Guys,

What exactly is a site licence? We currently have a site licence, on the licence sheet it says 127 units, but we use it on I would say 135 computers (8 more than stated, I alone have it on 3 machines, Mac, XP, Win 2000). Isn't purchasing a site licence covering the use of FileMaker on every computer on that site? or are site licences based on individual machines?

Cheers

Jalz

What a "site license" is depends on the developer.

But it would be silly to sell a license for "every computer on a site". That could be 10, 50 or 1,000 or more!

It sounds to me like you need to up the seat-count of your Filemaker Pro site license to cover the number of seats you have it installed on.

Look like it's pretty similar to volume licensing. See here:

http://www.filemaker.com/downloads/pdf/datasheet_bus_gov_SLA.pdf

or

http://www.filemaker.com/downloads/pdf/datasheet_ESLA.pdf

"But it would be silly to sell a license for "every computer on a site". That could be 10, 50 or 1,000 or more!"

Usually "site licenses" cover all machines in a site or organisation (depending on the wording of the license agreement) and it's not silly, it's very good business. One annual payment covers everybody without having to do a head count.

Government and academic instutions often negotiate site licenses. I worked at a university where the site license covered all 5,000 staff member's office and home computers across multiple physical locations, and even extended to allowing all 20,000 students a license for free for academic (non-commercial) use.

However as Ender says it's probably not a site license, it's a volume license agreement (VLA).

And you're out of license with those numbers. Better get the extra copies added.

For complete details about the site license program contact your FMI sales rep as the information I have may be inaccurate or outdated.

A site license, formerly known as a box set, allows you to install any combination of FMP product on any number of computers up to the limit of the license, if any. You could, for example, install 50 copies of server and 50 copies of pro in a site license scenario. FMI typically calculates the price of the license on a per-employee basis (i.e. total employees, not just total FMP users) for the organization and the license sometimes permits additional installations (e.g. for education they will allow teachers to install FMP on a home computer).

This is different from a volume license which allows you to install on up to the specified number of machines. With a volume license you purchase licenses for each product (e.g. 3 servers, 120 pro, 5 pro advanced) and are only allowed to install that many copies.

I believe you need to re-negotiate the site license if the terms of the license have changed materially. For example, if you had 127 employees when the license was negotiated but have since added an additional 50 employees you may need to contact FMI to ensure your usage is still within the terms of the license.

At one point I had calculated the costs of a "typical" FMP install (one server advanced and pro advanced per 25 pro users) and found the break-even point between site license and volume license to be about 55 users based on quotes at the time. This assumes that most employees in a organization will be users.

As with volume licenses, maintenance is available with the site license at additional cost.

This thread brings up some questions for me and maintenance. Our company is now up to purchase maintenance again...20+ users and Fm Server. I believe it's going to cost us 2000$+

Not knowing what features will be included in the next version it's a tough call to decide whether it's worth it. We upgraded last year from 6 to 8.5. The features in 8 were enough for us to want to upgrade. We purchased maintenance knowing 9 would be out within the next year and it was only I believe 300$+ because we bought it along with Server and all the clients.

Is it worth it to purchase maintenance now not knowing what features may be included? Seems that it may be a waste of money considering upgrading the clients would not cost that much more IF there are features that we are wanting. We may even be able to upgarde certain clients to use the new features providing that the next version is backwards compatible, which I think it will be.

What are your thoughts on this?

Michael

I think the maintenance is worth it. It's much cheaper than paying the upgrade price after you're already behind. Also, I'd say it's generally easier for a company to annually budget for a something like this, rather than the company getting used to paying nothing annually, then have you come to them every three years asking for a boatload of money when you pretty much have to upgrade because of OS or hardware changes.

I'm with Ender on this one - as we let our maintenance lapse after 5.5.

4 years later we coughed up £4000 ($8000) for our 30 users and server as we had to rebuy as new.

We had to maintain OS 9 systems until last year so I couldn't upgrade even to v7, but we still had to upgrade the kit aswell.

Thanks guys. That's basically what I was kinda thinking. I Mean it works out to about 170$ a month. To keep everyone upgraded. Not to mention if ever needed Filemaker Tech Support.

Michael