Exchange Online and Enterprise Agreements

Customers with Enterprise Agreements (EA) who are moving some employees to Exchange Online could end up purchasing both User Subscription Licenses (USLs) and Client Access Licenses (CALs) for some of their users, even though users with USLs do not also need CALs.

One of the three primary offerings within an EA is a CAL suite. The Core CAL Suite includes an Exchange Server Standard CAL, and the Enterprise CAL Suite includes both the Exchange Standard CAL and Enterprise CAL. Like the other primary components in an EA, CAL suites must always be purchased with Software Assurance (SA) and must be purchased for all qualified desktops within an organization.

The problem: currently, there is no mechanism in place to allow customers to mix USLs and CALs in an EA. For example, a customer with 1,000 employees cannot purchase 500 Core CAL Suites and 500 Business Productivity Suite (BPOS) subscriptions through an EA. This is not a major problem for customers with existing or renewal EAs, who have been using the on-premises servers companywide, for which they required CALs for everyone. They will get full credit for their SA payments on existing CALs when they purchase USLs, although they do not receive any credit for the cost of the underlying CAL licenses.