ArcGIS Platform Usage with Organization Account

Question

This is somewhat similar to this question from a few months ago: https://community.esri.com/t5/developers-questions/commercial-use-with-quot-essentials-quot-of-arcgis

But my question is a little bit different, and relates to the types of accounts as described in https://developers.arcgis.com/documentation/mapping-apis-and-services/deployment/accounts/ . I currently have a Developer subscription that I am using to access location services as part of an application that I am building. But I also have an ArcGIS Online Organization. I'm running into a sort of curious pair of obstacles:

a - I can't manage Developer accounts through my Organization 
b - I can't deploy a commercial application through my Organization account

This is an issue because, for example, I'd like to be able to use the generateToken API on my backend to authenticate with a "user" to perform certain operations, but I am not comfortable doing that using the same account that controls my billing information. It would be better to create a restricted, special purpose user in my Organization and manage things that way.

Is there any other option? Could I somehow get / purchase the ability to deploy a commercial application through an Organization account? Or enable pay-as-you-go Platform billing through an Organization? What is a "commercial application" anyway? I couldn't find it defined anywhere in the docs.

Thanks,
Dan

John-Foster · Answer

@DanielDormont I will research this and get back to you.

DanielDormont · Answer

@John-Foster thanks for the reply, that's helpful.

I imagine it will take a fair amount of time to make any sort of change in the platform. I'm wondering if there's any alternative I can use in the mean time. For example, that same document mentions something called a Commercial App Deployment License. Is there a way I can obtain / purchase that license and then deploy a commercial application using an Organization account with that license type? I admit I am still not all that familiar with all the ArcGIS Online license types as of yet.

Thanks,

Dan

John-Foster · Answer

@DanielDormont there's a lot to unpack here.

What is a "commercial application"?

this is an application you deploy that is earning income, for example an app that you sell subscriptions, in-app purchase, or display ads and earn income from the app. See section 77 in the Product Specific Terms of Use

Esri only enables developers to deploy non-commercial applications with ArcGIS Online services and accounts. Even if you are able to solve the generateToken issue, if the account you use to generate that token is an ArcGIS Online account but your users are using it in a commercial app then that would be in violation of the terms. In order to do that you would need to generate the token with a Developer account. However, at the moment there is only one developer account in a developer organization, you cannot have multiple accounts as you asked. The account you generateToken for would be the same account that owns the subscription. Here, you can deploy your commercial app and use that account authentication for all your services, but as you point out this isn't ideal from an account administration best practice.

I'll bring this back to our team and consider how we can accommodate this workflow in the future.