Acrobat license on Terminal server

[Guest]

Can someone explain me the licensing structure for Acrobat on Windows Terminal server? I found the below article about deploying Acorbat on Termainal server. It only mentioned that Acrobat is licensed per desktop computer.  Does it mean I have to purchase 10 licenses if we only have 2 users and they use 10 desktop computers to access Acrobat in the Terminal server?

Thanks

[QSS-Forums]

We are getting asked this more and more but have not been able to get a straight answer from anyone, including Adobe Customer Support.

Situation :-

Customers have terminal servers that services x number of users (eg. say, 20 users). Assume thin client deployments, with no full desktop PCs at each user's desk.

However, the customer only has requirement to have Acrobat Pro available to say, 2 specific users on the Terminal Server and not all 20 users.

Can they purchase just 2 Acrobat Pro licenses and proceed to install Acrobat onto the Terminal Server or must they purchase 20 licenses because there are 20 users on the Terminal server (even though Acrobat is only required for 2 of those users) ?

Thanks.

[uminds]

I did talk to one of the Adobe licensing consultant about the issue. Basically, the Acorbat license on TS is same as as any other MS Office application on TS. Every desktop computer that need to access Acrobat on the TS server will require a license. If you have 2 Acrobat users that need that access, you will have to purchase the number of Acorbat license based on how many computer they are going to use to access the TS server. For example, if they only use their own desktop or laptop to connect to the TS server, you will need to acquire 2 lic.. However, if they need to access the server from multiple machine, you will need to purchase the same no. of the lic. as the number of machine they use to access the server. TS is not really a cost saving solution for software licensing, even for MS products, it is just solution for ease of application management.

[QSS-Forums]

Hi uminds,

Thanks for the reply.

Cost saving is not a concern here. Licesing the products correctly is what's important. However, based on your description, licensing Acdrobat on TS is a little different to MS Office applications and server CALs.

With MS licenses, if you have a network of 20 users that use the terminal server, you cannot say that only 10 people will use MS Office and only 5 will need email access therefore, I only need to purchase 10 Office licenses and 5 Exchange CALs. According to MS Licensing when we rang them about this, we will still need to purchase 20 Office licenses and 20 Exchange CALs, even if they were on their own desktops and thin clients only.

Your description of Adobe's licensing however says that if the users only ever access the TS from a fixed station (PC, notebook or thin client), you could purchase only as many Acrobat licenses as there will be users supposedly using it, even though potentially, all users have access to the application. Is this right ?

Cheers.

[uminds]

According to MS, licensing MS desktop application on TS, e.g. Office, is no different than licensing it on desktop computer. You purchasing one MS office license for a desktop and that license is attached to the machice. Any user logon to that desktop, whether it is domain user or local user, can use that copy of office. When you want to have 10 users accessing MS office on TS, you will have to count how many desktop including laptop and thin client which they will be accessing the TS server from. If all the user share the one workstation, you purchase one license, if they access the server from 100 machine, you purchase 100 license. That is how MS licenses its desktop application and it is basically the same as licensing Acrobat on TS.. However, you still have to purchase TS CALs and Server CALs separately based on your requirement. As far as I know, neither MS nor Adobe provides their own tools to control/aduit the licenses on the TS server.

[toxicssdd]

Regarding the MS office on TS. If you have 20 users accessing the TS you will need 20 licenses. It doesn't matter how many computers those users are using to access the TS.

Regarding the Acrobat DC on TS. I'm not 100% sure but it should be like this - if you have only 5 users which will use Acrobat Pro DC you need to purchase 5 subscriptions and assign them to their email addresses. Once they are on the TS they need to sign in whit those email addresses to the Acrobat Pro DC. The other 15 users can use the free version - Acrobat Viewer. They will still have access to the Acrobat Pro DC but if they try to open it it will ask them to sign in with an account with active license which they won't have and this will prevent them for using the Pro DC version.