RLM Internet Activation
RLM v3.0 now supports product
activation and license fulfillment over the
Internet!
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Reprise Software Quick Links
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Reprise Software
www.reprisesoftware.com
info@reprisesoftware.com
781-837-0884 |
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We are pleased to send you the July
issue of
Options, the Software Licensing
Newsletter from the folks at Reprise
Software. We hope you find this issue
useful and informative. Please feel free
to
forward this to a friend
using the link at the bottom of this
email.
Thanks.
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Activation,
Activation, Activation!!
The latest version of RLM (v3.0) adds
valuable Internet Activation
capabilities... at no extra cost!
Let's face it, when it comes to getting
your customer licensed, it's all about
simplicity and ease-of-use.
Software vendors who use electronic
licensing face the question of what is
the best way to transmit license
certificates to their customers. Many
vendors use a somewhat manual approach,
using email messages or phone calls to
request the customer's hostid
information, and then sending the valid
certificate back to the customer in an
email or as an email attachment. This
model continues to work well for some
vendors, but many vendors want to
improve license delivery by setting up a
web-based service for customers to
"self-serve" their licenses
interactively over the Internet via a
browser or automatically during
installation. The vendor advantages of
this approach are many:
- Reduce costs
- Customers serve themselves
- Improve efficiency of
subscription-based models
- Improve efficiency of
support renew campaigns
- Improve customer satisfaction
- Simplify the end-user
experience
- 24x7 on-demand license
delivery
- Users reclaim lost licenses
- No waiting for permanent
license key
- Accelerate revenue recognition
- No waiting for hostids
- Recognize revenue on whole
initial order
- Enable bulk license
activations
- Improve trial software programs
- Issue eval licenses that are
good for a certain number of
days from software installation
The RLM Internet Activation features are
new in RLM v3.0.
Using the new activation features of RLM
is straightforward and easy. You start
by using RLM's web-based admin
application to define your products in
terms of the kinds of licenses that are
needed to activate them. Once defined,
the RLM tool creates a series of
"activation keys" for each product. The
activation keys resemble 16-digit credit
card numbers. Activation keys can
enable single-seat licenses or floating
licenses, and they can also be used for
bulk activations at your largest and
best customers. Now, all you need to do
is to install the RLM license activation
software on your web server, along with
the product definitions and activation
keys.
Activate
via a browser or through the RLM
Activation API
If you sell packaged products,
activation keys are pre-printed on the
box. Otherwise, when you make a new
sale, you send an activation key to
your customer. The user can then connect
to your URL and enter the activation key
and his/her hostid information into the
web form to retrieve a valid license.
For
Maximum Control
If you would like to control activation
within your application or within an
installation program, you can access RLM
Internet activation services directly
via an API call. When you activate
licenses with the API, you are in
complete control of the user experience.
RLM Internet Activation is intended for
simple activation scenarios; for more
complex activation and integration with
CRM systems, Reprise Software recommends
a relationship with one of our License
Fulfillment Partners. See our website
Partner Page for more information on
our Fulfillment Partners.
For more information on RLM Internet
Activation, please
click here.
RLM v3.0
supports Java JNI
For Java software developers, Reprise
introduces JNI support in RLM v3.0. It
provides a direct interface from Java
into the full depth and breadth of RLM,
including: licensing roaming and locking
to more secure hostids.
For a closer look at the RLM v3.0,
please
contact us to obtain an evaluation
copy.
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Take the Next Step: Lock Down Your Licensed
Applications
An interview with Amena Ali, CMO of Arxan
Technologies, a Reprise partner in advancing
anti-piracy technology.
Options:
Despite widespread adoption of license
management, global software piracy losses
are growing.
Why,
and what can companies do about this?
Arxan: License
management is critical for enforcing
business agreements with software customers,
and is designed to help honest users stay
honest. However, there is a whole
parallel
economy of professional pirates who
distribute keys, patches and tampering hacks
which unlock softwareand
enable unrestricted piracy. Unlocked
software is sold on professional-looking
websites, where many customers do not
realize they are buying illegal products.
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Software vendors need to consider IP
protection measures to reduce or
stop vulnerability to piracy.
This approach complements a license
management solution such as Reprise's
RLM, and ensures protection against both
casual and not-so-casual software theft.
Options:
How can my license-managed software be
unlocked?
Arxan: Software
can be unlocked in a number of ways, from
simple to sophisticated compromises:
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Most easily, OEM keys or volume keys
usually find their way to the internet,
allowing widespread abuse.
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Historically, popular LM systems can be
reverse-engineered to create "key
generation" attacks, where counterfeit
keys or licenses can be generated at
will.
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Today, hackers tamper with the binary
itself to either modify the license
verification routines to accept
arbitrary keys
and licenses, or entirely dissociate
license management from the software.
Options:
How well does software protection technology
work? What are some key technology
features?
Arxan:
While
software piracy has been around for years,
what's new is technology
that can efficiently and effectively address
this problem.
When evaluating technologies,
look at three key parameters: durability,
resiliency and no single-point-of-failure.
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Durability: how long the protection last
before it is potentially breached.
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Resilience: how quickly, efficiently and
securely you can bounce back from a
breach to full strength protection.
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No single-point-of-failure: encryption
wrappers or "magic" key-based solutions
have single points of failure. When one
exploit is discovered, every customer of
that protection technology is fully
compromised, and piracy is inevitable.
Options:
What factors should software vendors keep in
mind when choosing an IP protection
solution?
