Crystal Server 2016 – July Update
Since my original post about the licensing updates, there has been further clarification from SAP.
There are now two separate ways of licencing Crystal Server. The ‘old’ way of just buying some licences and paying an annual maintenance fee to a reseller, or the new way of signing a maintenance agreement with SAP as part of the purchase from a reseller.
You can get an understanding of the differences from the earlier post, the intention of this post is to show an interesting impact of the licences.
- The new 50 CAL licence limit only applies if you buy Crystal Server 2016. If you buy an earlier version, with maintenance, you can immediately upgrade to 2016 and have more than 50 CALs.
- If you need more than 5 named users, but only one or two need to design reports/dashboards, it’s cheaper to buy Crystal Server 2013 with maintenance, then buy the designers separately.
- The difference in price for 5 Concurrent licences – you save almost £1000 by buying Crystal Server 2013, then upgrading to 2016.
- Maintenance on the old product is also cheaper. That means it’s cheaper when you renew too.
- The second year maintenance on Crystal Server 2013 will still be invoiced from a reseller. Much nicer to deal with and more chance of a discount than from SAP!
I’ll update this is there are any further updates.
