X-Formation - Year in Review - 2023

X-Formation – Year in Review – 2023

It’s hard to believe–already, another year is coming to a conclusion. Looking back at the busy year that 2023 proved to be, we are filled with gratitude for all that each and every member of our team has contributed to X-Formation’s successes.

This gratitude extends to you, our customers. Since our beginnings nearly two decades ago, we’ve considered you to be our greatest collaborators. Your input about what’s important to you has provided invaluable guidance to help us to develop license management solutions that make a real difference to hundreds of organizations worldwide.

In this article, we’d like to share with you what we consider to be some of our most important accomplishments over the past year for both License Statistics and LM-X License Manager.

License Statistics

As usual, our License Statistics team has worked hard to expand and improve on all areas of License Statistics, from enhancing ease of use to increasing stability and performance. Let’s take a look at the most notable new features we added to License Statistics in 2023.

License Harvesting

We’ve added two new License Harvesting release methods–Dry Run and Suspend–that give you even greater flexibility for tracking and helping to reduce the waste of idle end-user applications.

Dry Run method

The new “Dry Run” release method is the least aggressive release method, particularly useful for testing how License Harvesting works with specific applications without taking action to close those applications.

This new method is perfect for situations where you want a history of license usage, but you’re concerned about disrupting end users’ work, as you can choose not to alert the user. In this case, application events will be detected and logged, but the end users of the monitored applications won’t receive any alerts for idle applications.

If you do choose to issue an alert, the Dry Run method will inform end-users that their application is idle and recommend that they close it. However, no action will be taken, giving the end user the choice to leave the application open or close the application, as best suits their current situation.

Suspend method

The new Suspend harvesting method gives you more flexibility in the way that you enforce the release of idle licenses. The Suspend method “freezes” the idle license so it can be released to the license pool, and issues an alert to the end user to inform them that use of the application is suspended.

Although the user cannot use the application while suspended, the application remains visible and no data is lost. The end user can resume using the application by responding to the alert or by using the License Harvesting tray icon.

License Statistics Agent

This past year has seen significant improvements for License Statistics Agent, with enhanced license server management, auto-update capabilities, and adjustable agent connection intervals.

License server management

With the addition of server mode for License Statistics Agent, License Statistics administrators can start, stop and restart license servers directly from the Administration > License Servers page within the License Statistics UI. Previously, license server management required going outside of the License Statistics UI, connecting to the proper license server host using SSH or a remote desktop, finding the service/administration tool, and restarting the server.

License Statistics Agent server mode adds convenience and can save considerable time, especially if you’re managing a large number of servers on different hosts or you’re handling numerous requests from users to free up licenses that have become unavailable (for example, due to an application closing ungracefully and taking a long time to release licenses back to the pool).

What’s more, License Management auto-detection using Server Agent detects the services available for the license servers on the host where the selected agent is installed, and the detected services can be used to manage the server remotely (start/stop/restart).

Auto-updating of Agents

Managing License Statistics Agents couldn’t be easier with our newly introduced automatic update capabilities. Simply toggle on the Auto Update option available from License Statistics’ End User Agents page, and License Statistics will schedule updating Agents (version 6.20 or newer) as a newer version becomes available.

You can also schedule updates for individual Agents manually. License Statistics informs you when a newer Agent version is available, and lets you schedule the update procedure with a single click.

Ability to adjust Agent connection interval

We added the ability to adjust the connection interval for License Statistics Agent. Previously, this interval was set to 30 seconds (still the default) and couldn’t be changed. Now, you can increase the interval to up to 10 minutes.

When there are a large number of End User Agents, increasing the connection interval setting will reduce the occurrence of redundant connections, thereby improving performance, with no impact on functionality or difference in the data that’s gathered.

User Experience

Over the past year, we’ve made improvements that help users to better work with and understand License Statistics reports, including dynamic date ranges and improved indicators in reports that show last update time.

Dynamic date ranges

Reports that were filtered using date ranges (for example, “Last Week,” “Last Month,” “Current Quarter,” etc.) used to be static, so reports added to the Dashboard became outdated, showing dates relative to the date the report was generated.

Our newly introduced dynamic date ranges base date ranges on the current date, so reports added to the Dashboard that are filtered using date ranges always contain data relative to today’s date. This alleviates the need to regenerate such reports, saving you time and ensuring that the data you’re viewing is more meaningful.

