SharePoint Licensing

Question

Hi - we are thinking of using SharePoint to host a web app for which we will allow internal staff and licensed external customers to access a website built on SharePoint. I am thinking that for each authenticated user (logged in) we would need an OS CAL & a SharePoint CAL & we would need a processor license for SQL Server - Is this correct & what about non-authemticatedc website "browsers"?

Any advice much appreciated.

Answer 1

The way to look at Sharepoint (MOSS 2007) licensing is like this

• Each internal user (employee) = CAL
• Each external user (non-employee) = CAL until you get to approx 250 users when it is better to get something called a MOSSFIS licence which is a licence that covers all external users.

Now, if all the information in your Sharepoint implementation is available to all your external users, then you can just use a MOSSFIS licence. I fyou want your internal users (employees) to create private webs etc, then you need to get a CAL for them no matter what.

You do also need a Sql Server Processor licence if it is hosted on another server. For smaller implementations you can get away with using the Windows Internal Database (Sql Server Express basically) that doesnt require a licence.