About Schindler GmbH

Schindler GmbH is a software vendor based out of Germany responsible for a highly regarded software platform known as S-Anywhere. S-Anywhere contains modules for maintenance and inventory management, along with tool management and an inspection chart. Schindler GmbH also offers RFID hardware and consulting services.

The Business Challenge

Schindler needed to tackle a fairly common licensing problem; finding a solution that was not only flexible, but that also fit the specific needs they were looking for. The support that was required needed to be for many different licensing models, mainly network and node-locked licensing.

The LM-X Solution

After testing and using HASP HL dongles from Aladdin, Schindler GmbH decided to investigate a new possible direction. The issue was that some customers were having problems with the hardware dongles, as servers were often outsourced or virtual servers were sometimes used. Markus Schindler, IT Engineer, explained, “IT guidelines of our customers often prohibit the use of hardware dongles. So, we searched for an alternative, and X-Formation’s LM-X License Manager offered the flexibility we were looking for. Schindler continued, ”Documentation and support was very good and X-Formation pays attention to customer’s needs.”

Summary

LM-X License Manager is a licensing solution that makes software license management easy with great features and fast support. It helped achieve the desired results in a solution with many bundled features. X-Formation is happy to be able to help Schindler GmbH with these needs and more, constantly innovating and improving the software and its features in every progressive version.

Schindler concluded, “LM-X is flexible and offers all the license types we need. Furthermore, if we have any questions, the X-Formation support team helps quickly.”

Next Step

Interested in taking LM-X License Manager for a test-drive? Download a free, 30-day evaluation or contact us for more information.

In this article, I’d like to discuss the topic of network licensing as an alternative to bulk licensing. Let’s picture a scenario where a vendor has a customer who wants to activate 100 node-locked (standalone) licenses. The most common way of going about this is through bulk licensing. However, the question to be asked is whether there’s a more efficient route to be taken. I’d like to argue that with LM-X License Manager, there is.

With bulk licensing, the customer needs to activate the same license key 100 times. This process is time-consuming, sometimes problematic, and requires a lot of effort and administrative work on the customer as well as the vendor side. Moreover, any further license changes enforce additional activations, which, on the other hand, incur additional costs. Unfortunately, this process is very often repeated by our customers and for this reason we’ve decided to offer an easier, cheaper, and simply more efficient solution for both sides.

The solution is network licensing with LM-X License Manager. Now, picture the vendor delivering his software to the customer together with the LM-X license server. As soon as the customer installs the license server, he accesses the License Management tab from license server GUI and pastes 1 activation key (not 100 keys) delivered earlier by his vendor. The customer then clicks the Activate button and waits while LM-X downloads the appropriate license from License Activation Center (LAC) and delivers it to the customer. That’s all there is to it!

The purchased software will now be able to run on as many machines as specified in the license file, and more importantly, the vendor will pay for only 1 activation instead of 100. Another advantage is that the vendor will not need to get involved every time his customer wants to rehost his license; with the LM-X license server, customers can rehost licenses themselves without comprising the vendors implemented licensing policies.

If you are an ISV struggling with such or similar issues, get in touch at +1 406 322 2614  or support@X-Formation.com, and let us find the right solution for your needs.

We’re happy to announce the release of License Statistics v4.0!

This major release implements a number of new features that make the software more scalable and enterprise-ready:

1. 64-bit MySQL server (for 64-bit Windows or Linux versions only). We’ve embedded a 64-bit MySQL server with License Statistics, which improves speed for larger environments. This can consume up to 12GB of memory, but allows for faster queries that speed up the entire web-based UI. Furthermore, we’ve updated the embedded MySQL database from 5.1 to 5.5, which is up to 300% faster in some cases (according to MySQL documentation and our own testing).
2. Added HTTPS support. We now support HTTP over SSL using Apache.
3. Added support for Felics license manager (import only).
4. Dropped all support for SQLite and the related command-line tools, xfeditdb and xfcustomreport.
5. Introduced a new command-line report tool, licstatreport, which lets you download existing reports from a command line. Using this tool, System Administrators can automate downloads of existing data from the database and schedule reporting on demand.

In addition to these new features, we’ve made many smaller parser changes to improve error message consistency and clarity.

Furthermore, this release completely removes the concurrent user licensing that has been used for all prior versions of License Statistics. Customers with older licenses won’t be able to use this new version until you update your license, as explained in the notification we sent to our affected customers in December.

