Cloud licensing FAQ

Review the FAQ to learn more about the Automation Anywhere Cloud licensing.

Cloud licensing introduction

What is Cloud licensing?
The Automation Anywhere Cloud licensing is a centralized way for managing and distributing licenses across various applications and deployment models. With Cloud licensing, all licenses purchased by the customers are consolidated into a shared pool of licenses on our Automation Anywhere Cloud.

Automation Anywhere applications such as Cloud Control Room or On-Premises Control Room connect to this Automation Anywhere Cloud license server to access licenses for user assignment and utilization. This centralized way of managing license provides customers the flexibility to access, release, and consume the licenses from different applications across different Control Room instances and deployment setups.

cloud-license-serverAutomation Anywhere license server is hosted on Automation Anywhere Cloud in the US-West region. It contains customer software license entitlement information for all our customers. The Cloud license server retrieves product sales information from our Order Management System every two minutes and converts it into customer specific license entitlements. The license entitlement information is then made available for Control Room instances to download and enable users and features based on the purchased licenses.

Automation 360 Cloud and on-premises Control Room instances connect over a HTTPS or TLS1.3 connection and register with the Cloud license server using the Control Room license key (GUID). The Control Room license server identifies the customer based on the license key used during the registration process. On successful registration, the Control Room downloads license entitlement information specific to the customer every 24 hours and uses the information to assign licenses to the Control Room users. The Control Room also uses the same information to enable different features and enforces volume-based license counts such as, number of pages, number of documents, number of APIs, and Recommendations. The Control Room also sends aggregated license consumption information to the license server.

Why is Cloud licensing important?
The Cloud license server is important as it offers customers the flexibility to use Automation Anywhere products and the licenses from all their different Control Room instances and deployment models.
Cloud licensing meets contractual compliance requirements, provides consumption telemetry, and supports features like license grouping and grace period. It provides entitlements for various Automation Anywhere products, such as the following:
  • Bot Runner, Bot Creator, Automation Co-Pilot
  • Document Automation
  • Feature-based licenses such as the Enterprise Platform license
  • Automator AI Platform Base license
  • API Task
What is file-based licensing and why was it discontinued?
File-based licensing (the legacy Automation Anywhere licensing method) has been discontinued due to complexity, management overhead, scalability, and compliance challenges. This is now replaced with Cloud licensing. The following products are not supported with file-based licensing:
  • Document Automation (with the exception of IQ Bot)
  • Feature-based licenses such as the Enterprise Platform license and Automator AI Platform Base license and Recommendations
  • API Task

Cloud licensing prerequisites

What are Cloud licensing prerequisites?

As Automation Anywhere is a centralized license server and is hosted on Automation Anywhere Cloud, our applications such as Cloud and on-premises Control Room instances need connectivity to this Cloud license server.

Cloud Control Room instances are automatically provisioned with GUID licenses to access licenses from the license server. You must provide Control Room GUID licenses to on-premises Control Room at the time of initial setup. On renewal, both on-premises and Cloud Control Room instances will need to be provided with the renewal GUID licenses.

The connectivity to license server is important because it provides users with the flexibility of assigning, releasing, and consuming licenses between the different Control Room instances across different deployment models. This connectivity to a central source of license information provides a one-stop view of purchased and available licenses from all the Control Room instances belonging to a customer.

Connectivity to the Cloud license server is used only to retrieve information about customer purchased licenses. Without this connectivity the Control Room will not be able to validate license information thereby impacting users' ability to allocate and release licenses. Long durations of no connectivity to the Cloud license server will result in Control Room getting locked out thereby impacting ongoing automatons.

Cloud licensing connectivity

Why is connectivity to Cloud important from on-premises Control Room?

Cloud connectivity from on-premises Control Room to Automation Anywhere Cloud is increasingly becoming important for the following reasons:

  • Delivering regular product and package updates
  • Leveraging Generative AI capabilities using LLMs to improve document processing accuracy and reliability for our on-premises customers
  • Using Cloud licensing to distribute new product licenses to on-premises Control Room instances
Is the connectivity to the Cloud license server secure?
Connectivity from on-premises Control Room instances to the Cloud license server is secured through HTTPS protocol, where the Control Room initiates the connection to the Cloud hosted license server. Inbound access ports need not be opened to the customer's network. The connectivity from the license server is over HTTPS/TLS 1.3 and supports multiple security features to restrict the connectivity. Traffic over this connectivity is encrypted using RSA256 algorithm.
Remarque : This proxy server feature is available from Automation 360.30 release onwards.

