I don't want to pay for Crystal Enterprise - now what?

[Craino]

Hey everyone,

We're a medium-sized non-profit. We love Crystal Reports for report generation and use it a lot. It's also bundled in with our accounting package, so it's basically our standard technology for complex report writing.

We are currently using the RAS that came with Crystal 9 Advanced edition. Given the limitations on this product for concurrent users, no scheduling, etc. we've been wondering whether this has what it takes to be our reporting platform of the future.

I've been doing a little research on what else is out there, but it seems like there are a lot of products. We don't want to give up Crystal for our serious report writers, but we'd like a cheaper web-delivery solution with more features and flexibility.

Any products that you developers out there particularly like and would recommend?

 

[synapsevampire]

CD can be fairly creative with their pricing, approach them as a non-profit.

I think that we paid $8500 for a 5 concurrent license agreement at my last non-profit, not too bad.

-k

 

[cjlarue]

you might want to take a look at the free copy of CE 9 Pro that is available.

http://www.crystaldecisions.com/x-jump/cr9_03/default.asp?ref=devzone_main#1

still has the concurrent user limitations but you get scheduling etc.


Regards
Chuck LaRue
ADRS Computer Services

 

[midearth]

The free CE 9 Pro is a great way to go (at least for the $$) as Chuck mentioned, but it's for named user licenses and not concurrent. According to Crystal, it is upgradeable (for a fee of course) to concurrent users but I'm not sure what the upgrade cost is.

 

[kmcmanus]

There are several other solutions out there that can take your enterprise install to the next level depending on your needs for customization and budget.

Check out

https://vm4.dmv.com/hammerman/showitem.cfm/Utlities.html

and

http://www.reportshield.com

there were other discussions towards these lines a few weeks ago as well.

Kevin