SharePoint 2013 Licensing Overview

For people who have been around SharePoint for a long time, one of the dreaded area to have an conversation with your upper management has been about SharePoint Licensing. I can say that IT managers will have few pleasant surprises in store when they try to get their heads around SharePoint 2013 Licensing model.

For starters, here are few key changes in SharePoint 2013 licensing model that will bring smiles on IT Managers faces:
   - No need to buy SharePoint Internet Licenses: You heard it right. The license to host SharePoint for anonymous users and public facing websites that used to cost 40-50k per server is not needed anymore. So, basically if you have the core Server license you can host a public facing website without needing to pay anything extra.  

  - No need to buy CALs for external users: One of the big confusion with extranet scenarios has been whether you need to buy separate CALs for your external users such as vendors, contractors, suppliers, etc who are not typically your employees but may need to access little bit of information or  forms on your SharePoint extranet. Here's the exact words defining who external users are from one of the deck I found from Microsoft on this topic.
       External users means users that are not either your or your affiliates’ employees, or your or your affiliates’ onsite contractors or onsite agents.   

  - Search Consolidation into Core SharePoint License: One of the big change is with respect to Search capabilities. All the search capabilities have been merged into the core SharePoint Server Licenses (Enterprise and Standard), and you don't need to buy a separate FAST license. This, i believe,  has also helped in streamlining the end user's experience with respect to search and data discovery.

I wanted to cover these three main changes with respect to SharePoint 2013 on-premise licensing in this post, but there are other changes being introduced with respect to features and SKUs in SharePoint 2013 on-premise as well as O365 licensing.

Here's an image of the key components in SharePoint 2013 on-premise as well O365 followed by another diagram illustrating the key changes from 2010.



Figure: SharePoint 2013 Licensing Options

      Please note the absence of other add-on licenses such as Internet Site, Search Server, FAST Server, etc.                                        



Figure: SharePoint 2013 Licensing - Key Changes

My goal for this post is to provide an overview of the key changes that I see in SharePoint licensing model, and help people who are trying to get a high level overview of the same. It's purely based on my personal understanding and does not reflect Microsoft's intended vision or my employer's view.  As always, any decision with respect to Licensing should be validated with your Microsoft representative, and is heavily dependent upon your unique requirements. You are responsible for any decision that you make based on above information.   

Let me know if you have any feedback and/or find a flaw with my understanding.
Cheers!!

SharePoint 2010: Classic Mode Vs Claims Based Authentication

One of the setting that you need to pick when creating a web application in SharePoint 2010 is the Authentication type. The two options that you have are:
   1. Claims Based Authentication
   2. Classic Mode Authentication

Authentication in SP 2010 - Classic Mode Vs Claims Based

Classic Mode: This is no different from the traditional AD based authentication. One contraint with classic mode is that you cannot implement "Forms Based Authetication" later on, if you want to.
Although you can convert "classic mode" to "claims based" but will have to use shell script. There is no UI available in  Central Admin to do it.

Claims Based: Claims based authenticaition gives you option to autheticate users using AD as well as Form based authentication for the same web application. It's based on Windows Identity Foundation, and can enable several advanced authentication scenarios as described in this article:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh394901(v=office.14).aspx

Claims based authentication would be the preferred approach for most users. Classic Mode may be selected if mandated by corporate policy or for backward compatibility. Microsoft is also showing more commitment towards broader adoption of Claims based authentication across various product lines (Azure, CRM, etc), and therefore is a better choice for any new development.


 Update (November 2013) :  I was looking at SharePoint 2013 (Preview Version)  and it seems there is no option for users to select Classic Mode Authentication when creating a new Web Application. Although this can change by the product release, it definitely is an indication of the direction that Microsoft is going, which is to encourage Claims based Authentication. 
 

Windows RT Vs WinRT vs Windows 8 !!

One of the things that I was confused about in the last few hours, and I am confident that many more people are going to be confused about in next few months is the difference between "Windows RT" and WinRT. Here is the simple version:

Windows RT:
     1. It's an OS.
     2. It's a variation of the Windows 8 OS that Microsoft has specifically designed for devices running ARM devices.
     3. (In case you are wondering) ARM is an architecture used by many processor companies to design their chips, including Qualcomm, nVidia, Texas Instruments and several others.

What that means is that when you go to the Settings -> PC Info screen of a tablet device running an ARM processor, it will show you "Windows RT" and NOT "Windows 8". So, it's a full fledged OS that is branded and sold separately by Microsoft to tablet OEMs (aka manufacturers) who are using ARM processors in their tablet devices. Infact, it used to be called as "Windows on ARM" earlier but was later on re-branded as Windows RT.

WinRT:
     1. It's a runtime.
     2. Conceptually, it's not very differemt from .net, java or any other runtime in the sense that it's main goal is to create a cross-platform application architecture on Windows 8 that supports multiple languages (C++, C#, JavaScript, etc). 

Difference between "Windows RT" and "Windows 8":
     Now that we know that Windows RT is an OS, I am sure that some of you are wondering how is it different from Windows 8. Here it is!!
     1. Not much different from user experience point of view as both support Metro UI.
     2. Windows RT is not sold directly to consumers, and is meant only to be sold to device manufacturers (aka OEMs).
     3. The goal behind Windows RT is to give end users consistent experience across tablets being offered by various manufacturers (including Microsoft's own device called as Surface).   
     4. Windows RT will come pre-pakaged with MS Office, whereas Windows 8 users will have to buy (and install) Office separately.
     5. There are similar differences in terms of applications shipped out of the box in Windows RT and Winodws 8, as well as the kinds of applications you can develop/install/uninstall on them. Windows RT seems to be more locked-down version of the two.
     6. You also cannot use Win32 and COM APIs on Windows RT, so you are pretty much restricted to using WinRT APIs. Although, over  next few days I am going to be closely working on a project that requires access to underlying System Information on a Windows RT "ARM" device. It seems that there may be a way to access a subset of Win 32 API on a Windows RT device. If it works, I will post my experience in a subsequent post.  


Cheers!! I hope it helped! !