Since this is my first X-Formation blog entry, let me begin by introducing myself. My name is Pawel Roman, and I'm a senior .NET developer at the new X-Formation R&D center in Krakow.
My primary area is License Distribution Service development, and I'm excited to tell you some of the ways that the upcoming release will help make your life easier.
This release of License Distribution Service includes a significant new feature, bulk licensing. This feature will let you specify the number of licenses that can be issued for the order you're creating.
For example, say a customer orders 50 node-locked licenses of your product. Using the License Distribution Service Administrator GUI, you can create an order for the customer, define the activation timeframe, and set the license number to 50, all with just a few clicks. You can also easily define the license locking criteria (e.g., ethernet adapter ID).
The license delivery is then fully automated. When the end user requests the license (by calling the GetLicense web service method and providing a valid hostid), checks are made for conditions such as whether the correct hostid was provided, the current date is in the activation timeframe, the license for this HostID hasn't already been issued, the license limit hasn't been exceeded, and so on.
If all conditions are met, the new license file is generated and returned as a string. If the license was already created for the particular order and host ID, the text is returned without creating a new license file.
With the License Distribution Service Administrator GUI, you can view all licenses issued for a given order, generate new licenses manually, or regenerate existing licenses at any time. Of course, License Distribution Service supports managing multiple products, customers, and orders, with fully customizable license locking criteria for each order. You can also use templates to save time when creating orders.
I hope all these features will greatly improve the efficiency of the license distribution process and help save time for everyone using License Distribution Service.
