A few days ago, I got a request from one Microsoft Customer regarding PPM. They are using Project Professional to track their projects and they were considering to move to Project Server.
They asked me several questions, and today, I want to talk about two:
1. What licenses do I need?
You need a lot of stuff. Operating system for your server (Windows Server), SQL for your database (it seems that SQL express is not valid anymore), SharePoint Server, Project Server, CALs, and Project Professional 2016 or higher. Get the calculator and build your budget. You can take a look at the requirements at: https://docs.microsoft.com/es-es/project/software-requirements-for-project-server-2019
2. If I use the web access, should I have the full functionality from Project Professional?
Project Server is somehow, a big database where all your individual projects (treated as so in Project Professional) are together, and available to your organization. Project Server will not give you all the capabilities of Project Professional (maybe only 30-40%). But, does it make sense to have PWA without Project Professional? No doubt the answer is NO. PWA without Project Professional makes no sense.
The common situation in this case is that all the individual projects of the customer, are subprojects of a bigger project. This may work, but it will give you a lot of problems. Working with projects and subprojects, take a lot of resources, simultaneous users editing the file, corrupt file... and it is something from the past. Project Server is able to manage all this situation easily and fast.
Do not forget about PowerBI! Once you use it, you will love it!
Now it is your turn to move forward...