Arxan: Hackers
are a chronic problem, so you want to choose
a company and technology that is keeping
pace with this arms race as you take the
next step to lock down your license
management system. Look for a solution that:
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has been tried and tested, both in the
real world and by professional red teams
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is
configurable, customizable and has no
global single points of failure
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fits cleanly into your software
development and maintenance life cycle
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does not affect your paying customers'
user experience in any way (negligible
application impact)
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and finally, ask a
potential vendor
about their ongoing research efforts to
continuously improve their security
capabilities. Come to think of it, you
are
choosing a security partner rather
than just a software vendor.
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RLM Customer Story: Dynamic Design Solutions
Dynamic
Design Solutions is an independent
and privately owned developer of software
tools for validating simulation models,
optimizing engineering designs and
integrating and automating simulation
processes. Their specialty is to bridge the
world of engineering based on
experimentation and prototype testing, with
the new world of virtual product development
and simulating product performance before
any prototype is built. In order to be
useful for decision-making, these virtual
models need to be calibrated using real-life
data and that is where their software comes
in. DDS' customers are active in the
mechanical and civil engineering industries.
DDS serves a niche market today, so their
licensing needs are modest in terms of
number of licenses but, their customers are
located worldwide and range from very small
local consultants to multinational
enterprises. Because of the nature of their
software solution, most customers are
supported centrally from their head office
in Belgium. Consequently, they work hard to
reduce support calls as much as possible by
providing extensive documentation, and a
web-based knowledge base. When they were
looking for a replacement of their prior
licensing solution, ease-of-use and trouble
free installation were top criteria.
DDS found all these requirement fulfilled by
RLM in addition to:
- Attractive pricing (all-in-one
offering at an affordable price per OS)
- All licensing models that are needed
fulfilled by RLM (node-locked, floating)
- Easy and smooth communication with
sales and technical support
- Basic architecture similar to legacy
software already known by their staff.
DSS chose to replace their legacy licensing
vendor because of slow or nonexistant
technical support, vague roadmap for new OS
support (i.e. 64-bit), and sudden changes in
business model and price level.
DDS is sensitive to piracy issues as well.
They found older versions of their software
on several piracy web site and therefore had
to reinforce protection. Using stronger
encryption is often at an extra cost with
competing license managers but is included
in RLM. For a company like DDS, with a small
customer base, it is relatively easy to
switch license managers. Changing to a newer
license manager that has not yet had the
same attention from the hacker community as
legacy software is probably a very efficient
way to reinforce protection.
DDS relies on RLM for standard license
models like node-locking individual licenses
and floating network licenses.
Sometimes DDS' customers need to take their
computer on site to work at remote locations
like factories, or test facilities. They
have traditionally used dongles to be able
to use the same node-locked license of
software on their office PC as well as
notebooks. DDS is now promoting the use of
floating license and use a RLM-supported
"roaming" license whenever they need to take
a notebook outside of their office.
Some of their larger customers that run
sophisticated computing centers, have asked
for a way to guarantee license availability
in case of a server failure. This is made
possible by the failover licensing feature
in RLM which permits a second backup license
server to automatically take over in case
the first (main) server fails.
Finally, DDS found it very important to
provide full versions of their software for
a temporary trial period. Converting such a
time-limited version to a regular paid
license is then only a matter of changing
the license file.
For the future, DDS looks for improvements
in:
- Internet-based licensing
- Further automation of installation
and configuration (wizards)
- Reduction of administrative costs
related to licensing
For more information about DDS or to contact
them please visit them at
http://www.dds.be
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RLM End User
Bundle for License Administrators and End
Users!
Right-size
your RLM license servers
Reprise
Software continues to listen to software
licensing administrators and users of
licensed software as we announce the
upcoming availability of the first-ever RLM
End User Bundle!
And, as with the built-in license server
administration pages and fully-documented
report log format, RLM continues to lower
the cost of using licensed software by
providing the End User Bundle at no charge!
Designed to give end users and license
administrators everything they need to
maximize their use of the increasing number
of RLM-licensed applications, the bundle
contains the most-current RLM server along
with the new RLM performance testing tools,
"rlmtests".
The Bundle
includes separate end user documentation as
well.
As we pointed out last month,
RLM v3.0 sheds some light on the black art
of predicting license server load and
performance. The new RLM release includes
some testing tools that let License
Administrators answer questions such as:
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How fast can my license server service
license requests?
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How many licensed users can my server
handle?
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What will my performance be if I double
my current user population?
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When should I split my license inventory
into multiple independent 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.
The server
capacity test attempts to determine the
total number of clients that the server can
handle. This test starts up a number of
sub-processes which each simulate 1000
clients connected to the server.
Sub-processes are started until a checkout
fails (or when 50 sub-processes all
succeed.) During the course of this test,
the checkout performance time is reported as
each sub-process completes.
With this
utility, license administrators and other
end users can be proactive about their
hardware requirements, matching available
hardware to expected needs and giving a plan
for hardware acquisition to match the growth
in users of RLM-licensed software.
Feel free
to use the "send to a friend" link to let
others know about the upcoming RLM End User
Bundle; they can then submit their email
address and we'll notify them, too!
An early version of this bundle can be
downloaded from
this link.
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RLM v3.0 supports Java
JNI
Software developers who write Java-based
applications may now use the full
breadth and depth of RLM via a new JNI
from Reprise Software. This interface
links applications to RLM's API. The JNI
is supported in RLM v3.0 and higher.
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