Connectivity to the Cloud hosted license service can be routed using a proxy server. This allows the customer to enforce any security policies at the proxy server level and allows restricted access from the on-premises Control Room.

Automation Anywhere Cloud license server supports a static IP address. This IP address does not change, and the customer can use this IP address to enforce security and provide restricted access to the license server.

Connectivity from the on-premises Control Room instances to Cloud license server is authenticated using a proprietary keys-based authentication. Therefore, the authentication session itself is encrypted.

Cloud licensing data transfer

What kind of data is exchanged over the secure connection to the Cloud license server?
The connectivity from the on-premises Control Room instance to the Cloud license server is used only to exchange license related information. Here is a list of information that is exchanged that displays there is no exchange of customer's user or business related information.
  • Customer account name
  • Control Room GUID license that is entered by the customer
  • Customer purchased license types and counts
  • On-Premises Control Room URL
  • Consumed user license counts
  • Consumed volume license counts
What happens if there is a loss of connectivity to the license server?
Connectivity to the Cloud License Server is checked every 6 hours using a keep-alive heartbeat. Loss of connectivity pushes the Control Room into a fail-safe mode.
  • For the first 48 hours after the loss of connectivity, the customer will not be able to install any new GUID license nor assign or unassign any licenses to the user.
  • For the next 30 days, the Control Room will not be able to download any new license information nor install any new GUID license because of lack of connectivity. During this time, user will be allowed to assign user licenses based on the last known license available counts.
  • After 30 days of continued lack of connectivity, Control Room will get locked, and all the automations will stop. The customer must install new license GUID to access the Control Room.
How frequently is license information downloaded from the license server to the Control Room?

Connectivity to the Cloud license server is used to pull license data from the license Cloud. This license data is synced using the following cadence:

  • License data is pulled from the license server every 24 hours.
  • Every time a license GUID is installed in the Control Room.
  • Every time a license is assigned or unassigned to a user.
  • Every time a manual license sync operation is performed by the user.

Conversion from file licensing to Cloud licensing

Why is it necessary to move to Cloud Licensing?

File-based licensing is a legacy way of licensing our products and it has been discontinued with no new planned enhancements. File-based licensing is functionally restrictive and is being replaced with Cloud licensing. All new products from now will only be supported with Cloud licensing. File licensing will eventually be phased out when we announce end of life for it. Hence it is important for customer to move to Cloud licensing

Cloud licensing on the other hand provides customers with the flexibility to use Automation Anywhere products and their licenses from all their different Control Room instances and deployment models. It will support all new products and innovations from Automation Anywhere.

How do I convert customer licenses from file licensing to Cloud licensing?

Converting your licenses from a file licensing to Cloud licensing is a straightforward and seamless process. This transition can be accomplished without any disruption to your operations. Follow these steps:

  1. Ensure that your on-premises Control Room has connectivity to the Automation Anywhere Cloud license server at https://license.automationanywhere.digital. You can use the network proxy feature using the information in Configure forward proxy settings section or use the Cloud license server static IP address to configure firewall rules to allow access to the Cloud license server.
  2. Contact your account team or customer support to begin the conversion of your licenses from file-based to Cloud-based licensing. This can be done by creating a support ticket.
  3. The Automation Anywhere order management team will handle the conversion of your file-based entitlements to Cloud licenses. Once processed, you can view the converted Cloud licenses and Control Room license GUIDs on your Licenses and Cloud Services portal at https://apeople.automationanywhere.com/s/Licenses.
  4. After the licenses are converted, you must enter the Control Room license GUIDs from Manage Cloud Licenses tab of your Licenses and Cloud Services portal at https://apeople.automationanywhere.com/s/Licenses into all your on-premises Control Room instances. See Modèle de licence GUID.
Remarque : Once you have transitioned to the Cloud-based licensing, reverting to the file-based licensing is not possible.

This process ensures a smooth migration to Cloud licensing, maintaining continuity in your operations.