Software Assurance Payments on ECALs Rise

The license price for the Exchange Server 2010 Enterprise Client Access License (ECAL) rose 20% compared to Exchange 2007 to US$42. (This is the Open Business program price, which represents the highest price a business customer in North America would pay through a volume purchasing program.) Since the annual Software Assurance (SA) fee is based on the underlying license price, SA for the ECAL has gone up as well. Existing SA customers face higher SA payments after their current volume licensing agreement expires, with the percentage increase in SA payments depending on the volume licensing program used to purchase SA.

Open Value, Select, and Enterprise Agreements. When purchased through these programs, SA on the Exchange ECAL is bundled with Forefront-branded on-premises and hosted antivirus/antispam subscriptions. Because of these extra services, Microsoft charges annual SA fees that are a much higher percentage of the underlying license price than normal. However, with the introduction of Exchange Server 2010, Microsoft did lower this percentage somewhat, from about 72% of the ECAL price to about 64%. So while the cost of new ECALs has gone up 20%, annual SA fees will rise by a more modest 6%. A large customer benefiting from higher-tier discount levels in Select will now pay about US$21 a year for SA on an Exchange ECAL (and pay about US$33 for the license itself).