Acrobat Pro as a shared app. Licensing & setup question
Posted by Desert_Dog_Tech@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 6 comments
Hello all,
I’m not sure if I’m remembering this correctly, but a year or two ago I came across a post/comment discussing how to set up Acrobat Pro as a shared application. If I recall, it was hosted on the network or on a VM (maybe RDS or similar), and users could access it either one at a time or concurrently (we maybe have less than 20 users that would use it). The OP mentioned that the setup was legal and compliant with Adobe licensing. I know that we could possibly use a service account and assign the license to that as well. We're also considering alternatives such as Foxit etc.
Does anyone know:
- What might be a way to set this up?
- Whether this can be done with a standard license key, or if it requires a specific licensing model (named user, shared device, etc.)? (we already have several keys from past purchases)
Appreciate any guidance.
Thanks!
hlloyge@reddit
What exactly are your users doing with Adobe Editor? Maybe there is some alternative which could replace that, like PDF24.
CPAtech@reddit
You still have to license ever person who will use Adobe. You can't just purchase one license and have 20 people using it.
CeC-P@reddit
Can confirm, Adobe is WAY ahead of this and will catch you no matter what you try. They're now clone-aware, VM-aware, and worse.
At a place I worked last year they had some insanely good PDF editor that blew Adobe out of the water btw. I think it was from Nuance but I googled it and that didn't look right. I'd ask them but every last person at that company can kiss my ass so probably not gonna.
Impossible_IT@reddit
Subscriptions for each Adobe app, including Acrobat DC. Contact a VAR, such as CDW.
JBD_IT@reddit
Adobe has moved to a subscription model while your keys might work you won't get any security updates or the latest feature set. Also every user who is using it needs a license for Adobe in addition to the MS user/device CALs. I know MS365 Premium includes entitlement to WIN11 but definitely not Adobe.
joshg678@reddit
So you could buy Feature Restricted License which ends up being per computer vs per user. But adobe does put some restrictions on how to purchase as you have to go through a partner vs the website.