Adobe Enterprise License and Named user license

[mconners]

Hello Everyone,

I know this topic has been hammered to death at times, but please let me ask some questions here.

We have an Adobe Enterprise license that runs through May of 2020. We have packaged via Adobe Creative Cloud Packager, the Adobe CC 2018 applications. We have found out however, Adobe Dimension CC 2018 is only available for those with an Adobe ID. This means our install will not deploy the program.

We have seen where an Adobe ID user will login and install pieces onto a Mac only to break the serial license we have. We have a license file package and a script to install the license file and the two work together well, in our testing.

The question is, as we won't know WHEN or IF the license file piece gets broken, should we have this script run via policy once per week or once a month to ensure the license is installed correctly?

Just curious how others are managing this situation. A little convoluted so please excuse me if I am making an already confusing situation worse.

[Volker]

We're fighting the same thing, but with Adobe XD. We keep a Self Service relicenser policy available for staff, and we'll likely handle student-facing clients on a break/fix basis (in the past, the Adobe enterprise licensing has "just broken" out of the blue, but it's been a rare event, not a class-breaker.)

I have no idea if this'll be sustainable, but that's what we'll try for next semester's rollout.

That said, we just had to relicense everything everywhere with a new enterprise serial, because Surprise Adobe Serial Expirations. After testing, we found that the de/relicenser didn't fail in any way regardless of who was logged into a client, or wasn't, or even if CC apps were launched during the de/relicense. So we ultimately let the policy fly once per machine on checkin, and there's been no screaming. So while it feels like a crying shame to have to set a CC relicense policy to be recurring, I don't think it'll actually break anything, especially at the intervals you mentioned.

[jhuls]

I haven't looked at the 2018 versions yet so I can't comment on it yet. I heard a few years ago of some having trouble with an Adobe ID user breaking a serial license but I've never seen that happen here on our campus. Up until a little over a year ago we didn't allow anyone to login to Creative Cloud on our lab systems with their Adobe ID. The installations were all serialized. Since then we still use the same serial(although we just learned Adobe is making us change this by the end of this month...grrrr) but now we let anyone sitting at a system to login with their Adobe ID into CC if they want and have not had any issues whatsoever. When I switched it, I was warned it could be an issue but it's not.

With that said have you talked to Adobe about the problem? While I have had a horrible experience with our sales rep(pure cluelessness), I've had a great experience with support with what little I've talked to them. I'm also curious if there's just something being done with the install, license, or configuration of the system that might be too "non-standard".

For what it's worth, don't get me wrong. Adobe is a major pain in my backside but it's gotten to where there are certain things I figure I just have to tolerate from them. Our main issue is the goofy installers that use to break fairly often when deploying through Casper. I think I have a solution for that now as we haven't had those issues in quite some time. I know some use disk images to deal with the same issue but I went in a different direction.

[annamentzer]

I was on a call with Adobe today regarding some issue we were running into with serial numbers and we were informed that, as of Nov 2018, using a serial number with Adobe Creative Cloud will no longer be an option. Only Adobe IDs will be used and everything will route through adminconsole.adobe.com.

While you may figure out a solution for this in the short-term, per Adobe, it may be something that you'll have to reconsider soon anyway.

[jhuls]

Interesting...we're currently in an exchange with our Adobe rep even as we speak over such changes. In our recent contract we apparently have 1 year to convert our staff and faculty here on campus over to named licensing which more or less matches up with what you're saying. However, our labs and classrooms can remain serialized.

[mconners]

Interesting replies. I have been loudly saying to Adobe for the past year, we will NOT move to named user licenses. Not only is it more expensive, from what I have read, but it requires more work to get into identity management. All of these things seem to be a deterrent to any of this.

Annual pricing:
Device License
All Apps: US $299.88/yr (per device)
Single App: US $155.88/yr (per device)
Volume discounts available

Named User License
All Apps: US $419.88/yr (per user)
Single App: US $179.88/yr (per user)
Volume discounts available

With that being said, our Adobe rep has told me the "I don’t believe there are any plans to take away the CCP tool. We’re just encouraging enterprise customers to serialize only with labs and libraries while deploying with faculty and staff in the Admin Console." We all know, things can change and sometimes without any insights from the customer. My gut is telling me, they absolutely want to move people to named user deployments using the Admin Console. I just don't see any easy path of making that work.

[jhuls]

@mconners I was told in an onboarding conference call that CCP is going away but that there isn't a timeline on it. Separate from that I've read online that it's just a matter of getting the feature added to the Dashboard to create a license.

Frankly I hate CCP as it's been nothing but problems over the years. I like the idea behind the Dashboard but it needs work like the license generator but also being able to view the specific dot version of the software you're downloading. Last I checked it's still very vague and only listed the major dot release of the software.

As for cost don't get us started. It's a crime what Adobe has done to its customers. When they went to subscription based pricing, our costs went up a minimum of four fold from what I understood from my manager and now it's going up more. There is some early talk about getting rid of Adobe software completely as the costs simply aren't sustainable. It doesn't help that our rep is either incredibly incompetent or simply doesn't care about his customers. Our contracts and licensing for CC and a separate Acrobat license have been totally bungled. This month he says we need to reserialize Acrobat and Creative Cloud by the end of November. We argued about this as it's not a good time for us and after a couple weeks of back and forth he ran it over to the Acrobat business unit to be told we were fine. Then it was CC that needed reserialized by the end of November. He argued that it was a licensing obligation and we had been told for months. Nope! I found information showing how to decode the license info listed in the text label of the license and our license doesn't expire until next year. Pointed that out and he came back with that this was correct. That just occurred today. I can't help but think he must be some Adobe manager's son who was given a job because he couldn't cut it mowing lawns or something. Hopefully others have better reps. sigh

Sorry for digressing.