FLEXlm: The Best Of Licensing

As BASIS' new Product Marketing Manager, Win has more than 15 years of management experience in high-technology product and business development.

BASIS now offers more cost-effective software licensing with its new FLEXlm license management tools. Starting with our 2.1 release, many users will require fewer licenses, find it easier to migrate licenses across platforms and can better manage the use of their important software assets.

Managing Software Assets

Along with 1,600 other software publishers, BASIS has implemented FLEXlm license management from GLOBEtrotter Software, Inc., because we believe it offers the most value to the end user. Even a small organization loses track of the software assets it has spent hard-earned revenue to acquire. BASIS license management provides utilities that can let the organization know where its software assets are, how much they are utilized, which assets can be shed, which are in great demand, and which users need the software and which do not.

Flexible Configurations

The customer can purchase multiuser licenses, also called floating licenses, that, when they are accessed on a license management system, are valid on any machine or any of a predetermined collection of machines on a network. A single machine can be designated as a license server, from which all licenses can be checked out and used. Instead of buying separate licenses for each machine, this system allows the customer to purchase only as many licenses as might be needed, then use them throughout the organization, on any machine.

In nearly all configurations, licenses are counted per seat. Unlike older licensing practices that counted every invocation of BBx® as a user, in most cases the license manager will count the machine as a licensed user, regardless of the number of invocations of BBX made from that machine. This includes terminal emulation sessions that use FacetCorp's FacetWin 2.1.d. BASIS will work with all other interested terminal emulation vendors to help them support per-seat licensing of BASIS products.

Simple, Fast Registration

Getting a license will be simple, albeit somewhat different with new BASIS products.With earlier products, users would get an activation key from BASIS and use it to enable the software.Version 2.1 and later products will be enabled during the installation process. Look for a piece of paper containing licensing information that ships with the media. Then follow the instructions on the screen. The person responsible for installation will load the software, register with BASIS and receive a permanent license through e-mail, over the Internet or by fax. Registration will take minutes and is available automatically.

Even if receipt of a permanent license is delayed or licensing installation somehow fails, the user can still get the software running immediately with a temporary license. The installation package shows you how. The system is programmed to periodically remind the user to register for a permanent license.