Last update time indicators

In the last update time color indicators displayed in grids, we now use query intervals elapsed rather than time elapsed, so it’s easier to understand when the last successful query was made.

Administration

We’re always looking for ways to make License Statistics administration easier and more flexible. License storage and management simplification, availability of API resource information, ability to close sessions manually from reports, and the addition of a new Command Line Interface (CLI) tool are among the major improvements introduced during the past year.

License storage and management

In previous versions, License Statistics had to scan the entire directory to find the best license file, since the file could be kept either in the default directory or in a user-specified location. Now, the License Statistics license is stored as an entry in the database, making license management more efficient and secure.

You can also now manage the license using a new Management tab on the Administration > Licensing page that lets you easily view the current Activation Key, reactivate the key, or activate a new key. With this new approach, License Statistics Administrators will find managing the license much more straightforward.

The Licensing page’s Management tab can also be used to upload a license file. This ability is particularly useful when there’s no internet connection on the License Statistics host, the license was activated on a different machine, the license was downloaded from the LAC end-user portal, or other cases where you already have a file to upload.

The Management tab even gives you a license preview, so you can see the current license contents and when the license was last uploaded.

Ability to view API resources

License Statistics reports now let you view details of the API request used to generate the report, including the headers, endpoint and used parameters. This information can be used to facilitate integration with other applications that you want to allow to access License Statistics data; for example, PowerBI or Excel.

Session closing from reports

License Statistics administrators can now more quickly and easily close sessions on the license server and return the license to the available pool using the Features Realtime Sessions and Users Realtime Sessions reports. (Currently available for LM-X and FlexNet license managers only.)

New CLI tool

A new CLI (Command Line Interface) tool replaces the use of scripts. The CLI can alternatively be used for license management as well as other administrative operations such as backing up the database and resetting the default admin user/password.

Linux installers

We’ve introduced the following new Linux installers to help make installations quicker and easier:

  • RPM (RedHat Enterprise Linux distributions)
  • DEB (Ubuntu and Debian distributions)
  • Generic, which allows for customization and/or installation on distributions other than RPM or DEB

The RPM and DEB installations will provide for automatic upgrades from v6.17 on. Upgrading older License Statistics versions to v6.17 and newer still requires a one-time manual upgrade, as done for all previous releases. However, after upgrading to v6.17, you’ll be able to upgrade License Statistics on Linux to v6.17 and newer without uninstalling.

LM-X License Manager Achievements

Over the past year, our LM-X team has stepped up to the challenge of fixing complex issues, ensuring good performance, and maintaining the stability that you’ve come to expect from our full-featured license manager solution. We appreciate your patience and cooperation as we’ve worked hard to solve your unique problems as quickly as possible while continuing to deliver improvements that meet your needs.

Let’s take a look at some of the new features and improvements made by the LM-X team over the past year.

Improved performance

Recognizing the need to optimize performance, we’ve made several improvements that add up to an incredible 30% overall performance increase, including:

  • Upgrading the system used for managing network connections
  • Adding caching for HAL servers state to reduce connection delay when the first server is down
  • Optimizing performance of LM-X license server and client
  • Improving client network optimization by reusing buffers
  • Making token loop detection quicker by performing it only once during license server startup

Expanded support

Many of our customers are moving their licensing to the cloud. To support this growing need, we’ve added a new CLOUD sharing type that gives you the ability to restrict licensing for cloud environments, and we’ve made improvements to optimize cloud detection.

In addition, we’ve added support for Linux 32 bit on ARM, increasing flexibility in how you license your software.

Improved logging and notifications

We’ve made several improvements that help you to get more detailed, focused information from logs, notifications and other types of reporting.

The information available in the client extended log during license checkin has been improved, including the ability to see the vendor’s environment variables, such as connection timeout. The contents of the startup log have also been improved, to give you more clear information about startup events.

In addition to improving logging to give you the information you need, we expanded other communications and notifications, including adding a new option to xmllicgen to display the expiration date, making more information available for harddisk HostIDs, and improving clock check error messages.

New filtering capabilities let you omit unneeded data, with the addition of a flag that filters out virtual ethernet adapters from the HostID list and the ability to filter out empty BIOS HostIDs.

API additions

The LM-X API has been expanded, with the addition of a new function that accommodates virtual machine discovery and cloud host detection. We also introduced brute force password protection and a new administrative API function that allows for password verification when adding an LM-X license server to License Statistics.

