Recently, our X-Formation team has had their own personal success implementing the X-Formation License Distribution Service software to manage license fulfillment needs.
With an ever-increasing customer base, we needed a more efficient and reliable means of allowing users to obtain and activate their X-Formation software licenses (License Statistics, License Distribution Service and, in the near future, LM-X). Our manual systems were becoming cumbersome and tedious, and the license activation tool was problematic when used on proxy servers. With no central database for actual license usage, too high a percentage of our customers were under-licensed or unlicensed, and we spent excessive time on billing.
We needed a solution that would allow users to fulfill their own licenses and easily activate them, which gave us the perfect opportunity to use our own License Distribution Service software.
License Distribution Service has made it possible for us to deliver automatic self-service license fulfillment using a web interface, including the important component of online license activation. By implementing the SOAP-based PHP web interface in our Support Portal, our customers now need only enter their 16-digit hostid, and at the click of a button, can download the license and start to use it within seconds.
On our end, to process and deliver purchase orders to our customers, we simply log into the administrative area of our Support Portal and select the product the customer purchased. License Distribution Service does the rest. It creates a new Order ID, picks the appropriate license template, generates a license using the correct license generator (LM-X, in our case), and makes the license ready for customer's self-service activation. All without any further intervention.
The service works in the same way for maintenance plan updates/upgrades, subscription renewals, and add-on purchases. All we need to do is change the settings in the Support Portal and click OK. Behind the scenes, License Distribution Service makes the needed changes to the license file and makes it ready for the customer to re-activate.
Using License Distribution Service, we can quickly and easily set limits on user count, define the maintenance time, and specify the number of vendors, all using a web interface that communicates with License Distribution Service directly using methods set within a binary WSDL file.
License Distribution Service has simplified and streamlined many functions for the X-Formation support team. Says Pawel Karwowski, an X-Formation developer, "The simplicity of license creation and SOAP-based web interface combined with the PHP-based distribution system we've implemented in our Support Portal do their job well."
For Konrad Marszalek, an X-Formation support engineer, License Distribution Service has made his job easier and freed up his time for tackling important support issues for X-Formation customers. "We no longer have any complaints from customers who previously had troubles with license activation, so I can concentrate on support issues directly related to improving our products," explains Konrad. "Best thing is, License Distribution Service saves me from all the tedious work of license administration."
Of course, when all is said and done, we're all most concerned with our ROI. In the first week after implementing digital licensing with License Distribution Service, we had upgrade sales of more than 10,000 USD in the first week, because customers who were previously under-licensed started to purchase the new licensing required to be compliant with the licensing terms. Previously, they simply didn't know about the fact that they should purchase additional licensing. Furthermore, it allowed us to perform automatic billing by extracting business intelligence from the service, which in turn lets us create automatic invoices. This replaces an entire employee, another significant return on the investment spent putting the service in place.
Not only did using License Distribution Service benefit us greatly in managing our own license fulfillment, but it gave us the experience of using the software in the same way as our customers do, increased our depth of understanding and our abilities to use our own technology, and as an end result, we gained knowledge we're able to use to make the software better.
