RDS CAL Subscription Available Under EA

Starting Dec. 2014, Enterprise Agreement (EA) customers who use Remote Desktop Services (RDS) have both a perpetual and subscription-based licensing option for User Client Access Licenses (CALs). An RDS User CAL allows one user to access, via any device, all instances of the Windows Server RDS role within an organization. With the subscription-based licensing option, use rights are contingent on maintaining the subscription, and unlike other volume licensing programs that offer subscriptions, such as an EA Subscription contract, there is no specially priced buyout provision available at the end of the subscription term to transform the subscription into a perpetual license.

The new RDS User CAL subscription offered in the EA costs the same as the equivalent subscription under an EA Subscription contract—approximately one and a half times the price of carrying Software Assurance (SA) on a comparable perpetual RDS CAL—with the main benefit being a smaller initial cash outlay. The most likely purchasers of the RDS User CAL subscription will be customers subscribing to Microsoft’s new Enterprise Cloud Suite (ECS), which shares the same Per-User subscription licensing model, and who want all their users on subscription versus a mix of subscription and perpetual licenses. ECS combines Per-User subscription licenses for the Windows Enterprise Upgrade, Office 365 E3 suite, and the Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS).