The Essentials edition is ideal for small businesses with basic IT requirements. This means a company that is very small and has no IT department or even a dedicated IT specialist can benefit from the features and capabilities of this edition. CALs are not required for Essentials, but it is limited to 25 users/50 devices.

The Standard edition of Windows Server 2016 is for mid to large size companies that need advanced features and virtualize to a lesser extent. This is really one of the most popular editions for a range of businesses. Standard allows for two virtual machines and requires CALs.

The datacenter is the workhorse for companies of any size that have high IT requirements and huge IT workloads utilizing many virtual systems. Datacenter allows for unlimited virtual machines and requires CALs.