mobile, or a phone handset with Communicator 2007 capabilities built in. Although the majority of organizations will find it most economical to purchase CALs on a per-user basis, when multiple users (such as bank tellers or medical staff) share the same PC, organizations can opt to purchase CALs on a per-device basis. Two Types of CALs As is the case with other recent Microsoft products, such as Exchange Server 2007 and SharePoint Server 2007, customers must purchase both a Standard CAL (SCAL) and an Enterprise CAL (ECAL) for any user or device that needs to access the full set of Communications Server 2007 features. The SCAL provides the right to use Communication Server 2007's base functionality and the ECAL covers the remaining features. Each CAL can be acquired separately or as part of Microsoft's Enterprise CAL Suite, a bundle of 11 different CALs. Even though the new Communications Server 2007 CALs carry the "Standard" and "Enterprise" monikers, they bear no relationship to the Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition of the server software (covered below). Both CALs provide the right to access either edition of the server, and both editions of the server provide the same end-user features. Furthermore, even though the Enterprise Edition server remains suitable for only larger customers, even the smallest customers might want the features licensed through the ECAL. Standard CAL The SCAL provides the right to use Communications Server 2007's presence and IM functions, as well as a restricted set of voice and video calling capabilities. Specifically, voice calls must be made and received via Communicator and can't traverse the corporate PBX. In effect, this limits calls to users within the same organization. Furthermore, the SCAL permits users to place a call to only one other end point at a time; they can't add additional parties to the call. The SCAL resembles the LCS 2005 Base CAL that was offered when the product first shipped. At that time a second license, called a Telephony Services CAL, was required for all other LCS capabilities including PBX integration. However, few customers found the Telephony Services CAL worth the extra cost, and Microsoft eliminated it in July 2006, rolling all usage rights into the LCS Base CAL, which the company renamed the LCS 2005 CAL. Each Communications Server 2007 SCAL is US$31, the same price as the LCS 2005 CAL. (Note that all prices quoted in this article are the prices for purchases made through Open Business, Microsoft's least discounted volume purchasing program; organizations can get discounts of 20% to 30% off these prices, depending on volume. Also, the annual SA fee for all Communications Server 2007 licenses, both client and server, is 25% of the license price.) In a break with the policy established when Exchange Server 2007 introduced two tiers of CALs, the set of features included in the Communications Server 2007 SCAL licenses a subset of the features available with the LCS 2005 CAL, even though their prices are the same. In other words, new purchasers of Communications Server 2007 who buy only the SCAL will get fewer features than they would have with LCS 2005, despite paying the same price. Current LCS customers with SA get a better deal, as discussed in the "Upgrades Under Software Assurance" section. Enterprise CAL The ECAL, which costs US$139, adds the right to use all Communications Server 2007 features not covered by the SCAL, including voice and video calling, PBX integration, and on-premise Web conferencing. Voice and video calling. The ECAL gives Communicator users the right to initiate a multi-party call; a dozen or more participants are feasible. It also provides a broad collection of call control capabilities, e.g., hold and transfer, as well as the ability to place and receive calls that pass through the organization's PBX and public phone networks to a conventional telephone handset. ECAL customers can also make calls with a variety of Communicator-enabled handsets from vendors such as Asus, LG-Nortel, Polycom, and Vitelix. Web conferencing. Web conferencing, new to Communications Server 2007, requires ECALs. Communications Server 2007's built-in Web conferencing capability shares a similar code base and offers a subset of the features of Microsoft's hosted Live Meeting service, which enables presenters to share a PowerPoint presentation or other application with up to several hundred people, with the option to coordinate a multiparty audio or video call among the participants. The Communications Server 2007 ECAL covers only Communications Server 2007's built-in Web conferencing capability; Microsoft's Live Meeting service is still licensed separately. Federation with Public IM Networks As with LCS 2005, Communications Server 2007 customers can subscribe to the Microsoft Public IM Connectivity (PIC) subscription service to allow their employees to use Communicator 2007 to exchange presence status and IMs with other users on the public IM services hosted by AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo. Communications Server 2007 users with PIC maintain the single corporate identity, security, and message-archiving capabilities provided by Communications Server 2007, thereby avoiding the security, regulatory compliance, and other concerns that come with granting users permission to install and use public IM client software. A PIC subscription provides access to all three public instant messaging (IM) service providers and costs US$1.13 per user, per month. However, customers purchasing PIC must commit to a subscription lasting through the end of their current volume purchase agreement. As of mid-2007, Microsoft says that approximately 6% of LCS 2005 seats also have subscriptions to PIC. Note that PIC supports only a subset of Communications Server 2007's features: PIC users can't communicate over public IM services via voice and video calling or Web conferencing. External Connectors With Communications Server 2007, Microsoft continues to offer External Connector licenses to cover scenarios in which CALs are impractical. An