Microsoft Corp. today announced its decision on how the company will license server software on new servers with multicore processors expected in the market next year. Microsoft software that is currently licensed on a per-processor model will continue to be licensed per processor, not per core, for hardware that contains dual-core and multicore processors. This policy is effective today and applies to several products in the Windows Server System (TM) family, including Microsoft® SQL Server (TM) , Microsoft BizTalk® Server and others. Microsoft is approaching this decision with the goal of driving high volume and high value to standards-based computing through logical licensing and more cost-effective adoption of multicore processors.

Today's announcement allows customers to benefit from dual-core technology with no change to the licensing or edition requirements of Windows Server (TM) and Microsoft enterprise server software. For example, Microsoft SQL Server Standard edition will run on a four-processor server with dual-core processors, utilizing all cores on the processors, without requiring more than four licenses. The same number of licenses will be required whether SQL Server software is running on a server with dual-core or single-core processors.