Exciting Changes in ShareVis Licensing

ShareVis has recently made some significant and exciting changes in their licensing model.  Up to this point, ShareVis’ licensing model was very basic; organizations deploying ShareVis purchased one enterprise license per SharePoint Web Front End.  ShareVis now has licensing based on a rental model and based on a usage model. 

ShareVis’ traditional license allowed companies to deploy an unlimited number of workflows for an unlimited number of users.  As a ShareVis user, you would purchase a single, enterprise license for each of your SharePoint Web Front Ends and be done with it.  ShareVis found that while this licensing model worked for most of their prospective clients, there were two constituencies under-served by this approach.  Prospective clients who needed to deploy one or two ShareVis processes to a small number of users, and those who wanted to evaluate ShareVis for an extended period of time were both left without a palatable option.

With this in mind, ShareVis recently released two new license types: the per deployed process license and the rental license.

Per Deployed Process

With the per deployed process license, the client pays a one-time fee for the ShareVis engine and then an additional charge for each process they choose to deploy on top of that engine.  The cost of the engine as well as the cost of each deployed process is credited toward the purchase of the unlimited ShareVis enterprise license such that the 11th deployed process converts the license over to the enterprise version.  The per deployed process license allows companies to deploy each process to an unlimited amount of users.

Rental

With ShareVis’ new licensing options, customers may choose to rent ShareVis on a month-to-month basis.  Some choose to rent ShareVis for an extended evaluation.  In other situations, a company may not be able to get a capital budget for the one-time purchase of ShareVis’ unlimited enterprise license, but may be able to expense the ongoing use of the software to support normal operations.  Just like with the per deployed process license, 100% of the rental fees are applied to the eventual purchase of an unlimited ShareVis enterprise license.  The rental license allows companies to deploy an unlimited number of processes to an unlimited number of users.

Test Licensing

Any discussion of enterprise software licensing would be remiss not to touch upon test and development licenses.  ShareVis supports the industry best practice of maintaining a test/development environment by providing all licensed users with a corresponding license for use in a non-production environment.  As with the enterprise license of ShareVis, the test licenses do not have restrictions on the number of users or number of processes.  If you have questions about ShareVis licensing and which model is right for you, please contact us.

Tags: best practices, SharePoint, SharePoint Web Front End, ShareVis, ShareVis licensing, test environment, workflow