Allow Portal/AGOL to support Concurrent Use Licensing

[JohnDye2]

Currently, if you want to convert your Pro licenses from Named User to Concurrent Use licensing, you have to make that conversion at My Esri and then license Pro in ArcGIS License Manager, which under the hood is just Flexera's terrible FlexNet Publisher.

There are 2 big issues with this:

• I don't want to run a server just for License Manager/FlexNet. 

Yes. I could technically install License Manager on a Portal or Server machine and not have to run an extra server.

• FlexNet doesn't really work very well. It's slow. Cumbersome. Riddled with bugs and Esri can't fix it because its not their software.

Portal for ArcGIS (Portal) and ArcGIS Online (AGOL), meanwhile can license ArcGIS Pro under the Named User Licensing model. Meaning, I can assign a Pro license to Jane Doe in Portal/AGOL and whenever Jane initializes Pro, if she is assigned a Pro license then everything works as expected.

What I can't do in Portal/AGOL is authorize a user for access to a concurrent license of ArcGIS Professional because Portal does not support concurrent use licensing. Instead, I'm required to "assign" a Pro license to Jane, meaning that Pro license is essentially reserved for Jane and that Jane only. So if I have 10 licenses of ArcGIS Pro in my organization and 20 potential users, I have to run a License Server in order to support a concurrent use licensing model.

I'd like to see Portal/AGOL support the Concurrent Use licensing.

Under this scenario, an Administrator could either "assign" or "authorize" a license for a given user.

If an Administrator "authorized" a Pro license for Jane Doe, then when Jane initializes Pro, it would query Portal/AGOL for her "authorizations" and see that she us "authorized" access to a Pro license. Pro would then request a Pro license from Portal and Portal would either grant one or deny the request based on current availability in its Pro licensing pool.

Conversely, if the Administrator wanted Jane to always have access to ArcGIS Pro and never run into issues around license exhaustion, then the Administrator could "assign" a Pro license to her, which would essentially reserve one of the Pro licenses for Jane so that she never ran into a situation where there were no licenses available.

It seems like this could work pretty seamlessly with the new User Types setup in AGOL. Further, if this could some how be integrated into ArcMap/Catalog/Globe/Scene as well and allow this workflow for all extensions, it would allow virtually all organizations that use Concurrent Use Licensing to get rid of License Manager and do all of their licensing in Portal/AGOL.

[JohnMDye]

bump

[AbelPerez]

Yes!!! I would love this. My issue is my companie's VPN. To get a concurrent license for ArcMap we have to VPN to our network. Sometimes getting a license works and sometimes it doesn't. For ArcGIS Pro, as stated above, the license for a single named user can be had through the ESRI portal and we don't have to VPN to the company network. Works great. Except it doesn't support concurrent licensing through the ESRI portal. Seems to me that all the technology is there to do this.

[JohnMDye]

It occurred to me this morning that if this could be supported, there could also be an ability to associate specific Pro core and extension licenses with memberships in specific Active Directory groups

[StephanieLeusink]

Yes! this approach of being able to 'authorize' multiple users to access licenses or extensions under the Named User license model, rather than having to assign them on an individual and as-needed basis would be a huge timesaver and would remove a bottleneck. We currently have many Basic licenses but a limited number of Advanced licenses and only a couple licenses for key extensions. The Advanced and extension licenses are used for shorter periods of time, specific to the needs of the task at hand, and they are shared between multiple users. Right now, anytime someone needs to access these, they have to contact an AGOL Admin who has to go in and assign them the license. Sometimes this also means checking with a previous user to make sure they are not still using that extension so that it can be unassigned and then reassigned.

Operating on a concurrent basis within AGOL would be much more efficient for organizations who share licenses. That way, several named users are authorized to access a license and the license is only in use as long as they have Pro open. If it is already in use, they will have to wait until it is released - exactly the same as with concurrent licensing in Desktop, just handled within AGOL. Under this model, it would still be important for an Admin to be able to view who is currently using the license, so that they can coordinate usage if conflicts arise.

[TracySchloss]

I know this is an old thread, but I'll add that we have been running a License Manager on a PC for years, not on a server, and that has worked just fine for us.    We used to have it running on its own server, but realized that wasn't necessary.  We are a large organization, and our users are spread across a wide area, not just in this building, and it's still fine.  

[JohnMDye]

Sure. That's really no different though, is it? Its still a system that needs to always be powered on and running. You already have that in Portal. Not to mention the hassle of updating options files, rereading licenses, managing extensions - it could all be done through a Portal interface and if you are cool with Named User Licensing for Pro, then in fact it can.

Still a major oversight in my opinion which Esri seems to have no intention of resolving.

[DerekWaggenspack]

Resurrecting this idea with the outset that ESRI is again planning to terminate concurrent use licensing.  We NEED concurrent use licensing in ArcGIS Enterprise due to some people in the org only needing the software 1 or 2 times a year. Having to play a shell game with limited licenses is an administrative NIGHTMARE and having a pool of licenses assigned to a group makes SIGNIFICANTLY more sense when only a handful of users regularly need access to a desktop license.