Installation improvements

The Linux installer checks for required packages prior to installation and does not proceed with the installation if any required packages are missing.

We’ve also replaced the deprecated license server System V init scripts with systemd init scripts, and added an option to the Windows installer to open required ports.

We want to thank YOU!

As we look back on all the hard work that’s gone into 2023 and recognize our incredible, talented X-Formation team, we want to also be sure to acknowledge you, our customers. We sincerely value the close working relationship that we’ve fostered together. Without your feedback about what’s working and what isn’t, your insightful ideas for improvements, and your willingness to stick with us as we work through tough problems, we couldn’t continue to do what we care so much about: help your business to be more successful.

Our X-Formation team extends our heartfelt thanks to you and yours, and we wish you a joyous, safe holiday and a Happy New Year!

Henrik Goldman
X-Formation Founder and CEO

X-Formation - Year in Review - 2022

X-Formation – Year in Review – 2022

“Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.” — Henry Ford

At this time of year, our thoughts often turn to what we’ve accomplished, and what is to come.

As we look at our past year here at X-Formation, we’re proud of all we’ve achieved together, within our hard-working team and along with you, our customers. We are grateful for all of the suggestions and feedback that you’ve given over the past year to help us make our products the best they can be.

As the new year approaches, we look forward to continuing this collaboration and being part of what helps your business to succeed in 2023 and beyond.

Here, we recount some of the highlights from our accomplishments in 2022.

License Statistics Achievements

Our License Statistics team has been digging in during the past year, improving overall user experience and implementing new features based on customer feedback, to ensure you’re able to effectively and efficiently track your organization’s license usage.

Improved UX

Sometimes, it’s the little things that count the most. We strive to make License Statistics easy for anyone to use, and we’re constantly looking for ways to make our user interface more intuitive and ensure that gathered statistics data is readily accessible and understandable. For example, redesigned chart tooltips now include more information, such as duration of license usage, and are formatted using a labeled list that’s easier to read.

Turning attention to detail, we’ve made layout improvements that make it easier to see information about features, users and hosts, and ensured consistency of labels and content in report grids, information panels, and LDAP Schema Settings to help make License Statistics even simpler to use and understand.

More details in reports

Our comprehensive license usage tracking reports now deliver even more data about current and historical usage, helping you uncover details about available licenses, how many licenses are in use or have been borrowed, utilization percentages, total licenses used, denials, and more. In addition to expanding on reported usage data, we’ve added more information to User properties, such as complete LDAP data, that can easily be shown or hidden in report details.

Improvements for License Statistics Administration

For License Statistics administrators, we’ve added more information to license server usage and license detail grids, and added the ability to invalidate (clear) report cache, customize the LDAP Users Import interval, and receive warnings when host resources are below minimum requirements. New connection settings for Remote Monitoring let you restrict the Hostname field entry to hostname or domain, and allow you to force an HTTPS connection.

We’ve also enhanced error reporting, with improved import validation that accounts for errors that occur when importing usage and denials. The level of events tracked in the log is now customizable, so you can track all events, just warnings and errors, or limit the log to error reporting. Furthermore, we’ve made the report easier to use by improving sorting and filtering, and adding the ability to delete all grid contents at once.

In addition, to make your life a little easier, you can now reset the administrator password to the default password with the click of a button using License Statistics Manager.

License Statistics Agent enhancements

Those who use License Statistics Agents will be happy to know that we now support backward compatibility for License Statistics Agent, up to five minor versions older than the License Statistics version. The Agents grid has been improved with additions to data and the ability to disconnect all agents at one time. We also expanded email notifications by adding a new alert for outdated License Statistics Agents, so you can stay on top of your licensing needs.

Expanded support for license managers and the latest platforms

Always broadening our ability to serve our user community’s diverse needs, we’ve added support for Altium Infrastructure Server (AIS/PLS) and GHS license managers (both support remote monitoring and imports), and expanded support for Dassault license manager to allow for monitoring authorization items.

Keeping up with the latest platforms, we now include support for:

  • Windows 11
  • Windows Server 2022
  • Debian 11
  • Ubuntu 22.04

In addition to these more notable new features and enhancements, we’ve made loads of smaller enhancements and fixes that ensure the stability and quality you’ve come to expect from License Statistics.

