Notable changes on the server side licensing
With the release of Lync Server 2010, you no longer require a license for the Edge Server. The only Server Role that now requires a license is the Front End Server Role servers. This is a great benefit as customers are now able to scale their infrastructure with fewer server licenses.
Notable changes on the device side licensing
On the devices front there are also some news, all IP Phones connecting to Lync Server 2010 require a license.
Some examples to make this clear:
Lets say a user has 2 computers, one mobile and one desk phone = User CAL
A kiosk computer or a computer that more than one person use = Device CAL
A phone in a conference room or a common area phone = Device CAL
Notable changes on the CAL side licensing
Then we have the user CALs previously there was a standard CAL and a enterprise CAL.
Now there is also a PLUS CAL to get the full feature set and to be able to use all of the amazing features in Lync. The PLUS CAL is basically the phone features that has been stripped out from the enterprise CAL (the price has been reduced a bit on the enterprise CAL). The reason to this might be that a lot of customers complained that the enterprise CAL was to expensive and included features (enterprise voice) that they where never going to use but they wanted “Live Meeting”.
Some examples to clarify:
A user that only wants im / presence & Lync one to one calls. = Standard CAL
A users that only wants to host meetings = Standard and Enterprise CALs
A user that wants it all (the above & Enterprise Voice) = has to have it all = Standard, Enterprise and the PLUS CAL
A phone in a conference room or a common area phone = Standard and PLUS CAL
Reference and more details can be found on: