Crystal Reports 2020 Licensing

[steven_mv_2010_87]

Our company, as I had said before, is seriously thinking about updating the reports we have in crystal 8.5 to crystal 2020, I know that they are totally different versions and that we have to redesign many reports, but by testing we discovered that the migration is viable to a certain extent, but now we have the following questions

1. How does the licensing issue work in both developer mode and deployment mode?
2. Is the issue of concurrent licenses limited as was the case with crystal 8.5?
3.What platforms does Crystal Reports 2020 run on?
4. On what platforms can deployment be done (Web, Mac, Windows, Linux, etc.)?

[JohnClark]

I'll answer 3 and 4 first because they are the easiest.  Crystal Reports 2020 runs on Windows only.  This is a change from older versions of Crystal Reports.  This applies to both the Crystal Reports Developer and any hosting platform.

Now for licensing, always a sand trap with Business Objects and Crystal Reports.

For developing, there is a user based licensing model.  For each user who uses the Crystal Reports Development tool, they need a license and their own license key.  Depending on the vendor where you get your licenses, these can be purchased in blocks of differing numbers of licenses.

For what you refer to as "deployment mode", I assume you are referring to some platform to host the Crystal Reports and allows users to interact with them by refreshing them and possibly scheduling them.  There are two options, Crystal Reports Server and Business Objects.  I don't know much about Crystal Reports Server as we use Business Objects at my company.  Business Objects is a server installation that allows for the hosting and scheduling of Crystal Reports.  It is currently licensed based on a concurrent or named user model.  What fits best with you installation will need to be determined by you.

I don't know of any limits on concurrent licenses as they would relate to Crystal Reports server or Business Objects.  Those licenses do not allow for editing or creating reports.  There is not a concurrent user license model for the Crystal Reports developer.

[DonWilliams]

This has a lot of great info so book mark this page:

https://pages.community.sap.com/topics/crystal-reports/faq

1. How does the licensing issue work in both developer mode and deployment mode?

CR has always been a single use license, so you can purchase a copy of CR Designer per user.

More info here:

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

2. Is the issue of concurrent licenses limited as was the case with crystal 8.5?

For CR Server or BOE Enterprise where you publish reports to those platforms you can get Concurrent or User based keycodes to allow/limit the number of users able to log into those applications. Does not limit the use of CR Designer if CR Designer is installed locally.

3.What platforms does Crystal Reports 2020 run on?

See this Platforms info here:

https://userapps.support.sap.com/sap/support/knowledge/en/2859510

Crystal Reports 2020

4. On what platforms can deployment be done (Web, Mac, Windows, Linux, etc.)?

CR Designer is a Windows based application, so Windows OS's only.

You can get Crystal Reports Viewer that is WEB based, only allows users to view reports with saved data.

If you want to develop an application using CR's SDK's then you can build the App as a Desktop Or WEB hosted application using RESTful, .NET or Java SDK's

Go here for more info:

https://help.sap.com/docs/SAP_CRYSTAL_REPORTS