Hi
I work for a European firm with over 15 offices. Having effectively worked as separate businesses in the past, we are trying to standardise our software packages, one of which is Crystal Reports.
In our various offices we have versions 6, 7, 8, 8.5 and 9 although the most used is 8. We have a lot of people creating reports for use in their own departments, a number of reporting extranets for our clients (CR8 using the Crystal web viewer) and are building a reporting site within the corporate Intranet (again in CR8). We also provide Crystal reports as part of a VB case management system (CR8 again).
We know that 8.5 has some better options than 8, and that 9 is another step on. However, having (tried to) investigate licensing on the CD website and from searches on this site I am concerned at the potential cost in upgrading from 8.
Internally we would have maybe 200 reports users, although probably not more than 50 users at a time. The client extranets would probably only be accessed by less than 10 clients at a time, while the case management system could easily have another 50 concurrent users.
I understand that as we have VB6 which includes CR4 that we would be entitled to upgrade pricing.
My questions are:
1. I have tried to work out the Crystal Broadcast License and am not sure if this would apply to us as nearly all reports require the user to enter parameters through their browser for the report to appear - would this count as manual intervention ?
2. As different reports could be hosted in maybe 4 different offices, would we need a license for each server that hosts them ?
3. Would anyone please be able to clarify what kind of licenses we would need for CR 8, 8.5 and 9 and if you have any idea of the potential cost ? From what I've read, version 8 seems to be a lot less stringently licensed than the newer versions: if the cost to move all users to v8 is comparatively small then it would seem the right move for now.
4. We haven't really looked at CE due to the price and the fact that we can already provide reports on the web with CR8 without headaches. We're spending an absolute fortune coordinating every users' desktop this year so there's not a lot left for reporting tools. Would CE really provide enough extras to justify the cost ?
I have asked CD for this information or at the least for copies of the current license agreements for CR8 and 8.5 so we can compare with 9 but am still waiting for a response.
When/if I get a response from CD I'll post it here for everyone.
Thanks
I work for a European firm with over 15 offices. Having effectively worked as separate businesses in the past, we are trying to standardise our software packages, one of which is Crystal Reports.
In our various offices we have versions 6, 7, 8, 8.5 and 9 although the most used is 8. We have a lot of people creating reports for use in their own departments, a number of reporting extranets for our clients (CR8 using the Crystal web viewer) and are building a reporting site within the corporate Intranet (again in CR8). We also provide Crystal reports as part of a VB case management system (CR8 again).
We know that 8.5 has some better options than 8, and that 9 is another step on. However, having (tried to) investigate licensing on the CD website and from searches on this site I am concerned at the potential cost in upgrading from 8.
Internally we would have maybe 200 reports users, although probably not more than 50 users at a time. The client extranets would probably only be accessed by less than 10 clients at a time, while the case management system could easily have another 50 concurrent users.
I understand that as we have VB6 which includes CR4 that we would be entitled to upgrade pricing.
My questions are:
1. I have tried to work out the Crystal Broadcast License and am not sure if this would apply to us as nearly all reports require the user to enter parameters through their browser for the report to appear - would this count as manual intervention ?
2. As different reports could be hosted in maybe 4 different offices, would we need a license for each server that hosts them ?
3. Would anyone please be able to clarify what kind of licenses we would need for CR 8, 8.5 and 9 and if you have any idea of the potential cost ? From what I've read, version 8 seems to be a lot less stringently licensed than the newer versions: if the cost to move all users to v8 is comparatively small then it would seem the right move for now.
4. We haven't really looked at CE due to the price and the fact that we can already provide reports on the web with CR8 without headaches. We're spending an absolute fortune coordinating every users' desktop this year so there's not a lot left for reporting tools. Would CE really provide enough extras to justify the cost ?
I have asked CD for this information or at the least for copies of the current license agreements for CR8 and 8.5 so we can compare with 9 but am still waiting for a response.
When/if I get a response from CD I'll post it here for everyone.
Thanks