Licensing Crystal server for Crystal reports concurrent licensing model

[nate6540]

Greetings -

The org I am with is seeking 5 concurrent user licensing for Crystal Reports for use on a terminal server. This is in combination with the SAGE accounting software. In talking with SAP sales they are "1000% sure" what we need to get is a 5 user concurrent license for Crystal server, which after digging in the documentation, says that Crystal server includes crystal reports licensing.

Though reading that documentation again makes me second guess(again) being that it says that the named user licensing includes Crystal Reports licensing, the concurrent licensing does not mention Crystal Reports.

We don't need/want Crystal server itself, we went to install it assuming it would install Crystal reports as well but it did not give an option to do that and wanted us to setup a SQL DB for Crystal server for things that would never be used.

My question is how does licensing work for Crystal reports in this way? I did not see anything like a "license server" mentioned during the Crystal Server install(using a trial). Is it just the honor system and relying on possible audits? Or some other means?

I tried asking SAP sales, they directed me to SAP support, I asked them and they directed me to ask here.

Is there concurrent user licensing for terminal servers on Crystal reports? Now that I read the above it makes me think there is not, but the two different SAP sales people insisted that Crystal Server would solve our licensing issue.

thanks

[nate6540]

ok thanks! The info I've been given so far seems to imply the users will view the reports via Sage, so crystal reports viewer not needed. But still haven't got firm confirmation on the use cases yet, but that's an issue with the org I'm with not with SAP.

We are proceeding to purchase 5 named user licenses for regular crystal reports and have canceled the pending purchase of Crystal server.

[DellSC]

I know that you used to be able to consume reports from Sage - I don't know if that's still true. If it's not, you'll want to use Crystal Server to allow users to consume the reports. The folks that write the reports will publish them to Crystal Server, where the consumers can log in to BI Launchpad and run them.

-Dell

[nate6540]

ok thanks for the clarification that helps a lot, I have one more Q if you don't mind that I forgot to ask before.

The terminal server has both some users that edit/create reports(5 or less I believe), and other users that just consume reports(upwards of 40 I've been told). I know there is a crystal report viewer which is free to view, but am curious if that can be installed on the same system as crystal reports, and I don't even know if the Sage application they are using can differentiate between the two even if they can be installed on the same system.

[DonWilliams]

Hi Nate,

CR is a standalone product, there is no Concurrent license available, which is why Sales directed you here.

And no CR Server does not come with CR Designer, so don't go that way.

It's all based on the honour system, if you know 5 users will be using CR Designer then purchase 5 copies of CR Designer.

And the License info in this document is a little confusing when it mentions Concurrent on TS servers:

https://www.sap.com/documents/2015/07/368edae4-597c-0010-82c7-eda71af511fa.html

What is does say is as I noted above, purchase one copy per user.

Don