In previous blog articles, we’ve told you about License Activation Center’s unique features and business benefits, keeping you informed of our constant improvements to give our customers the capabilities they demand. Our work isn’t done yet. With every week, we continue to progress on the quality and new features of License Activation Center.

Now that License Activation Center has been on the market for a year, we can clearly see momentum that indicates it’s meeting real needs for today’s businesses. License Activation Center has quickly gained interest. Since day one, we’ve been observing constant growth, and from January to April of 2012, the number of new vendors using License Activation Center increased by 300%. We noticed a similar trend on the end-user side as well, with steady growth in the number of new users each month.

There is also a noticeable increase in the number of visitors on the License Activation Center web page, with only a 26% bounce rate. Each month, more people are testing our online demo and requesting evaluations, so I guess we’re doing something right. Since the beginning of the year, there has been a steady increase of at least 20% in the number of new vendors buying License Activation Center each month.

Also of note, comparing 2011 to 2012, the average license activations per month increased 4 times and the number of average monthly new license orders increased almost 16 times.

Hard to believe that License Activation Center is that good? See for yourself by signing up for an account or trying the demo, and start using a complete license management solution right away.

And, we left the best news for last: License Activation Center is absolutely free for up to 25 activations per month!

If you have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

The X-Formation staff thanks you for your understanding.

The U.S. Small Business Administration defines a small business as one that is independently owned and operated, organized for profit, and is not dominant in its field. Depending on the industry and country, the qualifications for size standards are based on the average number of employees or on sales volume. Did you know that according to the Australian Fair Work Act of 2009, X-Formation would not be considered “small” anymore? Maybe we should move our office to Australia?
In April 2012, X-Formation reached a number of 20 employees. Currently, our team includes talented developers, sales, and support people. According to the European Union laws, with fewer than 50 employees, we are still classified as a small business. However, with our efforts toward constant growth and development, nothing is impossible. X-Formation is known for its innovative and cutting-edge practices and offers an exciting work environment that attracts only the best. With the increasing number of employees, we have more manpower to deliver better products and services. And of course, we value the feedback from our customers, so feel free to share your comments and ideas with us. How can we serve you better?

Arcos Technologies Ltd. (“Arcos”) was founded in 2004 in Israel by Yariv Reches (CEO) and Avi Eliyahu (CTO). Although the company was acquired in February 2012 by ATX Networks Corp. (“ATX”) and their corporation name was changed to ATX Networks Israel, they will continue to operate as an Israeli-based company.

Arcos offers next generation solutions to broadcast, cable, internet, mobile and communications use providers. A rapidly growing company, they specialize in providing multi-functional solutions in the field of real time video streaming and video networking. Recently, Arcos has developed Encoder/Transcoder systems for the OTT video streaming market, known as DensAtive.

Arcos has used LM-X License Manager since March of 2012.

Did you know that in 2011 more than 8.6 million people visited Krakow? The numbers are expected to look even better in 2012. The old charm of Krakow attracts tourists from all over the world. Also, Krakow has become the scientific, and economic center of Southern Poland, so foreign investors are more eager to invest in Krakow.

Last week a group of 31 high school students from the IBC International Business College in Denmark visited Krakow. The main purpose of their trip was to explore the city, but students were also interested in business and economic environment of the city. Prior to the trip they heard on the radio that Danish company, X-Formation, has established a Research and Development Center in Krakow. While in town, they decided to pay us a visit and check out how successful X-Formation is abroad. During the visit (March 26th, 2012) students had the opportunity to tour the office and meet with our employees. They got the chance to learn who we are and what we do from a short presentation by Piotr and Henrik. And of course, we answered all the interesting questions during the Q&A session.

It was a fun day for everyone! You can check yourself – just take a look at the picture below. As always at X-Formation – everybody had a great time.

INTERESTED IN X-FORMATION?

For more information about our products and services please visit our Web Site or contact us.

User settings for many pages can be saved and used across different logins. As a result, users will see their preferred settings regardless of machine or browser being used to access License Statistics.

Improved user data importing from LDAP. We are now doing full cleanups of stale data and have enhanced importing, making LDAP support in License Statistics even better for large organizations with deep LDAP trees.

