Entries by Henrik Goldman

Why is completing the next version of License Statistics taking so long? During the past fall, we invested more development resources in License Statistics than in any of our other products, and still the progress seems slow. Yet, finally, we see a light at the end of the tunnel.

The fact that the work on License Statistics has taken so long is really no wonder, because the changes to this upcoming version have been a massive undertaking! Since v3.0 of License Statistics, we've completed more than 145 issues. It's safe to say that the new version will be a surprise for many customers, because we've re-engineered almost all the core parts of the software.

Currently, as several License Statistics beta users know, we've replaced the embedded SQLite database with an embedded MySQL database. The existing database simply could not scale to the needs of our clients. Some existing customer setups store more than 95 million records, which require almost 10 GB of space for the database alone.

Don't worry; you won't need to be a database expert to run the new software. We've paid special attention to ensuring that the new database works embedded and without configuration as it did previously. On the other hand, external databases are an option for those who want enhanced scalability and operability in terms of insight, custom reporting and backups.

The first time you load the new version of License Statistics, it will convert your existing SQLite databases to MySQL. This is a one-time procedure required for the new version to work. Although we've spent hundreds of hours to optimize the process, it's still time consuming. For a typical environment, the conversion takes less than 1 day to complete. However, for large setups, such as those with 95 million records, it takes up to 5 days.

Why is this needed? Because MySQL is a far superior database and License Statistics can do calculations at the time it inserts records instead of having to run overnight. As a result, we've been able to remove the nightly graph generation; instead, everything is now done in real time.

With the database work completed, we've turned our attention to improving the web-based user interface, with our first goal being to replace Analyzer. We're working on this at the time of this writing, and thousands of lines of web-based code have already been written in order to achieve easy report generation.

Our ultimate goal is to replace all the individual tools, including editing of databases and custom reports, in order to provide everything from a web-based user interface. This is a lengthy process though as it requires rewriting nearly the entire application. So far, we've only rewritten half of it.

If there are no further delays, soon we will release License Statistics v3.5, which will no longer include Analyzer. In the release following v3.5, we'll focus on creating a web-based tool for custom reports.

We've implemented many features in this upcoming release that were not possible before: importing of license manager log files, user-authentication, and a much more efficient user interface for navigation and manipulation.

Rewriting half of the product is by no means trivial. Thousands of man hours have been invested in this release, and we're getting close to the finish line. After all the hard work that's gone into License Statistics, we're certainly looking forward to presenting you with a far superior product this year. I believe you'll find that the effort has been well worth the wait.

We're happy to have made our first release of LM-X in this new year. Since the last release, we've spent just over 2 months addressing almost 50 issues. These latest changes make LM-X more stable than ever, and at the same time give you, our customers, increased ease-of-use and performance.

The release notes for LM-X v3.3 can be found in our Knowledgebase at http://kb.x-formation.com/questions/208/LM-X+v3.3+Release+Notes.

Of the many new features we've implemented and bugs we've fixed, some are naturally more interesting than others. One such improvement is that you no longer need to build the SDK, without sacrificing existing security benefits. We'll post a separate article on this soon.

Another feature for which we had many requests was to use the native system hostids instead of obfuscated LM-X hostid's. We've included this important change in this release, allowing for even simpler implementations.

Furthermore, it's now possible to host more than 10,000 license clients under Linux. We spent quite a bit of time engineering the license server to become even more efficient, allowing it to easily scale beyond 10,000 clients. In our lab tests, we reached 11,000 client connections before we decided it would accommodate most customers' needs.

This new release also features a new type of bios hostid; improvements for dongle usage under Mac OS X x64; listing of borrow, trial and grace licenses; and many other enhancements.

It's important to note that we drive innovations based on extended R&D efforts. Unlike some of our competitors that provide "license server performance tools and extensive end-user debugging tools for license problems," we spend our energy on making solutions that actually work for end users. There is no need for extensive debugging tools, because our end users don't have these problems. LM-X offers many features that result in zero-effort installation for end-users: a license server that requires virtually no maintenance; automatic server discovery; hostid match rate, which allows flexible license hostid handling; easy trial versions; secure store; and much, much more.

As always, this release has been based on suggestions made by you, our customers. In this particular release, almost 90% of the issues handled have been those reported by our customers. Naturally, we're pleased to get this participation and feedback, as it's you who use and know our products in real action, and you who get the immediate benefit of the improvements we make.

With 2009 coming to a close, we're excited more than ever about beginning the new year.

This past year has been particularly successful for us thanks to you, our customers. Once again, we've proven ourselves to be a reliable partner and deliver the results you've asked for.

