Working with enterprise customers, we know how it can be confused to implement all different licensing models and different SKU’s of SQL Server across the years of usage with constant licensing changes. most of us familiar with the following items: SQL Standard, SQL Enterprise, Per Processor, Per Core, Server CAL model etc. do you familiar with the recent changes with the lunch of SP1?
as stated in the annual report of Microsoft Corporation: “Server products and cloud services revenue grew $1.6 billion or 9%, primarily driven by higher premium mix of Microsoft SQL Server” Microsoft 2016 Annual Report
side by side to the increased growth of SQL Enterprise, Microsoft allow users to download and use for free the following versions:
- SQL Server Developer Edition
- SQL Server Express Edition
subject to the terms in the Link
given all the above, I believe that the biggest news are refers to the SQL Server Standard 2016.
with the lunch of SP1, SQL Server Standard enriched with additional features that can save money to customers and optimize the usage of SQL Server Standard.
The following table compares the list of features which were only available in Enterprise edition which are now enabled in Standard, Web, Express, and LocalDB editions with SQL Server 2016 SP1. (please see full source)
leveraging this information can optimize your licensing position and usage with grater features who used to be only in SQL Server Enterprise