Price Increases for Enterprise CAL Suite

Addition of new Client Access Licenses (CALs), Management Licenses (MLs), and services to the Enterprise CAL Suite over the last year has prompted a price increase for the product. Price changes follow the additions of Forefront and System Center management products to the Enterprise CAL Suite, which expands from 15 CALs, MLs, and services to 19. The suite offers a greater discount than before, but taking full advantage of the new features could require licensing new servers for some customers—exactly what Microsoft wants, because the suite is a powerful tool for keeping competitors at bay.

CAL Suites

Microsoft sells two sets of CAL suites that customers assign to users or devices. The suites are considered to be indivisible products—that is they provide license rights “equivalent to” a set of CALs and MLs—and a suite license must be assigned to one user or device. These licenses give the user or device rights to access a server product (CALs), to have their device managed by a server (MLs), or to access a service, such as virus signatures, for their workstation or their Exchange or SharePoint server.