Other Enterprise Agreement Choices

A traditional Enterprise Agreement (EA), commonly called a “desktop EA,” was designed to license a wide selection of products for on-premises use—especially desktop software and Client Access Licenses (CALs) for server software. This remains the main use of the EA program. However, to meet competitive threats and foster new forms of software delivery, Microsoft has, over the past few years, augmented the EA program to support alternative licensing models for some select products as well as to incorporate new online services. These three extensions to the EA program leverage all or part of the traditional desktop EA contract structure, with two implemented as separate EA Enrollments and one (hosted online services) leveraging the same Enrollment as is used for a desktop EA. (See the illustration “Enterprise Agreement Contract Structure“.)

Enrollment for Application Platform

As a separate enrollment under an EA, Enrollment for Application Platform (EAP) is another way to license server applications and developer tools, specifically SQL Server, SharePoint Server, BizTalk Server, and Visual Studio.