Autodesk in Virtual Environments and What is "Allowed"

Yesterday at Autodesk University 2018, I attended a session (SD227281) that was supposed to be about "Best Practices for Virtualizing Your Autodesk Software."  What ended up happening was some sort of confusing and illogical announcement about new Terms and Conditions around what is allowed and what is not allowed in terms of licensing models for virtualized environments.  To categorize this session as devolving into an infuriating train wreck would be an accurate description.

After cooling down and doing some research yesterday I am even more confused, and some of what we heard was seemingly wrong.

First I'll summarize what was "announced" and what was discussed in that session by the two senior Autodesk people (John Looper and Chris Kayser).

Announced in the presentation:

Autodesk will permit virtualization for:

- Subscriptions with single-user access

- Enterprise Business Agreements

- Server-based components (Think Autodesk Licensing Server, etc.)

Autodesk will not permit virtualization for:

- Subscriptions with multi-user access (aka Network Licensing)

- Maintenance plans (the prior perpetual licensing with subscription)

- Virtualized Autodesk applications are now supported in a "best effort" level.

- "In the past (Autodesk) licensing terms and conditions largely prohibited virtualization"

Discussed in Q&A:

- Virtualization is allowed in any licensing situation on some machines (example was a Macintosh running Parallels).  It is unclear what makes this different or allowed.

- One (User) to One (Hardware) delivered remotely is also allowed (and not considered virtualization)

- Virtualized instances using Network licensing is not allowed (confirmation)

- Many questions circulated around Network licensing and prior guidance (from Autodesk and Partners) that was the way to virtualize.  Chris Kayser stated many times this was always incorrect, and was never the case.

- It was indicated that we should contact our partners (resellers) or Autodesk to deal with any issues here.  Meanwhile partners in the room had no clue what they were talking about.

- There was an indication that one off exceptions have been granted (stated) and may be granted (inferred).

- Questions were asked if there was any differentiation between full Virtual Desktops and session based Virtual Desktops or Applications.  Short answer no.  Follow-ups afterwards made it seem like these use cases were a foreign concept to those answering the questions.

Ok... so this should be very confusing...

1.) Network licensing has always been the way to virtualize.  The statement that this was "wrong and misguided" is false.  See the following Autodesk articles that state this clearly from multiple teams:

Which licensing methods are supported for virtual environments?  

At this time only Network Licensing is supported in virtual environments.

Source: https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/inventor-products/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Frequently-Asked-Questions-about-running-Inventor-in-a-Virtual-Environment-Citrix-or-VMware.html

Also see an article from the Revit PM team (former Revit Product Manager) stating:

Does the permission to install on a virtual machine apply to all license types?

Yes, but the additional provisions of each license type must also be satisfied to maintain compliance with the LSA. For example, while Stand-alone licenses of Autodesk software may be installed on virtual machines, sessions depending on such licenses must be accessed through the hardware directly supporting the virtual machine, not through a network connection. Access to remote sessions of Autodesk software over a network is only permitted if you have a Network License.

Source: https://insidethefactory.typepad.com/my_weblog/2014/09/licensing-and-virtualization.html

2.) The acceptable ways to virtualize have some issues...

First there is little to no information about Autodesk Enterprise Business Agreements... Most companies have a minimum size or minimum number of licenses to engage in these.  I could be wrong in this instance but after tons of time looking I have no answers here.

Secondly, single user licenses don't work in non-persistant environments.  Machines change daily and licenses become invalidated.  Also, users have been asking for SSO (SAML or the like) support for Autodesk accounts and so far we have nothing.  Note: in asking questions about SSO, it was indicated Autodesk is testing SSO with customers now (finally).

3.) The stated goal of this announcement was to clarify.  But currently terms and conditions are not updated (https://www.autodesk.com/company/terms-of-use/en/general-terms#use) and indicate that all virtualization is not allowed and neither is remote access of those licenses (both contradicted tons of other places).

Additionally every additional answer confused things.  What used to be the way to do this, is now the only way you can't... Virtualization is allowed on a Mac and Remote access is allowed on 1 to 1 hardware (both are not allowed per this terms of use).  It was quite clear the people announcing the policy either had no clue about the technology and use cases of their customers, or are intentionally trying to make things difficult in order to eliminate licensing options in the future.

The only thing I can find that outlines these "new" policies is the following site:

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/customer-service/download-install/install-software/virtual-installation

Nothing else indicates these, and I would argue this site is no more an authoritative source than the others in this article or the Terms and Conditions stating nothing is allowed.

Update: Apparently there are separate Terms and Conditions for subscription here: https://www.autodesk.com/company/terms-of-use/en/subscription-benefits#virtualization

Also there is a post mirroring this information here:
https://admin.autodesk.com/articles/setting-the-record-straight-can-i-virtualize-my-autodesk-software

The statements in this article confirm a lack of understanding.

1.) The definition of virtualization only refers/applies to application virtualization (shared, session based applications).  There is no mention of Virtualized Desktop applications.

2.) The indication that licensing can not be confirmed without named user licensing is false.  There is no issue with network licensing when it comes to 1 (VM) to 1 (User) scenarios.  If anything, a single user could pull multiple licenses when in other scenarios only 1 is needed.

Breaking this down:

This makes no sense... Network licensing is the logical way to handle this situation (except possibly in the session based scenarios, in which I need more information).  Take our use case for example...

Users are allocated non-persistent virtual desktops using full installs of Windows 10.  When they login (to a fresh, new desktop every day), they pull a license for the product they use from the network license server.  When they close, the licenses returns.  There is no way to over use the licenses, and if anything we use multiple licenses per person if multiple years of software are being used.

Single user licenses would not work in this scenario.  User licenses would be invalidated on every login.  Without single sign on, users would be forced to login every day to their Autodesk account.

Additionally, questions were asked regarding existing multi-user licenses (bought at a premium) that now are not allowed to do the thing they were bought for.  Buying new single user license would mean an increase in cost (due to current promotions for users moving from perpetual to subscription disappearing on new purchases).  There was no answer here either.

So in summary, nobody knows, Autodesk is clueless, and well meaning users may be currently breaking licensing agreements.  I hope this session and the "feedback" (outcry) opens the eyes of the Autodesk employees driving this "new policy", but I fear that may not be the case...