Summary: 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.

About 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 nonexistent 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 https://www.dds.be