Reprise Licenses 300th RLM Customer
This month Reprise Software licensed our 300th RLM customer.
We wanted to take a moment to thank all our customers for making Reprise successful, and thought this would be a good time to take a look back at the history of RLM and FLEXlm.
Back in the FLEXlm days, we had about 300 customers in 1993/1994, when GLOBEtrotter took over the FLEXlm product from Highland Software. That was 6 years into the life of the product. We ultimately got to about 2000 customers by 1999. So we added about 300 customers/yr (on average) for those last 6 years. Or 25/month.
It has taken Reprise 5 years to get to 300 customers. Last quarter (Q1/2011) we added 24 new customers which was the largest number for any quarter in our history.
The other comparison is that in the FLEXlm days, nearly all of our customers were new to license management, since license management was a new technology at the time. At Reprise, about 65% of our customers are new to license management, and the other 35% are switching from another technology. We are pleased that companies both new and old to license management are selecting RLM as their licensing solution.
So, once again, thanks to everyone for another great milestone in Reprise Software's history.
Using Dongles with RLM
Supporting dongles with the Reprise License Manager
The Reprise License Manager (RLM) comes with built-in USB dongle support. That means that dongles purchased from Reprise can be used as a standard "hostid" to which licenses can be locked. The principal advantage of using dongles is to provide a convenient way for your customers to transfer licenses when machines are replaced or upgraded. Software applications, with a valid license, can be used on any machine as long as the dongle specified in the license is attached.
ISV-Defined Hostids
ISVs who prefer to support their own dongles with RLM can do so by way of an ISV-defined host ID. ISVs can choose a simple, low-cost dongle because RLM needs only the dongle's serial number at runtime. ISVs then write a routine to retrieve the dongle's ID and include that routine within the RLM libraries so whenever a license is tied to the dongle, RLM knows how to call the ISV's routine to obtain the dongle serial number. Example code is provided with the standard RLM SDK to show how ISV-defined hostids can be integrated into RLM.
Ellexus chooses the Reprise License Manager (RLM)
Ellexus LTD, a software start up from the UK, recently released a tool called Breeze for managing scripted flows such as those used in hardware design and software builds. They surveyed several licensing providers before choosing RLM from Reprise Software.
"Our business has been growing steadily since we purchased the RLM licensing package in January 2011 - you may have seen our article in EEtimes," said Dr. Rosemary Francis of Ellexus. "We have been very happy with Reprise and so far it has been well received by our customers. It was really easy to integrate into our product and straightforward to cut new licenses. Our customers have large computing infrastructures that mean that they need a robust floating license model that gives their teams flexibility and cuts down on administration cost. The simplicity of the Reprise setup procedures has made their lives - and ours - easier. "
About Ellexus
Breeze is designed to help customers understand complex software flows such as scripted builds and compilation flows. Breeze traces the interactions between programs, scripts and data to help develop and debug mix-vendor and mixed-language builds. It helps to automatically document flows as a means to package up solutions for third parties and remote engineers or to understand a new flow from a customer or vendor. Breeze can be used to troubleshoot issues with compiled and scripted flows and is language independent. It works on your existing system and gives you an overview of the system as well as detailed information for debugging.
Reprise Announces Usage Reporting Toolset
Reprise Software has expanded its product line to address the usage reporting and pay-per-use needs of current RLM and FLEXlm/FLEXnet ISVs.
Reprise Software has recently become a global reseller of LicenseTracker's LT-Analyzer license usage analysis tool enabling your customers to understand their license usage and for you to implement usage based pricing models.
This new product supports both RLM and FLEXlm/FLEXnet. RLM's report log format is supported as is, and FLEXlm ISVs can take advantage of this new product simply by integrating a small piece of open source enhanced reporting code into their existing FLEXlm/FLEXnet vendor daemon.
By delivering reporting tools, ISVs can let their customers produce license usage reports to support current pricing models. Reports can be used as hard evidence to support fact-based software pricing negotiations, especially at the largest customers.
Usage based pricing can complement current license models. Time or some other metric that fits your licensing strategy can be measured to ensure that customers pay for what they use.
This tool also allows end customers to assign costs to licenses and to monitor usage versus a set budget, and to assign costs across departments or business units who share common pools of floating licenses.
For those ISVs planning to host license servers for "in-the-cloud" customers, LT-Analyzer can be used in-house to collect license data to produce billing reports based on actual cloud-based usage.
The LT-Analyzer product imports RLM report logs and/or enhanced debug log records produced by modified FLEXlm license servers. Useful reports are produced by aggregating logged usage data during the billing cycle.
Global licenses for LT-Analyzer are based on a scaled-revenue tiers, much like RLM and FLEXlm/FLEXnet.
Please contact Reprise Software for more information about functionality or pricing, or to arrange a demonstration.
Tachyon Design Automation switches to RLM
Summary: Tachyon Design Automation tells why they switched to RLM - to take advantage of its flexible licensing solutions to support multi-cores.
The Past
Previously Tachyon DA used an internal licensing system for our flagship product, CVC, a Verilog simulator with industry leading performance. Our in-house system only allowed node locked licenses and lacked the ability to support simultaneous simulations. As the industry moved to multi-core CPUs and we received more requests for floating licenses it became evident that our solution was in need of updating. We decided it was probably better to take a look at third party solutions than spend the time updating our own license manager.
The Switch to RLM
We found RLM to be a simple yet powerful licensing solution. RLM allowed us to immediately add support for multiple count (multi-core) and floating licenses with minimal effort. We were also able to maintain some of our original licensing mechanism on top of existing RLM features. It quickly became apparent that it was a good idea to go with RLM for CVC's license manager instead of updating our own. This allowed us to concentrate our efforts on what we do best, while letting Reprise handle staying current with all the latest licensing models.
