Questions about EE licensing and Software Subscriptions

[seancb]

Hello there,
I'm wondering about the long term costs of an enterprise edition installation with approximately 50 premium users. The pricing page lists a one-time license fee per premium user, as well as a software subscription fee which appears to be "optional"

I am unclear with regards to the subscription. Are we entitled to smaller updates and version upgrades only if we "subscribe"? Or is the subscription simply a mechanism which actively notifies us regarding upgrades? What are the limitations on upgrades for non-subscribers, and what are the advantages of subscribing?

Sorry to bust in here with such basic questions, but I've read the license agreement and the post-deployment services page and I'm just not sure exactly what we'd be giving up if we opted out of the subscription.

Thanks!

[Kris]

As far I as I know, there's one limiation for non-subscribers: you can't upgrade :P
When you buy your Enterprise Editon license, you'll have one year software subscription included. If you want to be able to install updates after that year, you must pay the software subscription fee. Iif you don't, you will be able to install updates, but your installation will downgrade to a Community Edition license.

[seancb]

Does this apply to every update? Major, minor, sub-minor, patches, etc?
Thanks!

[Valerion]

Your license has an expiry date in it. So if your license expires say 31 December 2006, you can install any patch which has an internal expiry date before that, but not any new ones.

FWIW, the current 11.0.x patches all have an expiry date before end of last year, even if they are released this year, so if your license expired 31/12/2006 you would still be able to install them. However, I am not sure what the official policy on this is. You would not be able to install the upcoming major releases, of course.

[seancb]

I can understand limiting major feature updates and version updates to subscribers however there must be some level of security update/patch that is available to everyone? I mean, if a security flaw is discovered and a patch implemented, would we be in a situation where our server is vulnerable until we pay for a subscription? Or are the smaller patches generally backdated to match the year of initial implementation of the major version number?

[kanderson]

What you're really asking, is do you need the subscription. The answer will ultimately be yes.

If your company is going to be shut down, or something similar, than I can understand not subscribing, but otherwise, I think it'll be frustrating for you.

Scalix is a great product today. But tomorrow, the featureset necessary to be a great product will be different. Some simple and obvious examples I can think of immediately are Outlook 2007 and Windows XP support. Neither is currently available, but in the foreseeable future, both will ne absolutely necessary. That's likely a year away, but it's coming. In the past year, Scalix has added SmartCache, Scalix Mobile, Recovery Folders, sxmboxexp, i18n, etc.

There's good value in the subscription, you won't regret having it, and you will regret not having it.

[seancb]

Great, thanks for all of the info... We need to have all our ducks in a row before making the jump