topic Re: ArcGIS Pro Concurrent licensing retiring in ArcGIS Pro Questions

ArcGIS Pro Concurrent licensing retiring

GISWT — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 11:40:06 GMT

We are hoping to expand the usage and licenses of ArcGIS Pro within our organisation but have been told that we cannot purchase Concurrent licenses as they are being depreciated and our only option is named user. We are a small organisation with only 2 core GIS users and many adhoc users, when they need to use ArcGIS it is for short-term projects and tasks, often with quick turnaround. It is not viable for us to buy licenses for all of these users but having to manually assign licenses as and when a user needs one also creates a major blocker for us in the system (what if the admins are unavailable, which is highly likely).

Has anyone else come up against this issue and been forced down the named user path? How are you managing the situation? I can't find any documentation or Esri communication about this change and can imagine many more companies will have similar difficulties. The only thing I can find is it almost happened in 2016 but in 2017 Esri back tracked because of user discontent.

Re: ArcGIS Pro Concurrent licensing retiring

ZachBodenner — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 13:57:44 GMT

From what I recall discussing this issue with ESRI, the backtracking you mentioned wasn't actually a complete backtrack - basically what they did is determine that any organization that already had concurrent licensure got to keep it, but no new organizations could go down that route. From everything I've read, you are kind of in a tough spot and you're reading the situation correctly. You can only get named user licenses if you don't already have a concurrent license deployment.

Someone with more experience can definitely correct me though, I hope I'm wrong!

Re: ArcGIS Pro Concurrent licensing retiring

BillFox — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 21:30:52 GMT

do you have options to stand up some web app builder types of viewers that could meet your ad hoc user's needs?

Re: ArcGIS Pro Concurrent licensing retiring

GISWT — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 15:45:33 GMT

Thanks Bill, this will cover some of their needs but not all as often the adhoc users have needs that are very focused in the Desktop environment, producing drawings or conducting analysis that can't be done in the web environment. Some of this work can be pushed onto a dedicated team but not all of it. Particularly things like drawing production is in the skillset of many more users, we have lots of small projects with limited budget and it's better to keep that to people focused on the projects who know their data and deliverables. Whereas the dedicated team will also be needed for other more complex scripting/developer tasks not necessarily in the desktop environment and I don't want to limit them to basic work such as drawings just because they're the ones with the licenses. We do use QGIS where possible but we have some particular tools in ArcGIS developed for analysis workflows or for things like map series that we don't want to (and in some cases can't) redevelop in QGIS.

Re: ArcGIS Pro Concurrent licensing retiring

BillFox — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 16:28:12 GMT

do the license levels help any to maybe move some to basic vs standard vs advanced or are they needing all advanced?

Re: ArcGIS Pro Concurrent licensing retiring

RandyKreuziger1 — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 22:38:47 GMT

Wow, we have an ELA and concurrent licenses. We have over 400 users who log into Pro over the course of a year but maybe only 45 core users. Without a developer to create some simple targeted web applications those users still need Pro now and then. I think it could be a big win for QGIS.

Re: ArcGIS Pro Concurrent licensing retiring

SheriNorton — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 18:07:21 GMT

Our County was just informed that the cost for our annual maintenance in 2025+ will go up ~ $8,000 and yanks all our flexible concurrent Pro desktop licenses in "exchange" for either Professional or Creator strictly named seats. We currently have 13 concurrent licenses (2 Advanced, 6 Standard, 5 Basic) shared by 5 core users (every day, all day) and 15+ additional mixed frequent-sporadic users. This represents an enormous investment to purchase and maintain to meet the needs of our staff. To suddenly face the stark change ESRI will impose is infuriating and deeply disappointing.

I had not seriously considered QGIS, but we may face no choice in the near future.

Re: ArcGIS Pro Concurrent licensing retiring

ChelseaRozek — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 20:16:32 GMT

I'm considering dropping our Basic licenses to help offset the difference. They don't seem very helpful since they can't edit. Do you have users who only use the Basic level? Would hate to get rid of them and miss some obvious benefit aside from cheaper cost

Re: ArcGIS Pro Concurrent licensing retiring

DavidBollinger — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 15:34:29 GMT

Hi Sherri, I feel your pain - or likely will soon. We're a rural County with 16Adv, 9Std, 4Bas, all concurrent, and current maintenance for those is right at $40k/yr. I've not yet heard officially, but I've "done the math" just as prep, if forced to convert to subscription. As of today: 16*4200+9*2200+4*700 ~= $90k. About a $50k/yr increase, ie more than double. It already feels like our GIS is operating on a shoe-string budget, so I have no idea how we'd manage that sort of increase. (and last time I checked, a suitable ELA was FAR outside our range, so that's probably still not a viable alternative either)

Re: ArcGIS Pro Concurrent licensing retiring

SheriNorton — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 19:44:25 GMT

We're just over the Small Gov ELA (only time great demographic trends are a bummer), so that's not a feasible path. We'll spend the next 11 months really looking at our users needs and try to eval whether to downgrade (or simply eliminate) licenses. This would have been somewhat easier to stomach and fund if the increases had been gradual the past 10-12 years, rather than such an enormous jump at once.

Re: ArcGIS Pro Concurrent licensing retiring

SheriNorton — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 19:52:39 GMT

These new levels are all so new to me, honestly. We do have quite a few staff that are only using a Basic (ArcView!!! - yes, showing my vintage here) license to review data and make some maps. They're fine editing local Shapefiles, so as long as that capability exists I think the Basic licenses will be OK.

