CAL Suite Bridges for Office 365

A new set of CAL Suite Bridge licenses will help organizations with Enterprise Agreements (EAs) transition to Office 365. Customers who currently license Microsoft’s Core or Enterprise Client Access License (CAL) Suites organization-wide under an EA will be able to substitute a less expensive corresponding CAL Suite Bridge as they shift users to Office 365—branded hosted services. Shown here are the licenses included in the Core and Enterprise CAL Suites, the new Core and Enterprise CAL Suite Bridges for Office 365, and the Office 365 E3 plan, the most comprehensive plan that will be available at launch later this year.

The Core CAL Suite, pictured at the bottom, contains four licenses that give clients the right to access features provided by on-premises servers running several Microsoft server products. The Exchange Server Standard CAL (far left) licenses access to the e-mail, calendar, and other basic Exchange features; the SharePoint Server Standard CAL licenses access to collaboration, corporate portal, enterprise search, and document management features; the Configuration Manager Client Management License (CML) licenses access to System Center product’s inventory, software distribution, and other management capabilities; and the Windows Server CAL licenses access to all the OS’s built-in capabilities except for Remote Desktop Services and Rights Management Services (RMS).