SharePoint 2013 editions

Question

I am researching upgrade scenarios for SharePoint 2013 and cant find any official information. So the questions are:

1. Am I right saying that SharePoint 2013 Foundation cant be upgraded to Standard\Enterprise by specifying proper license key? And this use case will require migration from one environment to another.
2. Standard edition can be upgraded to Enterprise by specifying license key. Is it right?
3. Trial edition of SharePoint 2013 seems to be available only in Enterprise edition (according to this article SharePoint 2013 180-day trial is only available as Enterprise edition and cannot be converted to Standard license!. Please comment if you got a chance to install SharePoint 2013 Standard Trial.

Thanks!

Answer 1

You CAN UPGRADE from Standard to Enterprise by entering an Enterprise key, you CANNOT DOWNGRADE from Enterprise to Standard without rebuilding the farm.

This is common with Microsoft Software, for example, you cannot easily downgrade an SQL Server Enterprise to Standard (it can be done, just not easily)

I have also not found a "Standard" key trial anywhere, which is quite disappointing. If you are really trying out the product, you will need to carefully review the differences in functionality, and know that if you only need standard, you will need to throw away your enterprise deployment and build with a purchased key.

Answer 2

1. Correct. You cannot.
2. Yes.
3. (sorry don't know)

For question #1 (since you can't find - nor could I) the official answer, you could install SharePoint 2013 Foundation and try to "upgrade" it to a Server edition. In an hour or less you'd have your definitive first-hand answer. Now if you want to know why you cannot, that's probably a mix of marketing and technical reasons and a separate question.

Answer 3

It is Not possible to upgrade from SharePoint foundation Trail edition to Enterprise. You need to install Enterprise from scratch.

Answer 4

You can upgrade to the higher editions as per your needs. In order to know more about the feature differences of each edition, please check the following article SharePoint Server 2013 Features – Foundation vs Standard vs Enterprise.