LM-X Achievements

With all of the strides made with License Statistics over the past year taking the spotlight, let’s not forget about LM-X License Manager! Our developers have also been striving to make sure that LM-X delivers unbeatable security for your applications while ensuring ease of use for your end-users.

Take a look at just a few of the highlights from the past year’s development work on LM-X.

Expanded support

LM-X now supports:

  • Visual Studio 2022
  • UTF-8 on Windows
  • Raspberry Pi

Miscellaneous enhancements

Over the past year, we’ve made enhancements to LM-X that include:

  • Adding a warning to the license server log when an unlimited license will be reserved
  • Making improvements to license server networking
  • Reducing SDK compilation time
  • Resolving an issue with using secure store between different LM-X versions
  • Fixing an issue with the license server allocating too much memory for network buffers
  • Improving stability for systems that are not POSIX-compliant

We celebrate you!

Without you, our customers, we would not be where we are today. Despite challenging economic times, we have been blessed to celebrate a long working relationship with many of you for 5, 10, or even more years. On behalf of our entire team—many of whom have also been with us for over a decade—I wholeheartedly wish you and your families the best, as we look forward to shared successes in the coming year.

Happy holidays to all, and a prosperous New Year!

Henrik Goldman
X-Formation Founder and CEO

X-Formation - Year in Review

X-Formation – Year in Review

“Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.” — Joshua J. Marine

It’s been an amazing year, full of challenges and successes. Here at X-Formation, our team has been working hard to improve and expand on the capabilities of License Statistics and LM-X License Manager, devoted to helping your business prosper with effective, cost-saving license management solutions.

Now that the year is coming to a close, we’d like to thank you, our customers, for your continued cooperation. We cannot do this without you. All the improvements and new features we’ve delivered during 2021 are based on your invaluable feedback.

Let’s reflect on what we’ve accomplished together over the past year, as we set our sights on making the coming year even better.

License Statistics Achievements

License Statistics users have seen many major new features over the past year, with some of the most significant among them Custom Application Monitoring, streamlined reports, and support for two additional license managers.

Read on to find out more about these capabilities and how they can help you to stay on top of your license management.

Custom Application Monitoring

Many of our customers have been seeing immediate benefits from employing Custom Application Monitoring to track license usage for their end-user applications, even when the application has no license server or log file. We implemented this feature in response to your needs to expand your license tracking abilities and make informed decisions when budgeting for desktop applications.

This new feature leverages License Statistics Agent to gather usage information—such as the time and duration of usage, number of instances used and by which users and hosts—for any user that starts a configured application on any end-user host. The agents then pass the data along to License Statistics for presentation in its usual reports.

With Custom Application Monitoring, you can learn everything you need to know about the usage of any end-user application, helping you stay on top of all your license management needs.

Simplified, streamlined reports

Less is more, with streamlined statistics reporting that both reduces the number of reports and more clearly divides realtime and historical statistics.

With this new structure, you can more quickly drill down to answer specific questions, such as who is consuming licenses in realtime; which users have been denied access to licenses and when; and how one feature’s license usage compares to others.

This all adds up to time savings and enhanced understanding of your license management needs, so you can zero in on how to best optimize your licenses to increase productivity and reduce costs throughout your organization.

Additional support for license managers

With the addition of support for two new license managers, bringing the number of supported license managers to nearly 30 different types, we’re broadening our ability to serve our user community’s diverse needs. Our newly supported license manager types include:

  • Zoo License Manager, with support for remote and imported data sources; feature versioning; and license borrowing (imported data only)
  • CodeMeter Network License Server (remote data sources only)

Once again, we’ve been listening to what you need and responding with all of these valuable new developments, along with the multitude of other fixes and enhancements made to License Statistics in the past year.

But wait—there’s more!

LM-X Achievements

X-Formation’s developers were also bustling during this past year to make sure that LM-X License Manager is reliable and packed with all the features you need to license your software with flexibility and confidence. Among the LM-X team’s most significant accomplishments are the addition of a new “upgrade” license type, support for Linux ARM, and a plethora of stability and performance improvements.

You can find out more about these LM-X advancements below.

Upgrade licenses

Our new “upgrade” license type supplants the “additive” license type, as a much-improved solution. Upgrade licenses let you add licenses for software features that your customers buy after the initial purchase of a license, without changing the original license.

Upgrade licenses increase the license count of exclusive licenses by a particular number of licenses, while simultaneously being completely transparent to the client. This approach allows for greater flexibility in handling license add-ons than were possible with additive licenses, because additive licenses are seen as a separate license pool of the same feature.