External Connector permits an unlimited number of clients to access a particular server running Communications Server 2007. As is the policy for External Connector licenses across all server products, access via the External Connector license is limited to non-employees of a company, such as business partners, suppliers, customers, retirees, or alumni. For example, External Connectors give an organization the right to set up accounts on their Communications Server 2007 system so that account representatives and other personnel at their suppliers can use Communicator to communicate with the organization's employees. Note that External Connector licenses are not required for communications between two (or more) organizations that have connected their respective Communications Server 2007 systems through federation because each organization has presumably purchased CALs for its users. As with CALs, the Communications Server 2007 External Connector comes in both Standard and Enterprise editions, which provide rights to the same feature sets as the corresponding CALs. For rights to the full set of Communications Server capabilities, organizations must purchase both the Enterprise Edition and Standard Edition of the External Connector. External Connectors apply per-server, i.e., any server running Communications Server 2007 that might be accessed by external users must have its own External Connector license. Depending on the Communications Server 2007 datacenter architecture, this could involve all of the Communications Server 2007 servers in an organization. This might explain why prices for the Communications Server 2007 Standard External Connector and Enterprise External Connector are inexpensive by Microsoft standards: each is US$2,000. Communicator 2007 License Communications Server 2007 server licenses do not include rights to Communicator 2007; Communicator 2007 licenses must be acquired separately from the CALs for Communications Server 2007. This is in contrast to LCS 2005 server licenses, which conferred the right to use Communicator 2005 on clients for no addition fee. The change for Communications Server 2007 follows the precedent set by Exchange Server 2007, whose CALs do not confer the right to use the Outlook client, in contrast to earlier Exchange versions. Even though Communicator 2007 won't become generally available until Sept. 2007, a license to install Communicator 2007 is included with the Office Professional Plus 2007 and Office Enterprise 2007 suites, which shipped in late 2006. If Communicator 2007 must be purchased on its own, the license cost is US$31. Microsoft continues to offer other client-side code related to Communications Server 2007 at no extra charge. The Communications Server 2007 server license provides the rights to install the following:
Licensing Servers As with LCS 2005, Communications Server 2007 systems at larger organizations will be composed of multiple servers running in various roles. In general, each machine running Communications Server 2007 code will require a Communications Server 2007 server license. There are exceptions, however. First, because Microsoft licenses Communications Server 2007 (and LCS 2005) by the "running instance," one physical server could require more than one server license if it executes multiple Virtual Machines running Communications Server 2007 code. This is the same policy that Microsoft applies to Exchange Server and SharePoint Server, which are two other server applications licensed with the Server/CAL model. Second, in large and complex deployments, a small percentage (at most 10 to 15%) of the physical servers will—for reliability, scalability, or maintainability reasons—likely be dedicated to running small portions of the Communications Server 2007 code for which Microsoft does not require an server license. These include the following:
Even though these exceptions are more generous than with most other Microsoft server products, the net effect on overall licensing "savings" is apt to be modest. Two Server Editions With Communications Server 2007, Microsoft continues its practice of offering a Standard Edition (SE) and an Enterprise Edition (EE), the latter containing availability and scalability enhancements targeted at organizations that have stringent service-level requirements or that have more than a few thousand users. A Communications Server 2007 SE license is US$699, 10% less than LCS 2005, and an EE license is US$3,999, up 25%. EE licenses are appropriate only when an Communications Server 2007 system is composed of multiple machines operating in specialized Communications Server 2007-related roles, and then only for Front-End servers (called Home Servers in LCS 2005) pooled together in a load-balanced cluster connected to a shared back-end SQL Server database. Front-End servers help coordinate all forms of communication (e.g., IM, audio and video conference calls, Web conferencing), handling tasks such as authenticating participants, maintaining user data such as presence status, enforcing policy (e.g., whether the meeting organizer is authorized to invite external users), and initiating and directing communications traffic. Microsoft expects that organizations with as many as 50,000 users could be adequately served by five such Front-End servers hosted on dual-processor machines. The total number of Communications Server 2007 server machines and server licenses an organization will need depends on many factors, including the type and frequency of use. A centralized organization with 10,000 users that does not require fault tolerance and is only interested in presence and IM, might need only one physical server machine and one server license. At the other extreme, a geographically dispersed organization with 20,000 users that exploits all Communications Server 2007 capabilities could require 30 or more servers, the majority requiring a Communications Server 2007 server license. Other Licensing Costs As with LCS 2005, implementing a Communications Server 2007 infrastructure likely requires customers to purchase other additional software