Third party licencing

[ShortyA]

Does anyone in the UK allow a third party contracting company offshore to access their UK-based CE installation ?

The reason I ask is that we are outsourcing part of our operation and I would like to have some background of other people's experiences before contacting Business Objects about the licencing implications. For example, did you have to purchase new licences, did you create a separate CE install or was it an addendum to your existing licence.

Many thanks for any information you can provide (naturally not referring to any company names!).
ShortyA

 

[IanWaterman]

Not sure I understand your problem, the benefit of CE is that anyone can access your installation.

YOu must set up your security so that they can access, the only limitation is then user licences. You can have Named or Concurrent.

Named means only that sign on can access, concurrent means that you have a set number of access licences say 10 and then as many users as you like can then access CE. Limited to the fact that only 10 can access at any one time. You will have to set up each user with their own sign on account.

It is relatively easy to set up users to be able to view and schedule existing reports which you have added to your server. If you wanted these remote users to publish reports then it will be more difficult. As the Crystal Enterprise Server will need to have ODBC connections set up to all data sources to be used.

Ian Waterman
UK Crystal Reports Consultant

 

[ShortyA]

Ian,
the concern is that an external company is wanting to access our CE installation (as in the reports, not the actual server). I think as it is a browser-based system that is meant for intranet, extranet and internet deployment that it does not matter who signs in as long as we have licenced the connections.

There will be no publishing of reports onto CE by anyone offshore so hopefully there will be no problem but it will be interesting to see what Business Objects's viewpoint on it is.

For info, we have CE v9 installed with processor licencing so hopefully not a problem. I will post info when known.

 

[IanWaterman]

It is a browser based system so your client or external co can access CE provider they have a browser.

I was recently working with a Book Distributor who wanted his external publishers to see a selection of reports. Eg The Distibutors holding of that Publishers Books. By using CE's Folder and Group Security each publisher could see a version of the same report resticted by the publishers ID.

As far as I am aware BO have no issues with this as this is a legitimate way of publishing reports externally.

You just have to be careful how you set up the security so that only authorised users can gain access, and then only see the reports or data that you want them to see.

Ian