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"Agilis's Orion Network Licensing Platform is a complete product activation
solution, since Orion allows software vendors to accommodate all their varying user environments:
network-connected, partially-connected, firewall-protected and disconnected, while retaining full
licensing flexibility and security across all these user scenarios."
Source : Agilis Software
Why Product Activation for Software Is Becoming Widespread
Product Activation is also known as :
Product Activation System,
Product Activation Software,
Product Activation Generator,
Product Activation Article,
Product Activation Whitepaper,
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Product Activation Process,
Product Activation Registry,
Product Activation Service,
Product Activation Technology,
Product Activation Wizard,
Product Activation Workaround,
Product Key Activation,
Product Activation Experience,
Product Activation Center,
Product Activation Crack,
Product Activation Error,
Product Activation Failed,
Product Activation Help,
Product Activation Worries,
Product Activation Component,
Product Activation Tab,
Product Activation Displays,
Product Activation User,
Product Activation Policy,
Product Activation Application,
Product Activation Screen,
Product Activation Page,
Anti Product Activation,
Bypass Product Activation,
Change Product Activation,
Get Around Product Activation.
Software vendors have used license management for many years. Older
approaches, such as key-file-based licensing or dongles, do have a number of
drawbacks for the vendor and their users. Product activation solves many of
these problems, so is gaining broad acceptance in the software industry.
Product activation is widely used by software vendors to protect their
applications and enforce license agreements. While some users object to any form
of license management, modern product activation systems are superior to other
techniques from both the vendor's and the end-user's perspectives.
Software vendors use license management for a variety of reasons. They are
often concerned about protection from piracy, and protection against users
exceeding their agreed license terms (such as the number of installations that
run in a customer company). License management also allows the software vendor
to develop, distribute, and support one version of their application, but offer
different license terms at different prices to different markets. For example,
the vendor can use the licensing mechanism to provide trial licenses, perpetual
licenses, subscription licenses, set limits on the product features or modules
enabled, set usage limits, combinations of all of the above, and offer
straightforward upgrades in capabilities, all with just one executable (some
license management systems even allow the vendor to also offer floating
licensing either over the end-customer's network or the Internet based on this
same executable). Finally, license management can enable the vendor to automate
fulfillment, management and reporting, so reducing operations costs and offering
immediate delivery worldwide 24x7 to their customers.
A key concern for software vendors is ensuring users don't just give the
software to unlicensed friends and colleagues, or even post it on the web for
anyone to download. The standard solution is called node-locking, where each
user's installation is locked to one or more parameters of their system, such as
the MAC address. Each time the application runs, it reads, say, the MAC address
of the computer where it is running, and will proceed only if the address it
reads matches the one recorded for that license.
Older approaches for license enforcement include dongle-based licensing and
key-file-based licensing. A dongle is a hardware device that plugs into the
user's computer; when the application runs it checks for the presence of the
dongle and will run only if it finds it. Dongles do therefore allow the user to
move their license around, but only by physically relocating the dongle. With
key-file-based licensing, the license limits and node-locking parameters are
encrypted in a file, which is sent to the user and read by the application each
time it runs.
These approaches have a number of disadvantages. Dongles require the
distribution of the hardware, with all that entails in material cost, shipping
cost, delivery times and management by the vendor. They are widely disliked by
end-users, who don't want to wait for them to arrive, keep track of them, have
them stick out of their computer and so on.
Key-based licensing improves on dongles as the encrypted key files can be
delivered immediately by email, and impose no hardware burden. However, they do
require the user to provide the names of the locking parameters (or run a
utility to read them), and do not allow users to readily move their license from
machine to machine, as such a move would require a new key file. An upgrade to a
user's license, such as extending a subscription, also requires the generation
and delivery of a new key file.
Product activation improves on these older approaches. Fulfillment is
immediate as with key-file-based licensing, but the node-locking is accomplished
automatically at activation
time, so the user is not required to supply any
information, and indeed is unaware of the specific parameters to which the
license is locked. Modern activation systems also support the relocation of a
license by the user, who can activate their license on one system, then perhaps
months later deactivate their license on that first system and activate it on a
second system. The activation system ensures only one copy of a given license is
active at any one time, thus addressing the vendor's concerns, but the user can
move their license from, say, their office machine to their laptop, then to
their home machine, as they wish. The activation system can also automatically
transfer user settings, so the newly activated installation comes up exactly as
the user had configured the old one.
If the user upgrades their license, perhaps by converting a trial license to
a production license, extending a subscription, or purchasing additional
features or modules, the vendor simply updates the record for that user in the
hosted activation system, and the user clicks a menu command to update their
license, causing the new limits to immediately take effect.
Product activation systems therefore meet the software vendors' need to
protect against piracy, offer a range of license models, and automate
operations, but remove many of the inconveniences and costs of older license
management systems. Early product activation systems that didn't support such
capabilities as activation on disconnected systems or license relocation did
give the approach a bad name, but modern product activation systems have this
flexibility so are gaining acceptance with vendors and users.
Agilis Software is an infrastructure software company headquartered in Santa
Clara, CA in the heart of Silicon Valley.
We develop and market software license management solutions that are relied
on by software vendors and hardware / software systems vendors in a wide range
of industries and market segments. Our solutions are particularly suited to
agile companies with complex licensing requirements.
Agilis Software LLC
5201 Great America Parkway, Suite 320
Santa Clara
CA95054
USA
URL: www.agilis-sw.com
Email:
sales@agilis-sw.com
Tel.: (408) 404
8480