Today Microsoft has released the new licensing model for the System Center 2012 suite. (thanks to @Syliance) A couple of highlights are the following. Regarding Server Management Licencing there are only two different licences available:
- Datacenter (Maximizes cloud capacity with unlimited Operating System Environments (OSEs) for high density private clouds)
- Standard (For lightly or non-virtualized private cloud workloads)
Buying one of those editions gives you the right to use the complete System Center 2012 suite. The members of the System Center 2012 Suite are:
- Configuration Manager
- Service Manager
- Virtual Machine Manager
- Operations Manager
- Data Protection Manager
- Orchestrator
- App Controller
- Endpoint Protection
Regarding Client Management Licencing there are three different editions available.
- System Center 2012 Configuration Manager (per user/device)
- System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection (per user/device)
- System Center Client Management Suite (per user/OSE, composed of Data Protection Manager, Operations Manager, Service Manager, and Orchestrator)
There is no information available about the pricing of the 5 different licencing options, we will have to wait until the System Center 2012 suite is general available. Nevertheless the new much more simple licencing model makes me happy :), and I think that System Center 2012 will be widely adopted!
Read more information about this new licencing model and all of the benefits at the System Center 2012 Licensing website and here