In 2009, we grew significantly. Our new R&D center in Krakow, announced at the beginning of the year, is now fully up and running, and we've hired 10 new people throughout the past year. The increase in X-Formation team members has helped lower our support request time, so we are now able to resolve issues even faster, with typical response times of no more than 2 - 4 hours.

Furthermore, our new development capacity is allowing us to develop software at an increased rate. With License Statistics, there's a lot happening under the hood. In the beginning of the new year, a new version will be released that contains a number of important changes that will enable us to deliver a much better product in the year to come.

Likewise, for LM-X License Manager, our customer driven development has let us regularly release new versions that include new features requested by our customers.

In addition, we recently published new sales materials that includes our company presentation. This comprehensive information is helpful for anyone who wants to learn about X-Formation and what we do.

We are also happy to announce expansive customer growth, including even more billion dollar and large corporations who depend on our software.

We wish all our customers a happy new year and look forward to working further with you in the year to come.

As part of our future roadmap, we’re committed to making big improvements to License Statistics. To move us toward this goal, we've hired a number of new engineers who are working hard to help us realize our ideas.

One obstacle to improving the software has been License Statistics’ SQLite database, which stores more than 10 million records for some customers. Unfortunately, SQLite is not designed to scale to this level, so we’ve come up against a number of problems in terms of scalability that have hampered our progress.

For a long time, we've had to make quick fixes to work around SQLite speed constraints, such as needing to generate a number of the web pages in the background at night, since it was simply not possible to generate them in real-time.

But now, this is over!

After spending several months changing nearly the entire internal engine, we've incorporated MySQL as part of our distribution. This enables MySQL to work as an embedded database, so there’s no need to set up an external database server (though we still optionally support this).

With the new database, we expect to be able to increase the scale to hundreds of millions. The initial goal is to be able to store more than 500 million records, which is over 10 times more than we do today. Furthermore, it is possible with this database to store large amounts of data. This has already enabled us to change the way the software works so License Statistics can generate all reports on the fly, instead of generating them at night.

This will make it possible for the largest enterprises to use License Statistics and benefit from the unique features that it offers.

This is only the beginning. With the new database opening up many more possibilities for improvements, we plan to use this structure to enhance License Statistics with even more features and additional types of reports that were not previously possible.

Over the coming months, we’ll continue to give you updates on new developments as we proceed. And as always, we welcome you to contact us about your own unique needs, so we can help you better.

With Microsoft releasing Windows 7, we're committed to ensuring that our customers have a successful experience using both License Statistics and LM-X License Manager under this newest operating system.

We recently announced that LM-X was ready for Windows 7 (see LM-X supports Windows 7 RTM). Now, we've risen to the next level by certifying that our products as officially Windows 7 compatible.



As a leading provider of license management software, X-Formation is dedicated to supporting the latest platforms to provide a hassle-free experience for our customers.

FLEXlm, I mean FLEXnet, or rather FLEXNet now... made by Macrovision... oh, right, that would be Acresso... what, they aren't Acresso anymore? Wait a minute. Who makes that software, and what's it called again?

Without a doubt, FLEXnet, now FLEXNet and formerly known as FLEXlm, has made an impact on the industry of software licensing for over a decade. However, in recent years, the product has undergone a turbulent time. Initially, the software was manufactured by Globetrotter and then from Macrovision. Then, in April 2008, it was bought by the investor Thomas Bravo, forming the company Acresso. Now, less than 2 years later, the company has changed names yet again, and is now Flexera Software. It's hard to keep up with all these changes.

If I were a now-Flexera customer, I would naturally be concerned, as all these changes leave you unsettled and wondering what to expect next. While the software certainly still has a significant presence in the market, for many it's become a legacy product that has opened up opportunities for companies like ourselves to provide a better alternative.

Over the past few years, we've accomplished many successful transitions to LM-X License Manager, where the customer stories are the same every time:

1. As a smaller company we're a lot more flexible and dynamic, allowing us to adapt to individual needs much faster.

2. Our lower-cost pricing is more transparent and comprehensive for the customer.

3. LM-X License Manager offers exceptionally high quality that doesn't require weeks or months for issues to get fixed.

Our customers have discovered that LM-X offers them a more modern licensing solution, with a focus on end-user ease of use and a more streamlined, simplified implementation that doesn't require mulling over 700+ pages of manuals to accomplish simple tasks.

With our recent price changes, now is a great time to take a look at LM-X License Manager and get a fresh perspective on license management software.

Oh, and by the way, we don't plan on changing our name anytime soon.

As a followup to our previous testing with Windows 7 RC, we've now invested time to ensure that LM-X works with the final release version of Windows 7, which was made available to partners last week.

We're happy to report that LM-X still works out of the box with no significant regressions. We've made a few minor tweaks to improve the experience working with LM-X under Windows 7, but these modifications are inconsequential.

