Summary: Lumina launched the 4.2 release of its flagship product, Analytica®, in early 2010 using Reprise’s licensing solutions for the first time. This replaced an internal license code scheme that they had been using for more than 13 years.
Licensing Challenges of the Past
Prior to Analytica 4.2, Lumina would issue a license code for each individual end user of its products. The license code would be entered during installation to enable the appropriate edition of the product. In many organizations, the end-user and the purchasing agent are not the same person. So the identity of the end-user was often not known to Lumina unless the end-user voluntarily filled out a registration web form.
Licensing Motivations
As they attempted to improve support relationships with end-users, it became apparent that they needed better information gathering mechanisms to find out who their end-users were. The solution was to adopt a license-activation mechanism for distributing licenses. The advantage of using activation-based methodology is that it provides a natural time to collect the most up-to-date CRM information from their customers. It also allows them to set up subscription-based support services automatically. For example, their customers can now set up access accounts for the web-based Analytica Wiki which provides reference materials on Analytica while their customers are using the product.
Lumina also wanted to start offering a floating license option, which would not have been possible using the old method. Floating licenses have several advantages. Large organizations can make Lumina’s product available to an extended user group, which increases product exposure and familiarity. Floating licenses also allow them to focus on organization-wide sales instead of low-margin individual sales. This is convenient for them and their customers both, since it reduces the amount of time their staff has had to spend processing Analytica license transfers between individuals.
Selection of Reprise
“We surveyed several options prior to undertaking this change in licensing scheme,” said Lonnie Chrisman of Lumina. ” These included expanding the current in-house solution to include activation and floating license support, or integrating with one of several existing license manager products on the market.
Lonnie added, “We carefully considered four major license manager offerings in this space, focusing primarily on the level of end-user friendliness and transparency, flexibility of the product, openness and documentation for the programmer, and overall capabilities. Flexibility was especially important knowing that we would have to adapt it in many customized ways to integrate it into our installers, products, and back-end systems. Reprise’s offering stood out compared to the other offerings on all counts. We also attended a conference on license management sponsored by one of Reprise’s competitors where we solicited opinions from existing IT managers who use these products. They repeatedly recommended Reprise over the other options.”
Based on the recent success with RLM, Lumina will continue to use Reprise for the release of version 4.3 in March 2011. Analytica 4.3 is a major new release of great importance to Lumina and their customers.
About Analytica
Analytica® is a visual modeling tool for building and sharing quantitative decision models. Popular with top quantitative and statistical analysts, Analytica’s success is based on its ability to speed the development process by an order of magnitude while improving the transparency of complex decision models. Analytica models are organized as a hierarchy of influence diagrams, providing a highly intuitive and visual depiction of the encoded logic. Its efficient handling of multi-dimensional intelligent arrays™ allows users to break out of the two-dimensional spreadsheet paradigm, enabling unparalleled flexibility and scalability, explicit representations of uncertainty, and optimization capabilities.
