Appendix: SQL Server Licensing and Packaging Changes

SQL Server has undergone significant licensing and packaging changes over the last decade. The timeline below is especially useful for determining license entitlements under Software Assurance (SA), understanding licensing and packaging differences between the current and previous versions, providing context for previous purchasing decisions (e.g., “Why did we buy licenses for ‘X’?”), and understanding past special offers and accommodations that may have resulted in more expansive use rights than originally recorded, or “free” licenses that do not show up in an official Microsoft Volume License Service Center license statement. Note that all prices quoted in the timeline are the highest price (U.S. dollars) a business customer in North America would have paid through a volume purchasing program (Open No Level or NL).

May 2010: SQL Server 2008 R2

Price increased for SQL Server Standard and Enterprise processor licenses. Prices for a SQL Server 2008 R2 Standard server license (US$898) and SQL Server 2008 R2 CAL (US$164) remain unchanged from SQL Server 2008. However, processor licenses rose 25%, from US$5,737 to US$7,171. Prices for an Enterprise server license (US$8,592) remain unchanged from SQL Server 2008, but processor licenses rose 15% from US$23,910 to US$27,495.