December 22, 2011
Liaison Technologies Deploys Agilis’s Orion Network Licensing Platform; Case Study Published.
Today we announced that Liaison has deployed our Orion Network Licensing Platform to manage licenses for their Protect family of data-security solutions. Several license models are now in production, including activation of node-locked licenses on disconnected systems, trial licensing and enterprise licensing, all managed from our Acropolis On-demand Managed Licensing Service.
These Liaison products protect financial and personal data that run on isolated systems in security zones, so Orion’s support for activation of node-locked licenses on disconnected systems was essential. Dameion Dorsner, Lead Software Architect for Liaison, noted: “Orion’s disconnected mode allows us to issue node-locked licenses on isolated systems with no operations overhead for Liaison”.
Liaison does allow users to relocate their licenses, but thanks to Orion’s secure license-relocation mechanism users cannot exceed their licensed number of installations. For larger customers Liaison also offers Orion’s enterprise-licensing model, whereby hundreds of licenses are managed in a single pool.
Liaison chose to use Agilis’s Acropolis service for hosting the Orion Server, in order to eliminate the setup and ongoing operations overhead from hosting the server internally. The Acropolis service includes all the necessary hardware, software, connectivity, 24×7 support and service management, all from a Tier 1 datacenter. “I have never known Acropolis to be down” noted Michelle McElroy, Liaison’s Senior Product Specialist.
To here to see the Liaison case study.
November 15, 2011
EasyLicenser documentation now online
We just published the full technical documentation for our EasyLicenser License Manager – it is available here: EasyLicenser Documentation.
Now developers and software publishers can find out about EasyLicenser without even having to download the evaluation package – which is of course still available free of charge here: EasyLicenser Evaluation Package.
September 27, 2011
New case study published on pay-per-use licensing
We just published a case study of how Smartesting, a French company, is using Orion from Agilis to offer node-locked, floating and pay-per-use licensing.
The pay-per-use model is interesting: they sell their customers units of actual usage of their application, measured in the time the application is active. Their system integrator customers love this approach as they can divide up their usage time between different projects, making costing a trivial exercise.
The full case study is available here:
August 5, 2011
New video on Delegating License Administration to Resellers or Enterprise Customers
A common issue for software vendors is how to work with your resellers, OEM partners or distributors on the mechanics of order fulfillment. You may want to delegate this fulfillment to your channel partner, but still want to know what licenses they have issued, and to whom, and perhaps set limits on the types of licenses they can issue.
A similar issue arises with enterprise customers who purchase a pool of licenses, whether for activation or Internet-based floating licensing. It may suit both you and your customer for you to be able to delegate day-to-day administration – assigning licenses, running reports etc. – to your customer’s System Administrator while still enforcing the agreed license limits (e.g. user count, time limit, how product features are configured, a usage limit).
This video shows how the Orion Network Licensing Platform supports both scenarios using Orion’s Administration Domain concept, and shows what a reseller or enterprise customer might see when they log into the hosted Orion service to set up licenses:
Delegating License Administration to Resellers or Enterprise Customers.
If you are a software vendor who sells via channel partners or to enterprise customers, would this meet your needs? Do please contact Agilis and let us know. Thank you!
July 20, 2011
White Paper on trial licensing for software
At our most recent webinar, the issue of trial or evaluation licensing came up as a major concern for software developers and publishers.
We have therefore written a white paper that details the issues you should consider as you determine what type of trials to offer your prospects, how to ensure the availability of the trial license does not cost you revenues, and the five scenarios you may encounter… with solutions for each one:
Request the trial licensing White Paper
Do please let us know if you found it helpful.
July 18, 2011
New video on software product activation
We just posted a new video that introduces software product activation and describes the benefits for software publishers:
Software product activation introduction
The video also addresses such questions:
- What if a customer doesn’t have an Internet connection from their system?
- What parameters of the target system can I lock the license to?
- What if a user wants to move their license to a different machine?
- What license limits can I set for each user?
- How can I set up new licenses? Can I do this automatically?
- I sell via resellers and channel partners – can they set up licenses?
We hope you find it useful. After this video, watch the demonstration video we’ve also posted.
June 23, 2011
New video demonstrating the user interface for the Orion License Server
We’re pleased to make this video available to software developers who are interested in offering product activation or floating licensing for their Java, C/C++ or .Net/C# applications.
The video is available here. We recommend going to full screen, and selecting HD format (click on the 360 at the foot of the screen, and select 720) for easiest viewing:
Did this help you understand how Orion can help protect your products? We’d love to hear your feedback at sales@agilis-sw.com
For further details on how Orion can protect your application please visit us at http://www.agilis-sw.com.
June 20, 2011
Software licensing webinar tomorrow!
Dozens of companies have signed up for our free webinar tomorrow on “Current Issues in Software License Management – and Solutions”. Why don’t you join us too? To do so, click here:
Among other topics we’ll be covering the challenges and opportunities of trial licensing – this one topic could fill an entire webinar on its own. We’ll touch on the key areas including a table of licensing solutions for the different combinations of:
- Whether prospects have a network connection or not.
- Whether prospects are each licensed separately, or trial licenses are generally available to anyone
- Whether one single download package serves all prospects, or a custom package is provided to each prospect
Hope you can join us!
May 23, 2011
Software Licensing Webinar
We have just announced our next free webinar. It will be on June 21st, and is on Current Issues in Software License Management – and Solutions.
As an independent software vendor (ISV) you face several challenges in securely protecting your revenues, but at the same time meeting your customers’ demands for convenience and flexibility.
For example, Internet-based activation works well for both you and your customers, but what about your users whose systems have no Internet connection, or their system crashes, or they need to relocate their license, or they want to renew a subscription license or update a usage-based license?
Perhaps product activation will work for the majority of your customers, but how do you support your enterprise customers who want floating licensing or activation of licenses from a pool, or who block external communication from their internal systems?
Securing a license by locking it to hardware parameters of your user’s system is a proven approach for copy protection, but what about virtual systems, where hardware parameters can change for legitimate users?
You probably want to offer trial licenses to prospects, with a time limit, limited usage, or some features disabled or constrained – but how can you prevent ‘serial evaluators’ from taking advantage of your offer and repeatedly enabling trial licenses?
Perhaps you sell via channel partners, resellers or distributors and you’d like to delegate fulfillment to your partner – but you need to know what licenses they have issued, and to whom?
This webinar covers these topics and more, and describes practical solutions with case studies of how other ISVs are using them today to securely protect their revenues.
April 27, 2011
Worldwide losses from software piracy
Based on data from the BSA, this chart shows the annual losses by country to software piracy:
http://chartsbin.com/view/1187
I found it interesting that while the rates are obviously very different, the dollar value of the losses to piracy in the US and China are about the same.
So even if China is not a major market for you, you should take measures against piracy, such as protecting your application with a license manager.