Extended Realtime User Count report with User List. The user list makes it possible to see exactly how your license count is used, making it easier to understand our licensing model and answer many common questions that come up.

Support for floating licenses in License Statistics. Large companies in the near future will be able to set up installations that dynamically span across more hosts and/or for testing use. This new feature will soon make it easier to allow for testing and other setups without the need for being in contact with us.

Parser improvements. We’ve added support for Sentinel Key license server and made improvements to LICMAN, Sentinel RMS, SPLM and RLM License Manager. Many error messages are clearer, making debugging various problems simpler.

And finally, we’ve completed the move of our parsers to a separate DLL file. While it does not have a visual effect it allows us in the future to do patches and fixes for parsers at a faster pace than what we’ve done before. Our aim is to be able to deliver fixes for parsers outside of our regular release cycles by releasing them when needed and then including them in the next release when available. All for the purpose of helping you out faster.

Furthermore, we’ve fixed around 10 bugs making License Statistics more accurate and stable.

Full release notes can be found at http://kb.x-formation.com/questions/317/License+Statistics+v4.2+Release+Notes.

As always, we listen to you. The majority of these improvements come from our customers and are direct responses to support requests we’ve gotten over the last few weeks. Make sure to send your feedback and let us know what we can do better for you in future by reaching us at +1 406 322 2614  or support@X-Formation.com.

The process is very straightforward. All the customer needs to do is click Send your Activation Keys on the LAC login page, enter his email address, and hit the Send button. Shortly after, he will receive an email with a list of all the activation keys his software vendor has provided him with. He can then go ahead and activate his products all on his own at any time. This is a great new feature because it helps vendors become more efficient and significantly cut down on the time needed assisting customers. Furthermore, customers have almost immediate access to purchased products.

Let’s also take a look at this process from the vendor’s perspective. The vendor can have activation keys ready for a new customer in 6 easy steps and just under 10 minutes.

Step 1. Log into LAC and click the Customers tab to create a new customer account. Enter customer information in the pop-up window such as customer name, address, tax id number, as well as a description. Only customer name is required, however.

Step 2. Click the Next button to enter contact information. The email address is required in order to send activation keys. Click Save and close the window.

Step 3. Click on the Licenses tab to create a new License Order. In the Add License Order pop-up window choose Customer, Product (assuming it was previously created), and Product template from the drop-down menus. Enter the license order count and optionally a description.

Step 4. Click Next to save the information and open the HostIDs tab to decide whether or not to lock the license to any particular hostids. For more information on hostids, please see Specifying HostIDs to lock the license to.

Step 5. Click Next to save the information and open the Settings tab to specify expiration type and date, additional settings, and make any modifications to the license order.

Step 6. Notify the customer that his activation keys are ready for activation. And that’s all! The rest is in the customer’s hands : )

At this point, the customer can go to the LAC login page and click Send your activation keys.

Upon entering his email address and clicking send, he will receive an email with a list of all available activation keys similar to the one below:

Customer email with activation keys.

We’d like to hear what you think, so get in touch with us at +1 406 322 2614  or support@X-Formation.com.

Since this month we’re celebrating our one year anniversary in our new office, we thought it’d be nice to share a few pictures and some news. Exactly 1 year ago we made the move to a new office. The move was necessary as we were growing very quickly in terms of employees (and still are, actually) and were beginning to feel a little cramped in the space we were occupying.

The change was certainly a significant one; our current office is much larger with 4 times the space and consists of 2 floors. The 1st floor is completely open space with 1 meeting room. The open space is great because it allows teams to collaborate more freely and effectively. The 2nd floor is the same exact space broken up into 6 rooms; 1 room for the LM-X team, 2 rooms for the sales and support team, a meeting room, the server room, and a game room that holds our foosball and ping-pong tables. All in all we’ve got lots of space with lounge chairs and sofas, meeting tables, and plenty of rooms where employees can take their laptops with them to work any way they’re comfortable or need privacy. Check out some of our pictures below.

Before and after picture of the 1st floor.

 Where the magic happens…

Part of the XF team.

Let the games begin!

Meet Giraffe. He’s always got the most to say at our daily scrum meetings.

