New licensing rule has a hidden cost

generic

The new Rule with DCO licensing makes NAV very expensive to upgrade or implement. Currently if there is any integration with web and NAV, you only pay for NAS license. If the company upgrades to 2009, you have purchase DCO license for every person accessing that website. If its employee, you have to purchase for every employee, if it's outside users, you have to purchase external connector license.

Another example, if currently NAV integrates with a POS system, you will need to purchase a license for all the POS users that use the 3rd Party POS system.

Another example, if you write a report using Reporting Services and publish the report for Every employee that access the report will need to purchase license for.

Basically any time anybody accesses and interacts with NAV data, you need to purchase a license.

So any companies that use currently NAV 5.0 with this scenario will pay through the nose if they upgrade.

This cost prevents any integration and makes NAV too expensive to implement.
Any integration that we will be doing now we will have to take into consideration this licensing cost and it adds another cost to the integration.

The same applies to web services as well. They are basically making pay for your own data. The data belongs to the customer, not MS. So how can they charge you for accessing your own data?

Alex_Chow

What's DCO?

Savatage

Microsoft releases new Microsoft Dynamics Client for Office (DCO) licensing for Existing Dynamics Customers as of October 1, 2008*

· Microsoft Dynamics™ Client for Microsoft® Office and SharePoint® Server, and
· Microsoft Dynamics™ Client for Microsoft® Office and Microsoft Windows® SharePoint® Services
:-k

generic

It stands for (Microsoft Dynamics Client for Microsoft Office ) or shorter version "Dynamics Client for Office".



https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource ... change.htm


https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource ... es_NAV.htm

p.willemse6

generic, just for your understanding: this was already the case with the NAS. You already had to buy webusers if you had read the licensing terms very carefully, only nobody did. Nothing has changed, only now microsoft has stressed the fact that everybody has to...

The only annoying thing (in my opinion) is that the DCO initially was meant as the licensing model for the sharepoint client, where now the Sharepoint client will not be there but the licensing model remains...

generic

Yes web user license was for SharePoint only.
If it was for any integration with NAS or SQL reporting services or anything that accessed the data, please point me to the document.

This is not just annoying, but ridiculous. They are basically milking anything that touches NAV.

p.willemse6

Generic, it was for all external acces. For example also for the commerce portal. Only due to the lack of technical checks nobody did.

Just for the record: I don't agree with the DCO licensing model, imagine you just get a postal code via a webservice to an application with 1.000 internal people....

kine

p.willemse6 wrote:

Generic, it was for all external acces. For example also for the commerce portal. Only due to the lack of technical checks nobody did.

Just for the record: I don't agree with the DCO licensing model, imagine you just get a postal code via a webservice to an application with 1.000 internal people....

Than you will buy the connector... ;-)

p.willemse6

sorry, not possible. For internal use, you can not buy a maximized connector!!! Just some surprises, had serveral discussions with the pricing team / managers regarding this topic...

kine

p.willemse6 wrote:

sorry, not possible. For internal use, you can not buy a maximized connector!!! Just some surprises, had serveral discussions with the pricing team / managers regarding this topic...

Hmmm... in this case, yes, it is terrible licensing. I was thinking about that licensing as licensing on SQL - you can choose to license by CALs (named users) or by CPU sockets (when using for uncountable users or to much users). If there is limit that external connector cannot be used for "internal users", it is not good. From software point of view, everyone accessing my data not through my NAV but through some external software is external users. How I can make difference between my employee and someone from outside, when he is logged in? When I will have some portal, which can be used by registered users, which can be external or my employee, I need to license my employee in different way than external user? It is nonsense... I will just buy external connector and use the portal in same way regardless it is external user or my employee. If the licensing model is selected only by "focus" of the application, it have no sense for me... :-k

p.willemse6

You are right, but that it is the way it is at this moment... only difference are users from other MBS applications (CRM, other NAV databases), they can access unlimited...

generic

kine wrote:

From software point of view, everyone accessing my data not through my NAV but through some external software is external users. How I can make difference between my employee and someone from outside, when he is logged in? When I will have some portal, which can be used by registered users, which can be external or my employee, I need to license my employee in different way than external user? It is nonsense...

If you have external users and Employee, you need to purchase both external users connector, and for each employee you need to purchase CDO license.
One of great things with NAV is be able to change/ Integrate with other systems and this puts the nail on the coffin.

kine

I read again the FAQ_PricingLicensingChanges_NAV_Partner_Sept08.pdf file from partnersource and yes, it is there... for employees, only DCO can be used, no external connector... [-X Very bad thing for bigger companies... we will see if there will be some future alignments or not... but we need to be prepared for full move from concurrent users licensing model to this Named users model... :?

Tronholm

I want to build a little application that collects data from a fully automatic machine (no human user at that end) and put information into NAV thru web services.
I suppose I need no extra license at all (no DCO, no external connector). Am I right?
Any ideas?

generic

You will need one DCO at least.

generic

kine wrote:

I read again the FAQ_PricingLicensingChanges_NAV_Partner_Sept08.pdf file from partnersource and yes, it is there... for employees, only DCO can be used, no external connector... [-X Very bad thing for bigger companies... we will see if there will be some future alignments or not... but we need to be prepared for full move from concurrent users licensing model to this Named users model... :?

