Summary: RLM answered requests immediately and the investment even for a small company like AnyBody Technology was reasonable. RLM is a general solution supplying many features, putting this ISV in a better position to address the future demands that come with an extended product line.
RLM Customer Story:
State-of-art musculoskeletal analysis software
AnyBody Technology A/S, based in Denmark, develops and markets the unique software the AnyBody Modeling System, which is a breakthrough invention for simulating man-machine or man-environment interaction and their effects on the human body. The AnyBody Modeling System allows users to be able to determine muscle and joint forces and other biomechanical factors. The system is an open system within which users can build their own models, or they can draw upon model resources from a public domain repository comprising a vast number of models, and an entire body model totaling more than 900 individual muscles.
Key benefits reported by clients include:
- Improved innovation of products for humans
- Improved usability of existing products
- Reduced cost for prototypes and improved time-to-market
- Improved documentation of ergonomic product benefits
- Improved fundamental or applied biomechanical understanding
The key markets for the products and services of AnyBody Technology are the global orthopedics, automotive, sports industries, and research institutions. Users of the AnyBody Modeling System are mainly involved in either university research, or R&D activities in the industries.
The AnyBody Modeling System has for many years used our own in-house-built license solution, but with latest major release we have switched to a solution using RLM. RLM was recommended to us as an affordable and flexible solution, easily implemented, and supplied with friendly and responsive technical support. After now one year using RLM, we can only support this picture of Reprise Software and its product.
Why Switch to RLM?
We had several reasons to look for a replacement of our own license control system, and naturally, we had several considerations regarding the switch, summarized here:
In general, we wanted to minimize our effort in this area, which is outside our core competencies, so a commercial package was the natural answer.
- We had immediate needs for improved handling of multiple products and a modular license structure. Furthermore, we expect these needs to increase as our core product, The AnyBody Modeling System, is extended with a product line of derived products. Products aimed at different marked segments will most likely call for different licensing structure and a flexible package, such as RLM, certainly supports these demands.
- We needed functionality to enforce our maintenance period and we now do this by the “version number” in the RLM license. Additionally, we use several of the information fields in RLM license for instance to identify the customer to the software. We believe that “accidental misuse” of licenses by honest customers is more typical and a larger problem than actual dishonest customers trying to cheat the license control. Providing information about the running license is therefore an essential part of our license control, which we also needed to strengthen when replacing our old license solution.
- We needed a better floating license solution, which was only poorly supported by our own solution. Again a commercial package better addressed this.
- We had a working solution, so, despite our extended needs, there was not a strong motivation to make a large investment into a replacing technology, neither purchase cost nor implementation effort. Rumors regarding other commercial solutions caused us to consider in particular the latter carefully and RLM has proven to be a good answer.
- Our original license control relied on several host IDs, which naturally had to be supported in the new solution as well. For instance, we had a dongle based host ID with a customized dongle. This we easily implemented into our RLM-based solution with the ISV-Defined Host ID facility.
- Moreover, we have occasionally operated with a special model based licensing for customized solutions, i.e., a license that is linked to special features in the simulation model to be loaded into the AnyBody software. This linkage easily and effectively restricts the customized solution customer’s use of the otherwise very general modeling system. This option we have not yet implemented with our RLM-based solution, but it will completely unproblematic to implement with the ISV-Defined Host ID facility.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, RLM answered all of our immediate requests and the investment even for a small company like AnyBody Technology was reasonable. Apart from our immediate needs, RLM is a general solution supplying many features, and we now feel we are in a better position to address the future demands that come with an extended product line. RLM has indeed been the right solution for AnyBody Technology.