Our new office has come together very nicely and has also been an important factor in delivering better service to our customers. It’s been an exciting year for X-Formation, and the new location has certainly been the start of another chapter in our history.

Are we still hiring?
We definitely are! We’re looking for C++ and PHP developers, as well as sales and support engineers. For a complete list of available positions, see our jobs page or simply stop by our office to talk more…

ul. Ostatnia 1c
31-444 Krakow
Poland

As you can see on the map, we’re easy to find and close to the city center.

We’ll welcome you with open arms!

Improved LDAP user group importing. You can now import entire sub-trees, instead of only single nodes as in previous releases. This makes LDAP support more flexible for larger organizations with multiple domains.

Ability to see LDAP user information. We’ve added tooltips that show LDAP user information in grids that contain usernames. With this enhancement, you can see all LDAP user details such as full name, department and phone number.

Persistent UI. As you move from tab to tab, you will see that the settings you make, such as expanding/collapsing panels, are remembered. This is a time-saving benefit that lets you make your preferred settings once instead of setting them per page.

In addition to introducing these new features, we’ve made many smaller improvements, including adding support for a newer Dassault license server version, better logging, support for larger license counts in log files, and improvements to the Apache configuration to support more Linux distributions, such as RHEL, out of the box.

You can see the full release notes for License Statistics v4.1 in our Knowledgebase, at http://kb.x-formation.com/questions/314/License+Statistics+v4.1+Release+Notes.

Every release is influenced by our customers and this one is no exception. Help us make License Statistics better for you by sharing your feedback with us. We look forward to hearing from you at +1 406 322 2614  or support@X-Formation.com.

New “Expired Licenses” Table
One of the first things vendors will notice upon logging into LAC is a new “Expired Licenses” table on the dashboard. As the name states, this table provides detailed information about the licenses that can no longer be used by the vendor’s customers. The table includes information about the customer, the product he had previously activated, the time and date it was activated, and when the license expired. Now, with this information at the vendor’s finger tips, it’s much easier to go after customers that haven’t renewed their purchases!

Minimum HostIDs
The Min HostIDs field lets vendors specify the total number of HostIDs required to activate a license. As an example, vendors can specify that the user must enter a total of 3 out of the possible 5 HostIDs upon activation.

License Manager Type
When creating new products, vendors will now choose a license manager from a drop-down menu in the general tab. Choosing a particular license manager will influence various settings made available in the License Generator tab. And for those who don’t already know, License Activation Center supports:

• LM-X License Manager
• FlexNet Manager
• Reprise License Manager (RLM)

“Creator” Column
The License Orders table includes a “Creator” column which shows information about the user who created a particular license order. Additional information in the table includes creation date, template name, expiration date, and so forth.

Login Page Improvements
Vendors can create new accounts as well as reset their passwords from the login page. So, anyone that would like to give LAC a try can do so without any hassle. No need to fill out boring registration forms or wait to hear back on your evaluation request; simply sign up and test run LAC with 25 free activations per month.

“Save and Close” Button
The “Save and Close” button is available in the Customer, Contact, License Order, Product Template, Feature, and Product windows, allowing users to save their settings and immediately close the window with just one click. More action, less clicking; that’s how we like it!

Email Notifications
For vendors that like to stay on top of things, we’ve implemented email notifications to let them know that they are slowing running out of available license activations. The email is sent out when there are fewer than 10 activations available. But don’t worry; LAC users get their 25 free license activations every month!

New SOAP Functions
We’ve also made improvements to the Vendor API by adding a number of new SOAP Functions that will facilitate even better interaction between LAC and licensed software:

GetCustomerById -  used to to get an existing customer using the customer ID.

GetProductTemplateById - used to get an existing product template using the product template ID.

GetLicenseOrderList - used to get a license order list. The license order contains all information about HostIDs and Features configured for the product.

FindCustomerByName - used to to find one or more existing customers using the customer name.

FindProductByName - used to to find one or more products by product name.

FindLicenseOrderByActivationKey - used to to find one or more license orders by activation key.

Like what you see? Sign up and start using License Activation Center (LAC) in 5 minutes!

Need more features? Get in touch with our team!