With this testing completed successfully, we can reassure our customers and partners that the recently released LM-X v3.0 is already compatible with Windows 7, and will work for you out of the box whenever you choose to use the new Windows operating system.

The latest version of LM-X, v3.0, once again includes additional new features based on customer requests. In particular, we've responded to many customer requests by adding support for MinGW compiler as a native compile environment under Windows.

The benefits of using MinGW are clear. For Java customers and small business customers, MinGW support eliminates the need to invest in Visual Studio. Furthermore, MinGW support simplifies integration with Unix environments, because you're able to use the same GCC compiler and environment as you do for your Unix builds.

LM-X compiled with MinGW is available now, and can be accessed by both existing and new customers.

For some time, we've been very busy integrating an embedded web server into our products. Not only will this make our software easier to use overall, but in the times of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), it will allow you to manipulate most properties and views using a web browser.

Our first product to implement an embedded web server will be License Statistics. With the introduction of this capability, we will greatly increase the speed of the software, as we're finally getting to the bottom of some persistent performance bottlenecks.

This improvement will have the most impact on our largest customers, who will see that the software consumes much less CPU and memory. This speed increase is due to the fact that HTML pages will no longer need to be pre-generated like they are today. As some of our customers often have more than 10,000 concurrent files being generated, the performance improvement is significant. We're at once eliminating the need for this file generation, and rather introducing a dynamic generation of pages similar to web languages such as PHP.

As always, our code is platform-independent, and thus this embedded web server will be introduced on all the platforms on which our software is supported.

Furthermore, the development is a long-term investment in delivering improved tools for managing software licenses as requested by you, our customers.

Just a few months into our new R&D operation here in Krakow, Poland, we've already expanded X-Formation with five new team members. Even with this significant growth, we continue to seek for more talent to join X-Formation.

With many companies around the globe being adversely affected by the economic crisis, we're naturally pleased to let you know that this is not the case for X-Formation. On the contrary, we are continuing to grow at an ever-faster pace.

The real winner is obviously you, our customers, as we're able to work harder and faster to deliver even better solutions to you.

As mentioned in a previous article, "License Activation... for real," we recently put license activation in place for our users. The focus of the previous article was to show that despite our own complicated setup that involves using several different machines for license distribution, it doesn't have to be difficult to use. Learning from industry mistakes, we've seen that hiding complexity helps to make our customers more successful and results in less hassle for everyone.

As I mentioned previously, our setup includes a PHP web server. This particular machine drives our support portal, letting users download applications, etc. (There's nothing special about this, as it's the backbone of any modern software company who needs to offer different solutions to different customers.) We've now added a new field on the main page called "Licenses." This particular field shows the order id activation numbers that our users need to be able to activate their product and get started using the application.



The above screenshot shows what a typical customer sees. As you can see, there's not much to license activation, because most details are completely hidden. This flexibility allows you to match your users requirements and needs.

On the back-end we have more details, which lets us get a quick overview of orders and related information whenever someone requests support.



This PHP support is available in the current version of License Distribution Service, and currently works with PHP 5. It has been developed as a library that lets you connect to a License Distribution Service setup and poll and post information. This makes it efficient to connect License Distribution Service to business websites and portals such as our own.

You can see an example here: License Distribution Service - Example in PHP

As 2008 is wrapping up, I would like to thank both our customers and our partners for the honor of working with you during this past year to deliver solutions that make an impact on your business.

Throughout this year, we've taken your feedback about our products and your frustrations working with other vendors to heart and to action. Based on your input, we’ve improved a lot of elements of our business and products. With the resources we've had available, we've tried to incorporate as much of that feedback as possible to ensure that you are getting the solutions you need.

This attention to your needs has helped lead us to almost 100% growth in the number of new customers in 2008.

While several ideas haven’t made it into our products yet, rest assured that we're using our customer-driven development at its optimum level, allowing you to participate and offer comments and ideas that help us to help you more efficiently.

As this year is about to end, we're committed to bring even better solutions in the new year to come.

Right now, we're very busy creating a new R&D office in the center of Krakow, Poland. Krakow offers a lot of talent, including the resources of three universities. Our aim is to benefit from this in the next year to be on par with other technology companies, such as IBM, Google, Motorolla, Capgemini and other large businesses, who operate in the same area of the city as we do.

In the near future, we will be rapidly increasing our staff to be able to continue delivering the service that our customers expect:

1. Fast and competent support.
2. Improved products based on innovative ideas, collaboration and direct customer feedback.
3. Affordable pricing without compromising quality.

It has indeed been an exciting year, and we're doing our best to use all we’ve learned from our user community to do even better in 2009. After all, there is nothing more important than you, our users.