About Tachyon Design Automation
Tachyon Design Automation specializing in Electronic Design Automation (EDA) software. Our flagship product, CVC, is a Verilog simulator which provides industry leading performance and capacity.
Managing Renewable Licenses – A Practical Approach
Using RLM refresh-type activation to support short-term renewable licenses
Consider these licensing system requirements:
- The system must be able to generate a time limited and trial licenses.
- The trial version will automatically become a "full version" when the customer purchases a license.
- Full licenses are also "time limited", i.e. customers can purchase packages of 30, 60, or 90 days.
- Each time the application starts, it must validate that its license has not yet expired.
- The application must be able to operate "off line" for a specified period of time: if the license cannot be reactivated at the expiration of the allowed off-line period, then the license is suspended and the application cannot start.
- Upon first reconnection, if the user still has a valid license (has not been terminated), the license is reactivated, the off-line allowed time is restored and the application can be run again.
Supporting the Concepts
Using the optional RLM add-on product, RLM Activation Pro, a refreshable license is one that is intended to be reactivated frequently and receive a license with a new expiration date with each reactivation. Refreshable licenses are typically of short duration (days). The ISV is assured that the maximum period during which the end user can run the licensed application is the duration of the refreshable license, say 30 days.
For example, if the ISV specifies a 30-day refreshable license, then the license will be good for 30-days after each activation. If the refresh operation fails for any reason, such as the lack of Internet connectivity, then the license is still good until the end of the 30 day period - enough time to resolve any connectivity issues. This allows the customer to operate off-line until the license needs to be refreshed.
Refreshable licenses also give the ISV a way to revoke a license should that user fail to meet contractual obligations, for example. The ISV can simply disable the user's license on the activation server, and refresh attempts of that license will fail from that point forward, or until it is re-enabled by the ISV.
The client side of refreshing can be automated, so it can be performed without an undue burden on the end-user. Reprise supplies a "Refresh API" for license refreshing, which the ISV can use from within the application itself, or within a separate standalone utility. Reprise supplies a generic refresh utility that can be supplied to the end-user by the ISV. The generic utility, "refresh_util", is meant to be set up to run daily as a scheduled task.
ISV-Defined Hostids
Defining new Hostids within RLM
RLM comes with a comprehensive set of integrated hostids, but there are times when ISVs need to lock their software licenses to something else. The three most common reasons for ISV-defined hostids are:
- Supporting non-Reprise dongles
- Tying licenses to peripheral hardware devices
- Combining various identifying elements of the computer.
ISV-Defined Hostid
RLM provides the ability to extend the native set of hostids by using your own routines to obtain host identification which is unique to you.
In order to do this, you use the rlm_add_isv_hostid() call in your application. If you want to support multiple instances of your hostid type on a single computer, you would use the rlm_add_isv_hostid_multiple() call.
For more information on ISV-defined hostids, please consult the latest RLM Reference Manual or contact Reprise Software.
RLM End User Bundle
RLM End User Bundle for License Administrators and End Users
The RLM End User Bundle is designed to give end users and license administrators everything they need to maximize their use of RLM-licensed applications, the bundle contains the most-current RLM license server, and a tool, "rlmtests," to help with license server and network capacity planning.
The RLM End User Bundle includes some testing tools that let License Administrators answer questions such as:
- How fast can my license server service license requests?
- How many licensed users can my server handle?
- What will my performance be if I double my current user population?
- When should I split my license inventory into multiple independent license servers?
‘rlmtests’ is totally self-contained, creating the required test licenses and then starting a license server before it runs the tests, finally reporting the results on the screen. The rlmtests utility performs two categories of tests: checkout performance tests and server capacity tests.
With this utility, license administrators and other end users can be proactive about their hardware requirements, matching available hardware to expected needs and developing a plan for hardware acquisition to match the growth in users of RLM-licensed software.
The RLM End User Bundle can be downloaded from the RLM end user support page: http://www.reprisesoftware.com/support/end-users.php
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How to Produce RLM Report Logs
SUMMARY: RLM license servers can produce detailed report logs of the license activity of your products. By default, these log files are turned off. This article will explain the potential uses of these report log files, what they are and how to tell your RLM license server to start producing them.
User Benefits
Users of products that use RLM license servers for floating or concurrent licenses use report logs for:
- Proof of internal license compliance
- Allocating costs across departments who share licenses.
- Asset and maintenance cost optimization and budget planning
- Entering into and monitor usage-based software licensing agreements
ISV Benefits
Software vendors benefit from report logs too. They can be used to:
- Reconcile over-usage
- Build post-use billing models
- Produce audit reports to support future product pricing negotiations
How to turn on RLM Report Logs
The is nothing that the ISV needs to do. The user creates an “options file” for each RLM ISV for which he wants to produce a log file, and adds this line to the file: REPORTLOG +file_path
Also, on the ISV line of the license file, the options file name must be specified.
Format (pre-RLM v9.0): ISV isvname isvname.exe isvname.opt
or
Format (RLM v9.0+): ISV isvname options=isvname.opt
Other RLM Report Log Features
- Plain-text format is fully documented
- Applications can ensure that report logs are capturing usage
- ROTATE [daily | weekly | monthly | #days ], automatic log file rotation
- Feature names mapped to “product names”
- Authentication to ensure report data integrity
- Anonymized – ensures user privacy
- ISVs can write their own report log records
- 3rd party RLM reporting tools are available from Reprise Software partners
For more information about RLM report log and its format specification, please review the RLM End User Manual.
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