I think it would be nice if you could customize an installation and price. For example, if Standard edition was the baseline and had exactly what it currently has, but you could get the transparent encryption modules for $X, and the database compression module for $Y, and so on.

The one feature of Enterprise that I don't understand is backup compression. Why is that Enterprise-only? I don't see that one fitting in with the description given in the blog you linked to. It doesn't require a more skilled DBA to understand that backup compression is a good thing, nor should it take any particular expertise to operate it. From what I can see, that should be a Standard edition feature.

Heck, by the justification given, compressed backups probably matter more to smaller businesses that can't afford as much disk space.

Of course, RedGate has a solution for that, so it's easy enough to bypass that issue. But it strikes me as odd that it's necessary to do so.