Re: ArcGIS Pro Concurrent licensing retiring

ZachBodenner — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 20:23:02 GMT

ESRI has been trying to nudge organizations in this direction for a while now. Up until a few years ago they let you convert concurrent licenses to named users a little bit cheaper but that's no longer offered. It's a pretty disappointing that their stance has always been that concurrent licenses aren't going away if you already have them, only to finally pull the plug without a ton of warning. Their stance is that the simplified user roles mean that products that used to require additional licensure no longer do, but the fact is that the new user roles are so expensive that most of the time it doesn't matter.

Re: ArcGIS Pro Concurrent licensing retiring

vnixon — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 20:51:32 GMT

I unfortunately only learned about this imminent deprecation from a Reddit post 2-3 months ago. My plan is to convert as many of our desktop workflows to web gis as possible to reduce the impact of the price increase. I work in a State agency with almost 200 ArcGIS Pro users, 100% on concurrent use licenses. Usage ranges from occasional basic data exploration that may be replaceable with web applications to full-time advanced analysis and development that will continue to require ArcGIS Pro. Luckily we do not need to purchase new licenses this year but we are in a very tight budget year, short-staffed on our central GIS team, and very worried about the following:

An estimated tripling of our bill if we were to simply convert our concurrent license users to named licenses
The time needed to research potentially dozens of GIS workflows, develop replacement web applications, and train users
Feeling like a frog in slowly boiling water and not knowing how quickly the cost of maintaining our concurrent use licenses will increase and when exactly they will be deprecated

Re: ArcGIS Pro Concurrent licensing retiring

Bud — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 16:10:33 GMT

This isn't my area of expertise, but are you able to push back and insist that you be grandfathered in since you already have concurrent licensing?

Re: ArcGIS Pro Concurrent licensing retiring

ZachBodenner — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 12:32:48 GMT

During conversations with my account manager, I didn't exactly push back, but I did not get the impression it was an option to avoid the new user model.

Re: ArcGIS Pro Concurrent licensing retiring

SimonSchütte_ct — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 10:11:06 GMT

@vnixon "not knowing how quickly the cost of maintaining our concurrent use licenses will increase and when exactly they will be deprecated"

The concurrent use license model is directly linked to ArcMap. It was never possible to buy ArcGIS Pro concurrent use licenses. They were part of the ArcMap license to help the transition to ArcGIS Pro.

If you have perpetual licenses for ArcMap, you can keep using the accompanying ArcGIS Pro license as well. With the End of Life of ArcMap in 2026, maintanance will also end. Therefore, you can continue using the Software in the last version that will be released in 2026. (To my knowledge)

If you want to use the latest ArcGIS Pro version after the end of life date of ArcMap, you need to switch to named user based licenses managed in ArcGIS Online or Enterprise (based on the information available at this point in time). I for example did not hear anything about an maintanance increase for 2025+ or that it even is an option to continue maintanance for concurrent use licenses beyond 2026, but maybe this is region/industry specific. Best discuss the migration strategy with your account manager.

"With the upcoming retirement of ArcGIS Desktop, the ArcGIS named user model will be the only method for licensing ArcGIS. The ArcGIS Pro licensing methods that we knew until now, such as Single Use and Concurrent Use, will be deprecated."
Information source: Esri Spain

Re: ArcGIS Pro Concurrent licensing retiring

ChelseaRozek — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 13:37:37 GMT

That's the first I've heard that we would be version locked at the last version of Pro that was available when ArcMap reaches its end of life, or maybe I just didn't understand the ramifications of any previous communication. Whatever the truth is, ESRI definitely needs to make more and clearer communication about what's going to happen.

Re: ArcGIS Pro Concurrent licensing retiring

DavidBollinger — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 14:30:17 GMT

Existing concurrent licenses could fail (ie be unable support latest release of Pro) sooner than 2026. The "10.1 - 10.8" block of ArcMap concurrent license that also licenses up to latest (currently 3.3) Pro may only go so far, and is the last version of Desktop license that we'll see. (just as the prior license block for 10.0 only went "so far" (edited, bc version correlation may have been wrong, but those details aren't important))

For example, upon the release of "Pro 4.0" (could be even earlier, whatever version cut-off they choose) it seems reasonable to expect that ALL former "you get Pro with Desktop" licensing would fail - because there's no more Desktop concurrent licensing AT ALL* as of 7/1/2024 (e.g. don't expect a "Desktop 10.9" license that includes "Pro 4.0"). I get that, we all know Desktop is going away, and has been expected, but they're closing doors on existing licenses in other ways sooner than expected.

*That also means existing licenses can't be upgraded either - which is how I learned about all of this in the first place, while attempting to upgrade a Desktop+Pro from basic to advanced. I did literally ask regarding a supposedly "grandfathered" concurrent license, and was told that the ONLY WAY forward was to acquire a Prof+ named license.

Re: ArcGIS Pro Concurrent licensing retiring

LindsayRaabe_FPCWA — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 05:13:09 GMT

Always ask the question - we've had a few scenarios where things were "not possible" that later have seemed to indeed be possible (with some wrangling).

Re: ArcGIS Pro Concurrent licensing retiring

MJB — Wed, 04 Sep 2024 15:16:12 GMT

Someone goofed because my county engineering office just received our renewal quote and it still includes the concurrent use licenses we've been rolling with for a while. I reached out to our account manager, something doesn't seem right...