For complete release notes for License Statistics v4.0, please see:
http://kb.x-formation.com/questions/310/License+Statistics+v4.0+Release+Notes

As always, the improvements we’ve made in this release were done in response to customer input. What can we do better for you? Please be sure to contribute your thoughts and suggestions to help us continue improving License Statistics in ways that make a difference for you. We are always eager to get your feedback, so get in touch at +1 406 322 2614  or support@X-Formation.com.

Due to an electrical maintenance in our office building that will be conducted over the weekend, many of our services such as online documentation or support portal will not be available. The services will be down as of Friday (January 20) approx. 7:00 pm GMT+1 until Monday (January 23) morning, approx. 9:00 am GMT+1. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Should you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at +1 406 322 2614  or support@X-Formation.com. Thank you.

The LM-X License Server GUI is a relatively new development that came out in September with LM-X v4.0, but has already improved by leaps and bounds. Through our constant cooperation with customers we’ve implemented a number of new features that provide software end users with more power and flexibility.

Until now the web-based UI allowed end users to:

• View information and statistics about the LM-X license server
• Restart or shut down the license server
• View the LM-X server’s HostIDs, such as Ethernet, Hostname, IP Address, etc
• View license usage statistics for the current license server, as well as for borrow, grace and trial licenses
• View and edit the configuration file
• View and search for entries in the log file

With the recent development, however, users can now also:

• Activate licenses and upload license files
• Enable and configure High Availability Licensing (HAL)
• Enable and configure Pay Per Use
• Enable and configure license server logging
• Configure settings for TCP, remote access and user removal

For each of these new administrative functions we created sub-tabs with a user interface for easy access and modification of settings.

License Management tab

In the License Management tab users can can activate and download licenses from License Activation Center (LAC). Users can also upload license files, for example, licenses that a vendor has provided via email or a license that was previously activated and needs to be uploaded to the server.

High Availability Licensing (HAL) tab

Through the High Availability Licensing tab, High Availability Licensing can be enabled, which allows users to configure backup (redundant) license servers that will continue to serve licenses should the master server go down.

Pay Per Use tab

In the Pay Per Use tab, users can enable and configure pay per use, which, as an example, would allow them to use an unrestricted usage license that would be paid for based on actual usage.

Logging tab

Under the Logging tab, users can enable and configure logging to produce a log file that contains detailed activity such as client connections or disconnections, license checkout/checkin, and other server activity. Users can specify the name for the log file, the format of the file (Normal or Extended), the rotation interval (None, Daily, Weekly or Monthly), and any LM-X messages to exclude from logging.

Miscellaneous tab

In the Miscellaneous tab users can specify the TCP port number the license server will listen on, set a remote administration password (used when remotely stopping and restarting the license server and removing users from it), and also specify the minimum time that must elapse before a user can be removed.

We look forward to your feedback as to make further enhancements in the LM-X License Server GUI to better meet your license management needs, so give us a call.

Download a free evaluation of LM-X License Manager.

We’re just a few days away from New Year’s, and so we’d like to thank both our customers and partners for another successful and exciting past year of cooperation!

Throughout 2011, we’ve kept very busy developing and improving our products to deliver solutions and services that our customers expect. We completed 7 software releases for LM-X License Manager and 9 releases for License Statistics. LM-X License Manager also took a huge leap forward when it was given a new face. The LM-X License Manager GUI was completed in July, and has proven to be an extremely valuable and useful tool in managing license servers. We can’t also forget to mention that at the beginning of the year we launched a completely new product, License Activation Center (LAC), that was built from the ground up to provide a back office system for customer relation, product management and license activation. All this could not have been possible without the participation and feedback of our customers, for which we are thankful and encourage more customers to work more closely with us in the coming year.

2011 has also been another successful year of growth for us both as a company and in terms of our customers. We’ve grown to a size of 17 people, and because our teams consist of some of the most talented and skilled professionals available on the market, we’ve been able to consistently deliver the highest level of product quality to all our customers, while our support capacity has allowed us to address various issues immediately and cut response times to just a few hours. This mix of quality and responsiveness, together with our willingness to listen, has been the driving force behind our continued customer growth, which has exceeded last year’s figures.

Looking back, a lot has happened in 2011, but we’re also very much looking ahead in anticipation of bringing our customers even better products and service in the new year. We wish our customers and partners all the very best in 2012 and look forward to another great year of partnership!