Thank you Grant Fritchey. I came to this job from a mostly SQL Server 2012 shop so I was dismayed to find the network administrator's husband installing SQL Server 2008. The compromise was 2008R2 when I asked if we could install a newer version. There weren't any existing SQL Server servers and no applications requiring an old version. Politics were thick. No one here knows what a DBA does but it's assumed that a DBA queries the data but doesn't take care of the database(??). The network admin (probably with help from her husband) wants to do that. I didn't have any knowledge of this situation until I arrived. I was told it was a new operation and I could build the servers from the ground up. Sounded ideal. Now there's another server that they've installed. I believe that in a situation of buying new licenses for SQL Server for a brand new operation there isn't a good reason to go with old versions as you said. I am a DBA but I was an Oracle one until two years ago. My last job was a SQL Server DBA with transactional replication between servers in different centers.

The budget here is not tight but no one knows whether I'm correct or the network administrator/desktop support person is correct so I have an uphill climb because she got here 6 months before me and none of the executive team has a technical background. Their eyes glaze over if I try to explain the difference between the roles.

Thanks for reading my tail of woe. Your answer helps me with trying to get upgrades though because maybe the licenses "purchased" through her husbands company can be upgraded.