Updated: July 10, 2020 (June 23, 2003)
Analyst ReportPricing and Licensing
One important factor in upgrade decisions for Exchange and Outlook will be licensing costs. Even though pricing is unchanged from that of Exchange 2000 and Outlook XP, because Microsoft no longer offers Version Upgrades (VUPs) to volume license customers, customers without upgrade rights must purchase new licenses for Exchange 2003 and Outlook 2003 at full product price (less any volume discounts) if they want to upgrade. In addition to upgrading their Exchange server licenses, they must upgrade all CALs used to connect to the new servers. Because new CALs will cost about US$67 each (without volume discounts), it could be prohibitively expensive just to perform a minor upgrade. (Organizations with Enterprise Agreements or that purchased Software Assurance on their Exchange servers and CALs will get these upgrades at no additional charge.)
Further complicating matters, organizations that want to upgrade to Windows Server 2003 on their Exchange servers must also upgrade to Exchange 2003 because earlier versions of Exchange will not run on Windows Server 2003. But since Exchange 2003 requires upgraded CALs, this additional cost could discourage organizations from upgrading the OS on their Exchange servers to Windows Server 2003.
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