I thank you all, and wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

I feel that time is flying so fast right now! It seems that each Sunday I go to sleep and then I wake up the following Friday afternoon asking where the time has gone.

Recently, I was out of the country for about 1½ months, spending my time keeping up with the ever-increasing amount of activity. I traveled to Calgary in Canada; spent time in the United States in Los Angeles, Denver, and other cities; and traveled to destinations within Europe. During my travels, I met with both existing and new clients. It was great to have such a wonderful opportunity to see the various industries and learn firsthand about the problems that our users have been facing. The clients I met with ranged from very small businesses to a Global 500 company, which aptly represents the companies we help support today. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to meet with everyone who was interested, but I'm sure it's not the last time I'll visit the US.

When I had time to reflect on my experiences and understand further the different issues discussed during our meetings, it's become clear to me that the industry needs improved solutions. Most of our clients expressed their interest in what our next product versions will contain, and I am pleased to say that good stuff is heading your way.

Now that fall is settling in, we're working even faster and harder to get the next versions of our products ready. This means that we've been making a lot of investments in our infrastructure, such as enhancing our testing equipment and preparing to get new services up and running.

More announcements will be coming later, but let me just say that we're in the progress of doing more than ever before to give you an even smoother experience working with us. This will include new customer-related enhancements, which we're eager to deploy when the time comes.

So, while I sometimes wonder where all the time goes, I always remember that our mission is to put the customer in the center, spending all our efforts on helping you to be successful with our products.

After doing your best to anticipate what your users want from your software product, the next step is to ask your users whether you got it right. If you did your job well, when you ask your users for feedback, you may get limited new ideas, because it does indeed meet their expectations and gets the job done. Such is the case for LM-X License Manager and License Distribution Service.

As our offerings and number of customers are increasing, we too need to keep track of our users, so we're now integrating LM-X and License Distribution Service as solutions to manage our own offerings.

As a colleague said recently, "... this is like eating your own dog food." While our users give us every indication that our "dog food" is high quality, in the process of using our software to solve our own license management needs, we will discover the exact problems that annoy users from time to time. With our initial use, we've already proposed a ton of new functionality that will both enhance ease of use and fix those minor annoyances.

The end result: what once was dog food becomes gourmet fare. Bon appetit!

We often talk with clients in the industry who want to distribute network licenses for their software, and ask us, "How do we offer the best flexibility to our users, while still making sure our software is secure against illegal use?" In the old days, that would have been a hard question to answer. Today, with new emerging technologies such as virtual machines, it's become much easier.

Let me explain: Many companies in the 1990's liked using dongles due to their flexibility and their ability to be moved from one machine to another. The downside of this was that they were expensive and cumbersome to deal with, because they could easily be broken or lost.

With the emergence of inexpensive networking equipment, the modern environment now consists of a larger infrastructure that lets users connect to the corporate network while still being able to disconnect and do things offline. When it comes to license models, this represents very well the reasoning behind both node-locked and floating licensing.

In early 2000, I personally swore that I would never need a laptop, because everything I ever needed to do could easily be done on a standalone machine. Guess what... I'm writing this message from a laptop today. People like me who are always on the run need flexibility. When it comes to software licenses, you want them to work for you, not against you. That's why license models such as floating and borrowed licenses have made a huge impact on how people buy and use commercial software today.

Another technological breakthrough that changes how we look at licensing is virtual machines, which offer the needed advancements on the server and back-end infrastructure. We see more and more interest in virtual environments, because this sparks the same progress in computing as the advent of the network did back in the 90's. Already, even smaller companies like X-Formation couldn't be performing the operations we do without virtual machines. One of our machines runs with 10 virtual machines concurrently to perform only some of our testing. Without tools like VMware, our hardware costs would be multiplied many times to perform the same operations.

The idea here is that software must adapt to the modern environment, which is also the reason we invented virtual machine licensing. Virtual machine licensing is disabled in LM-X by default; otherwise, users can easily duplicate their number of licenses in a matter of minutes by using virtual machines.

However, if you combine a virtual machine license with hostid locking for dongles, you get the best of both worlds. In addition to getting the floating and borrowed license capabilities that our customers typically request, you also get a solid hostid locking mechanism that doesn't depend on virtual hardware devices. Thus, copying of virtual machines becomes irrelevant, because you won't be able to start more than one instance of the software anyway.

In such a setup, a dongle connected to a server is easier to manage. Servers are typically isolated and seldom moved around, so risks of stolen or lost dongles are minimal compared with single-user licenses. In addition, costs for a single dongle are minimal compared with node-locked usage, which makes it possible to incorporate dongle usage into contracts when people are signing up for greater numbers of licenses.

If you would like to hear more about potential license models, contact us today, and we'll be happy to discuss your specific requirements.