We hope you’ll find life a little easier when it comes to license upgrades for your customers, thanks to this new feature.

Support for Linux on ARM

Many customers have asked for support for the Linux ARM 64-bit platform, and we’ve delivered. Linux ARM has been gaining in popularity for high-performance computing (HPC) due to the platform’s exceptionally low energy consumption while maintaining high processing power.

Stability and performance improvements

Over the past year, we’ve made huge leaps in stability and performance. You’ll find that the license server is able to serve many more clients under even greater loads, and LMX_GetLicenseInfo handling performance has been particularly improved.

We do it all for you!

With all the hustle and bustle of bringing 2021 to a close and ushering in 2022, we are filled with gratitude for all of our customers. You bring purpose and satisfaction to every day, knowing that our work is helping to make your business thrive.

With the pandemic continuing to bring challenges into both our business and personal lives, our sincere wish is that you enjoy gathering with your loved ones over the holidays while staying safe and healthy, and we look forward to continuing our collaboration with you in the coming new year.

Happy holidays, and a happy and prosperous New Year!

Henrik Goldman
X-Formation Founder and CEO

A Year of License Statistics in Review

A Year of License Statistics in Review

The past 12 months have seen major upgrades and enhancements in License Statistics, including powerful new features and redesigned monitoring tools for increased control and usability. Here’s why you should be using the latest version of License Statistics.

Over the last year, we’ve delivered important updates and enhancements to License Statistics to help you get even better control over your software license budget. The latest version of License Statistics includes:

  • License Harvesting with automatic license release.
  • The License Statistics Agent, enabling new features such as Autodesk named user license tracking.
  • Feature and User Reservations.
  • API enhancements.
  • New and enhanced reporting tools.

Here’s what you need to know about the key features released in the past year.

License Harvesting with Automatic License Release

License Harvesting helps you eliminate the extra costs associated with purchasing spare licenses by monitoring users’ machines to see when licenses are unused (e.g. due to meetings, coffee breaks, etc.). Every company has peak days when the highest number of licenses are used. License Harvesting helps you monitor and respond to such peaks by reducing idle license consumption and automatically return those licenses to the available pool.

Automatic remote license release for LM-X and Flexnet license servers was introduced in License Statistics v6.10. This gets idle licenses back into the available license pool just after the Agent has closed the end-user application. No more waiting or manual intervention required – simply set it and forget it.

See the License Harvesting documentation for more information.

The License Statistics Agent

License Statistics Agent is a License Statistics add-on tool that enables client usage monitoring for software using locally running applications that must be tracked on the clients themselves. License Statistics Agent communicates between these applications and License Statistics, running as a service in the background.

License Statistics Agent currently supports monitoring for Autodesk license usage and Autodesk named user licenses, and is currently available for Windows installations.

See the License Statistics Agent documentation for more information.

User and Feature Reservations

Customer enhancement requests are one of our top priorities. Several customers had requested a way to view User and Feature reservations to further simplify software license asset management tasks. The User and Feature Reservations pages were the result.

The User Reservations page provides an overview of all reservations across all features and license servers for a selected user or group. You’ll find the User Reservations page under the Users section in the left navigation pane. (See the documentation for User Reservations for details.)

The Feature Reservations page provides an overview of all reservations for a selected license server and feature. You’ll find it under the Features section in the left navigation page. (See the documentation for Feature Reservations for more details.),

API Enhancements

Not only did we release a significant update to the License Statistics API with API v2, but we released the first version of API v3.

With API v2 came enhancements making it much cleaner and easier to use. New endpoints were implemented to make it even more extensive. The API v3 release lays the groundwork for future API enhancements and releases. It includes extended reports that allow extended selection of all license servers and features.

See the API documentation and interactive API tool documentation for more information.

New and Enhanced Reporting Tools

We were also quite busy this past year building new reporting tools and enhancing / extending current ones.

User Usage History report now gives you the ability to view license usage history by a selected user or group (available only with the new licensing model). The report makes it easy to select the user/user group for which you want to view usage history and specify time intervals to include in the results.

We are devoted to simplifying your license administration tasks through detailed reporting and complete automation of routine tasks – including recapture of idle licenses that would otherwise cost you hundreds of lost productivity hours every month.

As always, please contact support@x-formation.com with your questions. We’ll be delighted to serve you.