from Microsoft. SQL Server If an organization uses Communications Server 2007's Archiving Service or sets up a pool of Front-End servers running Communications Server 2007 EE, SQL Server Standard Edition (SE) or Enterprise Edition (EE) licenses will be required. Archiving Service. Communications Server 2007 requires SQL Server 2000 or 2005 Standard Edition or Enterprise Edition as a records storage area for the Archiving Service. (Microsoft recommends running it on its own machine.) Front-End servers running Communications Server 2007 EE. While a Communications Server 2007 SE Front-End server uses the "free" SQL Server 2005 Express for data storage, a Communications Server 2007 EE server pool requires a more substantial back-end database. Because the SQL Server database is a crucial component of the system (and a single point of failure), a cluster of SQL Servers is most desirable. Both SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005 are supported. However, only SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition supports clustering, whereas both SQL Server 2005 SE and EE support clustering. Windows Server 2003 Each server in a Communications Server deployment will need Windows Server 2003. (Windows Server 2003 R2 is recommended, but Windows Server 2003 SP1 is supported.) Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition is sufficient for all roles except clustered SQL Server database servers, which need Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition. Upgrades Under Software Assurance Customers who have SA active as of August 31, 2007 on LCS 2005 server licenses and CALs are entitled to upgrades. SA on server licenses. Customers with SA on LCS 2005 Standard Edition or Enterprise Edition are entitled to the corresponding editions of the Communications Server 2007. Unlike first-time purchasers of Communications Server 2007, these SA customers are also entitled to install Communicator 2007 on as many PCs as they require. Also, if SA on their server licenses is active when the subsequent version of Communicator ships, they are entitled to that version. SA on CALs. Customers with SA on LCS 2005 CALs receive licenses for both the Communications Server 2007 SCAL and the ECAL. Microsoft made this concession because some features that were part of the LCS 2005 CAL now require the Communications Server 2007 ECAL. As an additional concession, SA payments on CALs will remain constant until the end of the organization's current volume purchase agreement. However, customers who renew their upgrade rights after their agreement expires will see their annual SA payments on the CALs rise approximately 400% because they must then pay the regular price for SA on both the SCAL and the far more expensive ECAL. SA on External Connectors. Upgrade rights for LCS 2005 External Connectors are exactly parallel with LCS 2005 CALs—customers receive licenses for both the Communications Server 2007 Standard and Enterprise External Connectors and don't face an increase in SA fees until the end of their current volume agreements. Compliance Neither the Communications Server 2007 server software nor Communicator 2007 client software has any form of activation. Furthermore, CALs (as well as External Connectors) are simply abstract rights recorded in contracts, and are not enforced by the software. Consequently, Microsoft relies on customers to police themselves. Assuring server license compliance should be possible using software inventory systems to keep track of the number of servers running Communications Server 2007 code. However, as mentioned previously, not all servers running Communications Server 2007 code necessarily require a Communications Server 2007 server license and Front-End servers running in pooled configurations require an Enterprise Edition server license. CAL compliance is simple in theory if the organization buys CALs to enable the same feature set for all users—in other words, if the organization buys only an SCAL for each Communications Server 2007 user, or both an SCAL and an ECAL for every Communications Server 2007 user. For example, it is possible to query Active Directory to count the number of users with permission to use the Communications Server 2007 system so that this count can be compared with the total number of CALs purchased. Furthermore, for organizations that don't purchase any ECALs, it is possible to configure Communications Server 2007 and Communicator 2007—through installation options, group policy, and other means—so that no user can inadvertently use features requiring an ECAL. There are, however, scenarios in which customers could have a mix of users, some licensed with the SCAL only and others with the SCAL and the ECAL. For example, an organizations could need IM and presence for all their users (SCAL features), but need Web conferencing (an ECAL feature) for only a small subset of users. Physically restricting ECAL features to only users with an ECAL is possible, but can be time-consuming to set up and maintain. Similarly, counting the number of ECALs the organization needs (so that it can be compared with purchases) can be made simpler with some planning prior to deployment, but would likely involve complex scripts. Resources The enhancements in Communications Server 2007 are described in "Unified Communications Roadmap" on page 12 of the Nov. 2006 Update. Microsoft's main site for Communications Server 2007, which the company sometimes refers to with the acronym OCS, is office.microsoft.com/en-us/communicationsserver/default.aspx. The Enterprise CAL Suite, which includes both the Communications Server 2007 SCAL and ECAL, is described in "Enterprise CAL Suite Reduces Complexity, at a Price" on page 27of the Mar. 2007 Update. How Microsoft licenses software in virtual machines is outlined in "Virtualization Licensing Adapts to New Challenges" on page 46 of the June 2007 Update. SQL Server 2005 licensing and pricing information can be found in "New SQL Server Pricing, Products Announced" on page 11 of the Mar. 2005 Update and at www.microsoft.com/sql/howtobuy/default.mspx. |
