BO Do Away With CAL Licensing

[Nuffsaid]

Hello All

Here's a snipet of an email I received from my sales rep;

Upcoming Pricing Changes

List prices for all products with the exception of Crystal Reports will increase by an average of 8% in January 2005. For Crystal Enterprise and BusinessObjects Enterprise Premium a 25% price increase will apply to reflect the expanded functionality that will be part of the next release. To take advantage of the lower prices now, you may want to consider purchasing before the pending price increase.



Standardization of License Models

To align our licensing model with enterprise software vendors, BusinessObjects Enterprise/Crystal Enterprise products will be standardized on a Named and CPU licenses basis going forward. As a result, Concurrent Access Licenses (CAL) are only available for purchase until the end of 2004.

As a valued CAL maintenance customer you will be able to transfer your CAL licenses over to future releases. For expansion purchases after January 1, 2005 you will have the option to purchase additional named-user licenses to add to your existing CAL deployment or have the option to convert over to named or processor license model.


Thougt you'ld like to know......


Nuffsaid.

 

[synapsevampire]

Sounds interesting, however Crystal Reports Dev has CAL licensing doesn't it?

Are they saying that CR will still bo sold with this model, but CE will not?

-k

 

[MJRBIM]

Another change to the licensing model?

...it seems to change with every release.

 

[MJRBIM]

Saw this article about the "back-lash" to the many license changes that BO has brought in, and thought it may be of interest to folks here....

http://www.itbusiness.ca/index.asp?theaction=61&sid=57844

 

[Nuffsaid]

From the artical mentioned above,

"We’re going to release something new in the product line with a whole new set of licensing (plans) around Crystal Reports distribution. We’re not disclosing that (right now)," Thomas said. "I think it’s something those customers would really like."

After spending mucho bucks on CE this will probably just peeve me off even more!!

Just my thoughts....


Nuffsaid.

 

[lacemh]

If you are annoyed with the proposed change to the licensing model, let's not just take it sitting down!!
This new pricing is ridiculous!! We need to form at
minimum a "MASS-MAILING" campaign to our BO Sales Reps, to let them know that we do not find this new model to be acceptable. With the currently proposed elimination of CAL licensing and change to Named User and Processor, CRYSTAL will become more expensive than ORACLE!! That is just NUTS!
That is why we need to speak out against this change.

What does everyone else think?

 

[MJRBIM]

I just received the latest info from BO on the Crystal Reports XI (Developer) tool...and would like some details on the following quote.

"Also new to Crystal Reports XI Developer Edition is a royalty free runtime license, which allows for unlimited internal corporate deployment of the Crystal Reports .NET, Java™ and COM (RDC) report engine components, without having to pay additional licensing fees for multiple servers or CPUs. "

Could any VARs or BO folks please let us know the following -

1.) Is this only for "stand-alone" RAS servers for .NET applications, or does it impact clients who also run a BO-Enterprise-XI environments...?

2.) It specifically mentions "unlimited internal corporate deployment" - what is the license/pricing model for applying this solution for external reporting clients being serviced by a .NET application?

Thanks in advance for the information.