1. Overview

This Licensing Guide provides a way to
understanding how Microsoft® SQL Server® 2012 database software is licensed
through Microsoft Volume Licensing programs.

2. SQL Server 2012 Editions

SQL Server 2012 is
offered in three main editions to accommodate the unique feature, performance
and price requirements of organizations and individuals:

·
Enterprise Edition
is ideal for mission critical applications and large scale data warehousing.

·
Business Intelligence Edition, a new offering, provides premium corporate and
self-service business intelligence (BI).

·
Standard Edition
delivers basic database, reporting and analytics capabilities.

The new editions are
offered in a straightforward, tiered model that creates greater consistency
across the product editions, features and licensing. The Enterprise Edition
includes all the capabilities available in SQL Server 2012. The Business
Intelligence Edition includes all Standard Edition capabilities, plus all BI
capabilities included in the Enterprise Edition.

3. How SQL Server 2012 Licenses Are Sold

SQL Server 2012
software licenses are sold through channels designed to meet the unique needs
of customers. These sales channels include online retailers offering full
packaged product (FPP) licenses of SQL Server software, Original Equipment
Manufacturers (OEMs) offering pre-installed licenses with their hardware
systems, as well as Large Account Resellers (LARs) and Enterprise Software
Advisors (ESAs) offering SQL Server software through Microsoft Volume Licensing
programs for end customer organizations.

For customers with as
few as five users, Microsoft offers licensing programs to help reduce
administrative overhead and software management costs, while enabling product
licensing on an ongoing basis at considerable discounts. The various licensing
options enable customers to choose the program that works best for their
management and operational needs.

·
Comprehensive
programs that offer Software Assurance as a fixed benefit include the Open
Value, Open Value Subscription, Enterprise Agreement (EA), Enterprise
Subscription Agreement (EAS) and the Enrollment for Application Platform (EAP).

·
Transactional
programs include Open, Select and Select Plus.

Enrollment for Application Platform

The EAP is a flexible
cost-effective licensing program designed for EA customers who are
standardizing on the Microsoft Application Platform. With the EAP, customers
get the latest SQL Server and other Application Platform products across their
organizations on new and existing deployments with lower up-front costs, and
savings of up to 40 percent on new IT solutions.

Microsoft also offers
programs that can meet the specific needs of organizations that partner with
Microsoft to provide additional software and services, such as the Microsoft
Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Royalty Licensing Program and the Microsoft
Services Provider License Agreement (SPLA).

4. SQL Server 2012 licensing options

SQL Server 2012 will
continue to offer two licensing options – one based on computing power, and one
based on users or devices. In the
computing power-based license model, however, the way we measure power will
shift from processors to cores.
Core-based licensing provides a more precise measure of computing power
and a more consistent licensing metric regardless of where the solution is
deployed across on-premises, virtual and cloud scenarios.

·
Enterprise Edition (EE) will be licensed based on compute capacity measured in cores

·
Business Intelligence (BI) Edition will be available in the Server + CAL model, based on users or devices

·
Standard Edition (SE) offers both licensing models to address basic database
workloads

SQL Server 2012 Editions		Description	Licensing Options		Pricing**
SQL Server 2012 Editions		Description	Server + CAL	Core Based	Open NL (US$)
Main Editions	Enterprise	High end datacenter, data warehousing and BI capabilities		ü	$6,874 per Core
	Business Intelligence	Enterprise BI and High Scale Analytics	ü		$8,592 per Server*
	Standard	Basic database and BI capabilities	ü	ü	$1,793 per Core, or $898 per Server*
	Client Access License (CAL)	Access to SQL Server databases licensed per server			$209 per CAL

* Requires CALs, which are sold
separately

**Pricing is for demonstrative
uses only

4.1 Core-Based Licensing

·
The
Enterprise Edition and Standard Edition of SQL Server 2012 will both be
available under core-based licensing. Core-based licenses will be sold in
two-core packs.

·
Core based
licensing is appropriate when customers are unable to count users/devices, have
Internet/Extranet facing workloads or systems that integrate with external
facing workloads.

·
To license a
physical server, you must license all the cores in the server with a minimum of
4 core licenses required for each physical processor in the server.

·
Core
licenses will be priced at ¼ the cost of a SQL Server 2008 R2 (EE/SE) processor
license.

·
AMD systems
have different requirements; see SQL Server 2012 Quick Reference Guide.

4.2 Core Based Licensing

4.2.1
Server and
Client Access License (CAL) Licensing

·
The Business
Intelligence and Standard Editions will be available under the Server and
Client Access License (CAL) model.

·
This
licensing model can be used when the number of users can be readily counted
(e.g., internal database applications).

·
To access a
licensed SQL Server, each user must have a SQL Server CAL that is the same
version or newer (for example, to access a SQL Server 2008 SE server, a user
would need a SQL Server 2008 or 2012 CAL).

·
Each SQL
Server CAL can provide access to multiple licensed SQL Servers, including the
new Business Intelligence Edition as well as Standard Edition Servers and
legacy Enterprise Edition Servers.

·
The SQL
Server 2012 CAL price will increase by about 27%.

5.
Microsoft
License Advisor

Microsoft License Advisor provides list
of Microsoft products, programs and their pricing.

·
Go
to the Microsoft Licensing site- http://mla.microsoft.com/

·
Select
your country and language

·
Licence
Advisor provides three types of Quote options

o
Quick
Quotes :

o
Full
Quotes

o
Guided
Quotes

·
Select
the Guided

5.1 Quick Quotes

· Quick Quote

·
Click
on “Get Quote”. It give the report for the product and their pricing:

·
We
can download the report into word or excel also.

5.2 Full Quotes

·
Select
the Full Quotes options. It provides two options for quoting:

§
Start
Full Quotes by Products

§
Start
Full Quotes by Licensing Program

·
Click
on “Start Full Quotes by Products”. First Step is Product Selection. Select the product by clicking on the product that
you want e.g SQL Server Enterprise Edition 2012