Appendix: Exchange Licensing and Packaging Changes

Exchange Server has undergone significant licensing and packaging changes over the past decade. The timeline below is especially useful for determining license entitlements under Software Assurance (SA), understanding licensing and packaging differences between the current version and previous versions, and understanding past special offers and accommodations that may have resulted in “free” licenses that do not show up in an official Microsoft Volume License Service Center (VLSC) license statement. Note that all prices quoted in the timeline are the highest price (U.S. dollars) a business customer in North America paid through a volume purchasing program.

Nov. 2009: Exchange Server 2010 Available

Only scalability differentiates Standard and Enterprise server editions. Exclusive to Exchange Server 2007 Enterprise Edition was mailbox high availability, which uses automatic failover to help customers meet stringent service-level requirements, and mailbox database scalability to accommodate larger numbers of users. Exchange Server 2010’s new mailbox high-availability capability, called a Database Availability Group, is included in both editions, leaving only mailbox database scalability to differentiate Standard and Enterprise Editions.