We recently ran in to an issue where SharePoint 2013 needed SQL 2012 or higher to get the full feature set from SharePoint. We're about to upgrade both SQL clusters, probably to 2014. The question has come up whether or not we need to buy those licenses with software assurance or not. It's costly to buy it that way. Typically you don't need to be on the latest version of SQL to get other products to work but with what happened with SharePoint 2013 we're not sure.
Does anyone have any insight in to whether MS will be doing things like that moving forward? I don't want to purchase SQL 2014 without SA only to realize we needed SA in two years when SQL 2016 comes out, or whatever version does.
Any help is appreciated!
