The appropriate vSphere edition is a decision you reach after an analysis of the workload and customer business drivers, including factors such as availability, capacity and performance requirements.

• Standard (Server consolidation and no planned downtime)
• Enterprise (Powerful & efficient resource management)
• Enterprise Plus (Policy-based datacenter automation)

VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus includes the full range of vSphere features for transforming datacenters into dramatically simplified cloud computing environments providing flexible, reliable IT services.

With VMware vSphere 5 Enterprise Plus, you can:

• Reduce capital and operating costs
• Rapidly deploy and decommission servers for application testing
• Improve availability and uptime for business critical applications
• Cut the deployment time of new servers
• Simplify the operational management of large virtualization deployments
• Integrate across a broad range of hardware, operating systems, application stacks, and service providers

VMware vSphere 5 Enterprise provides powerful resource management while protecting applications from planned and unplanned downtime.

With vSphere 5 Enterprise you can:

• Reduce capital and operating costs
• Rapidly deploy and decommission servers for application testing
• Improve availability and uptime for business critical applications
• Cut the deployment time of new servers

VMware vSphere 5 Standard provides an entry solution for basic consolidation of applications to slash hardware costs while accelerating application deployment.

With VMware vSphere 5 Standard, you can:

Reduce capital and operating costs
• Rapidly deploy and decommission servers for application testing
• Cut the deployment time of new servers from weeks to hours

References:

• http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/purchase-advisor/
• http://blog.mwpreston.net/vcp-5/vcp-objective-1-5-identify-vsphere-architecture-and-solutions/