More than 20 years have passed since the first floating licensing systems saw daylight. Since then, a lot of new issues have arisen. In this article, I’ll dig into the evolution of floating licensing.
Beginning in 1988 with FLEXlm, license management systems introduced new ways to package and sell software. Going from traditional “one seat per machine” new business models allowed users to share a pool of licenses. Floating licensing consists of a client application (built into the purchased software) and a license server hosting one or more license files. Both license client and license server typically reside on the end-user’s network, allowing the end user to be in control of the whole licensing process together with their software.
At the time floating licensing was introduced, most people were using it on “heavy” UNIX workstations and had simple needs. About 10 years later, modern and much cheaper desktop and laptop PC’s arose in the market, creating a new problem: What if you wanted to take the software with you when you traveled? License borrowing was introduced to satisfy a growing need to be mobile and take the licenses with you.
Today, software applications have made a huge impact on how we work, do business and even live our lives. Could you imagine planning construction of a commercial building without using CAD software like AutoCAD? Or how about designing a car without the use of 3D design software like CATIA?
As the software we use becomes more important for us, most software vendors also adjust the price based on this demand. High-value software is nothing new; the problem is that sometimes things go wrong. In IT, it’s well known that computer hardware can fail. Even giants like Google build in redundancy as a software component rather than relying on the hardware. By using commodity hardware, they’re able to reduce costs while bringing service levels up by employing software redundancy.
For license management, there is a crucial need for stability. Striving for stability is a key factor when choosing a license manager, and our product, LM-X License Manager, is no exception to this rule.
For us, the next revolution in license management is clear. Customer needs are driving “floating licensing v2.0.” While original license managers did a great job of ensuring access to software from multiple networked machines, the next generation of license managers must handle a more extensive set of requirements for “floating licensing v2.0″:
1. Accessibility
Today, networks aren’t just single location “home” networks connecting tens of computers. Instead, large enterprises require access to run software across multiple locations, in different time zones, both in-house and using outsourced external resources such as Amazon EC2. There are no longer any boundaries between the public internet and the local intranet as far as accessibility goes.
To solve this, a license manager must be able to work over TCP/IP using a single socket and be configurable just like a webserver. Using random sockets or multiple daemons on a single machine like our competitors are doing is a bad idea because it lacks of ease of use. The LM-X license server, however, is designed for this purpose by using a single port (6200, which is modifiable) and is no more difficult to configure than a webserver. This is makes configuring firewalls easier, because if you understand how to pass a webserver through your firewall, then you understand how to do the same with LM-X.
Furthermore, license managers must be designed to be “low-noise,” not requiring transfer of large amounts of data to function. With LM-X, the typical licensing transaction is in the order of a few KB of data regardless whether you’re in-house or on the internet.
2. Stability
Today, virtual machines are available to help companies both large and small to reach new service levels for uptime. Virtual machines are important, and we believe that virtual machine licensing is, too. We introduced virtual machine licensing 5 years ago, before any other software vendor, as we already envisioned a clear need to allow users to move licenses around.
High Availability Licensing, also known as HAL, is another key feature required for larger corporations to ensure stability. While virtual machines work best for some customers, HAL works best for others. This is something that enterprise customers typically ask us for to obtain additional uptime with their customers.
Both of the above solutions work only if you’re actually connected to a network. What if you need to travel to a hotel with a lousy internet connection that doesn’t allow VPN? Or your corporate network switch blows up without having an immediate spare? Floating licensing depends on having a network connection available at all times. This is not how the world always works, of course; even the best IT systems and hardware break down. Sure, you can auto-borrow, making licenses unavailable to others, but the idea of auto-borrow is just as silly and expensive as having an extra car in your garage in case your primary one breaks down.
For this scenario, grace licensing is an important (but often overlooked) feature of “floating licensing v2.0.” Grace licensing works by saving a copy of the license used, making it temporarily available for a certain number of hours while allowing the broken systems to restore. Grace licensing works exactly like borrow licensing, but without the need to do any active steps. Grace licenses are always available just in case your network becomes unavailable. LM-X supports grace licensing, while most of our competitors do not.
3. Ease of use
While HAL, virtual machine licensing and other license models are desirable, they don’t get you anywhere unless ease of use is considered. It’s surprising how many legacy licensing systems are deployed today without the ability to use automatic server discovery. This is a must for “floating licensing v2.0.”
Automatic server discovery provides the ability to detect at which host/IP address the license server is located. It works by performing a broadcast on the network that queries for license server availability. Without this (mostly the case today), software end-users are bound to spend valuable time configuring each end-user workstation with the proper host/IP and port number.
What if you need to move the license server from one host to another? Well, you need to plan for downtime, of course. With LM-X License Manager, this is not the case, and any system administrator can move a license server when necessary without informing anyone.
4. Reporting
Just as important as access to licenses is the ability to track and report on who’s using the licenses. X-Formation, as an end-to-end software license management solutions provider, offers a complete suite of tools from which end-users can benefit. With our license monitoring tool, License Statistics, we’re making an impact by allowing hundreds of our customers to see their realtime and historical license usage.
It’s not enough to just deliver a log file. You cannot import a log file into Excel, right? Ready-to-use tools are just as important as the way one accesses the software.
In conclusion, software license management has evolved greatly during the last two decades. However, due to the rise of the internet and new computing capabilities, license managers must evolve even further. HAL, virtual machine licensing, automatic server discovery and grace licensing are all key components of “floating licensing v2.0,” but the game doesn’t end there. Additional integration with reporting tools such as License Statistics have an impact, allowing hundreds of companies to gain insights on the use of their expensive licenses. With all that has come to pass, further developments are on the horizon, as we haven’t yet seen all the possibilities related to new outsourced IT management.
