Several customers have recently asked us if any software vendors who use RLM for licensing have extended Salesforce.com to handle licensing information.  The answer is yes. One of our customers who uses both RLM and other older licensing technologies has written an integrated web service and activation API that ties into Salesforce.com.

Here’s a quick summary of what one of our customers does:

• create a new sale in Salesforce.com
• send download instructions to customer with a unique activation code
• customer downloads/installs software, enters activation code into the application
• activation server returns generated license, stored locally
• generated license also stored in transaction record in Salesforce.com

This RLM ISV has extended Salesforce and created a new License object (or table) which is associated with a Salesforce Account. When they make a license sale they create a new License record in Salesforce and populate it with parameters pertaining to the product license (node locked / floating, count, licensed modules, expiry etc). When this information is saved an “activation code” is generated and saved along with the rest of the licensing options. The activation code is something unique that can identify this record in Salesforce.

Their support desk sends the activation code to the end customer and he/she downloads and installs the application program.  This activation code can then be entered into the application which connects to the ISV’s own internet license activation service. The information submitted includes the activation code along with hardware information, or HostID. The license service is responsible for connecting to Salesforce and generating the RLM license. For transactional purposes they also store this generated license in Salesforce. The license is returned to the application and saved locally on their machine.