I was thinking that with MS buying NAV, things will get cheaper, and the move to SQL will remove things like buying table etc. But from what I see small companies that make up majority of the clients it will be very expensive to implement and support NAV. If NAV is moving into bigger clients, then they have to also meet the requirements. Such as solve performance issues with the system. Things I run into on every other implementation. Performance, Multi language, Cost.

davmac1

I believe NAV licensing was changed to be more standard with Great Plains licensing which is why the price went up.

p.willemse6

Generic, the opposite is true. With the BRL pricing, smaller companies can use NAV for a relatively low amount of money. Imagine a company with only 3 of 5 concurrent users, having a full blown ERP system for a small amount of money... The named user system will at least take 3 years from now, if not more...
My feeling (not just based on assumptions) is that NAV will not be targeted at larger companies... Especially in europe more and more companies are going international, which causes demand for multiple localisations in one database. For sure, this will not be part of NAV the coming 3 years.... AX does... I see AX more and more sellign down.

pdj

FYI: https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource ... noffer.htm

generic

I would have to disagree. You need to purchase SQL server license. standard Edition $ 6K.
You will need a new box for Service tier. around 5K. They will need a person to maintain SQL.
And if you are doing any integration, price will go up.

Marije_Brummel

With 3-5 users you can use the free edition of SQL and run the NST on the same box. With this config you can even run on a small business server.

I can say this out of experience since we are a 5 user company running this...

Savatage

From what I have read in this post it seems pretty logical.

Larger companies pay more - smaller pay less.
I guess MS thinks the bigger Co's can afford the extra $$'s

I see the real question is How many big companies Pass on Nav beacuse of this.

Marije_Brummel

Any other 3-tier ERP will have equal or more requirements, don't worry.

Big companies will take on more and more NAV, that is what we are seeing at least. The model with the vertical NSC's is still a golden model, especialy with verticals becoming more complete and better of quality.

generic

Mark Brummel wrote:

With 3-5 users you can use the free edition of SQL and run the NST on the same box. With this config you can even run on a small business server.

I can say this out of experience since we are a 5 user company running this...

And once you reach the 4 gig limit, you will need to reach for your pockets. Those 3-5 companies that choose Nav is for a specific reason. Unique bussiness that requires specific mod/integration. Otherwise they can use QUICKBOOKS.
You are probably have lot volume of transaction and are familiar with NAV. That's why you chose it.
You are pobably also not spending the whole day infront of your NAV system.

Marije_Brummel

Threads like these usualy end up in endless discussions, that is why I normally skip them.

I have been in the NAV business longer than I can remember. I purchased the software for a company I worked for over a decade ago, it was called Navision Financials and had version number 1.1.

This company has quadrupled its turnover since then and is still my customer, they upgraded several times and have a minimum of modifications. I was there some weeks ago and expanded their database to 2 GB. [wow, ohhh]

There are tons, tons and tons of companies like that out there with a massive number of license sales for Microsoft. With NAV2009 and the current quality of horizontals and verticals those companies can by a good product and customise it themselves.

- AMEN -

generic

I agree that there are too many different companies that have different requirement and it doesn't make sense to talk about it.

The original intent of this thread still stands. Which is integration is becoming too expense with licensing.

And paying for accessing your own data through some SQL report just ridiculous, when you already paid for SQL Server to do whatever you want with your data.

bbrown

A user would only require a NAV license if they are executing NAV program logic. This would include users running either a NAV cleint or an external process that is using web services (or something similar). A user that is using an external reporting tool (like SQL Reporting) and simply reading the database would not require a NAV license.

generic

bbrown wrote:

A user would only require a NAV license if they are executing NAV program logic. This would include users running either a NAV cleint or an external process that is using web services (or something similar). A user that is using an external reporting tool (like SQL Reporting) and simply reading the database would not require a NAV license.

You are wrong. Please read the FAQ.


https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource ... change.htm


https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource ... es_NAV.htm

bbrown

I am going to disagree with you. The license applies to the application. Not to the data. If I access the NAV database via a component of NAV (like a web service) then I need to license it. But if I am accessing the data completely outside the scope of NAV then I don't need a NAV license. I would only require a SQL license. The key point is how you are accessing the data.

p.willemse6

Sorry, again you are wrong. Anyone acccessing or modifying data from which ever source, has to pay. Either via BRL, or via DCO. The only exception is SQL reporting services, as you already bought SQL licenses when you fired up NAV...

David_Singleton

Reading closely I think that bbrown and p.willemse are saying the same thing.

i.e. if you buy SQL licenses you can access the data through SQL if you have reporting services you can access though SSRS etc. If you want to access through a NAV technology then you must license that technology.

But either way, bbrown must be correct. I mean how could we even conceptualize that we license SQL data through NAV. To take an extreme case, lets say I moved from NAV to Axapta, but moved my NAV data to the Axapta database. Now would I need to pay Navision licensing to access data when I don't even have NAV running?

In any case, I don;t think this discussion has barely even begun. There are a lot of issues to work out here.

In fact I think understanding NAV 2009 licensing will become more complex than learning the product.