Client-Side Licensing

Employee access to an organization’s SharePoint servers is licensed through the purchase of SharePoint Server CALs. (For information about the one exception, see the sidebar “Project Server 2010 and SharePoint“. For a full explanation of the rules that dictate when SharePoint Server CALs are necessary, which types and versions are needed, how many are required, and how to buy them, see the sidebar “Rules for SharePoint Server CALs“.)

Like CALs for most other Microsoft server products, SharePoint CALs must be assigned to each user or each accessing device, usually a PC. Each SharePoint client also needs a Windows Server 2008 (or later) CAL, as well as a SQL Server 2005 (or later) CAL if SQL Server is licensed in server-CAL mode.

As with SharePoint Server 2007, accessing the full SharePoint Server 2010 feature set requires customers to purchase two different CALs, a SharePoint Server 2010 Standard CAL (SCAL) and an Enterprise CAL (ECAL). The price for the SharePoint 2010 SCAL remains at US$95, and the ECAL is US$83, up 10% from SharePoint Server 2007.