Thursday, July 29. 2010
License Statistics v3.5.3 out now
Tuesday, July 20. 2010
Increased accuracy of reporting with License Statistics
As License Statistics has become a fast and stable tool, our technical experts have now focused their attention on providing greater accuracy and a higher detail level of the data gathered. Over the past few days development has successfully improved the algorithms used for computing the data that is later presented in License Statistics Reports. Let’s take a look at an example scenario to understand the change:
User John begins working at 8:00. He starts up his application and works until 13.00, the time when he goes out to lunch. Afterwards, he attends a meeting and finally returns to his desk at 15:00. He then starts up a second application and checks out 2 more licenses. And finally at 16:00, he finishes work. Presented below is a graph of his license usage:
Looking at the graph we can see that user John had licenses checked out for a total of 6 hours (from 8 to 13 and then from 15 to 16) and his highest usage of the day was 3 licenses. Though this information is valuable, it is, however, incomplete. What we really want to know is how long was John using these licenses, that is what fraction of license time available to the company did he use up. So, what we need to see is:
This is the value that is relevant because it is exactly what we are paying for. In other words, if we purchase 10 licenses for a month, we’re paying for 10 licenses x 30 days x 24hrs = 7200 license hours. And naturally, the goal is to utilize as much of these license hours as possible. Otherwise, we’re wasting money on licenses we’re not using.
For this reason, our updated algorithms compute license time weighted by the number of used licenses and thus providing finer granularity of license usage information that is more valuable to you. And though not all this information is yet visible in the GUI, it is continuously being gathered and stored in the License Statistics database and will soon be accessible through the reports, which we’re putting together for the following releases.
User John begins working at 8:00. He starts up his application and works until 13.00, the time when he goes out to lunch. Afterwards, he attends a meeting and finally returns to his desk at 15:00. He then starts up a second application and checks out 2 more licenses. And finally at 16:00, he finishes work. Presented below is a graph of his license usage:
Looking at the graph we can see that user John had licenses checked out for a total of 6 hours (from 8 to 13 and then from 15 to 16) and his highest usage of the day was 3 licenses. Though this information is valuable, it is, however, incomplete. What we really want to know is how long was John using these licenses, that is what fraction of license time available to the company did he use up. So, what we need to see is:
5hrs x 1 license + 1hr x 3 licenses = 8 license hours
This is the value that is relevant because it is exactly what we are paying for. In other words, if we purchase 10 licenses for a month, we’re paying for 10 licenses x 30 days x 24hrs = 7200 license hours. And naturally, the goal is to utilize as much of these license hours as possible. Otherwise, we’re wasting money on licenses we’re not using.
For this reason, our updated algorithms compute license time weighted by the number of used licenses and thus providing finer granularity of license usage information that is more valuable to you. And though not all this information is yet visible in the GUI, it is continuously being gathered and stored in the License Statistics database and will soon be accessible through the reports, which we’re putting together for the following releases.
Friday, July 9. 2010
License Statistics performance and scalability record beaten!
With all the backend tuning included in License Statistics 3.5.2 we’re proud to announce that the previous performance record has been beaten. The current stress-test setup for our product is capable of simultaneously monitoring 100 license servers with an update interval of 10 minutes.
During the test, every license server had 50 features with 20 licenses each which brought us to 5,000 features and 100,000 licenses (= 100,000 employees) being monitored in total!
The machine used for the stress-test had 4GB RAM and a 4-core x 2GHz CPU, but neither RAM nor CPU usage was really high. Memory usage remained at about 200MB for License Statistics with its child processes and an additional 660MB for the embedded MySQL database. CPU usage rose for about 5 minutes of the 10-minute monitoring cycle (data computation and storage in database) but afterwards dropped near zero. Throughout this time, the GUI maintained its responsiveness. Below is a screenshot of the resource monitor.
Our goal is to provide products that not only meet but also exceed the requirements of our customers and thus we’re continuously working on delivering even better, faster, and more superior solutions that will be made available in the upcoming releases.
Subscribe to our blog to stay informed and up to date with the latest news or participate in our Customer Driven Development to post comments, contribute ideas, and more.
During the test, every license server had 50 features with 20 licenses each which brought us to 5,000 features and 100,000 licenses (= 100,000 employees) being monitored in total!
The machine used for the stress-test had 4GB RAM and a 4-core x 2GHz CPU, but neither RAM nor CPU usage was really high. Memory usage remained at about 200MB for License Statistics with its child processes and an additional 660MB for the embedded MySQL database. CPU usage rose for about 5 minutes of the 10-minute monitoring cycle (data computation and storage in database) but afterwards dropped near zero. Throughout this time, the GUI maintained its responsiveness. Below is a screenshot of the resource monitor.
Our goal is to provide products that not only meet but also exceed the requirements of our customers and thus we’re continuously working on delivering even better, faster, and more superior solutions that will be made available in the upcoming releases.
Subscribe to our blog to stay informed and up to date with the latest news or participate in our Customer Driven Development to post comments, contribute ideas, and more.
Wednesday, July 7. 2010
License Statistics v3.5.2 released
Thursday, July 1. 2010
LM-X v3.5 launched
Monday, June 21. 2010
Speed and performance improvements in License Statistics v3.5.1
We’ve come a long way from License Statistics version 3.0 to version 3.5 in speed and performance improvements. During the last two weeks, we've continued to implement significant improvements to License Statistics v3.5.1 that answer the needs of our customers. Our efforts have been focused on:
1. Decreasing CPU usage
2. Minimizing GUI response time
Decreased CPU usage by over 75%
------------------------------------------------
The improvements
Improvements on the database side delivered in v3.5.1 dramatically decrease CPU usage by more than 75% when gathering statistics. This result was achieved on our load-testing setup, which contains historical data gathered from 30 license servers over a period of 10 months – that’s about 600 million records in a single table in the database!
The test
Using a mock setup to observe CPU usage, we monitored the activity of 20,000 users on 5 license servers, each containing 200 features, with a 5-minute update interval. This large-scale setup was to ensure that License Statistics will operate smoothly, efficiently, and continuously for even our biggest and most demanding customers.
During testing, License Statistics ran on a single machine with a 4-core CPU and 4GB of RAM. As visible from the screenshots, the system didn’t have the resources to run v3.5. On the other hand, everything worked perfectly well with v3.5.1, as CPU usage went up for about 70 seconds and then remained low for the rest of the 5-minute update interval.
The result
Our customers can now monitor an extremely large number of users while maintaining a low update interval and still have spare CPU power for other tasks.
Minimizing GUI response time to less than 2 seconds
---------------------------------------------------------------
We’ve also succeeded in increasing response time for the GUI. By merging CSS and JS files, we decreased the number of requests needed to render the pages. Furthermore, we applied proper caching of the data on the client side, thus lowering traffic over the network. And finally, we applied memory-caching on the server side to make it respond much faster. With all these optimizations in place, the server response time has gone down to less than 2 seconds for all the pages!
These have been just a few of the many improvements that are to come in the next releases of License Statistics. As we always strive to deliver top quality solutions, we can assure you that we’re not stopping until we know that YOU have the best tools for the job.
We further welcome you to participate in our customer-driven development through our issue tracking system, where we cooperate with our customers to help solve real business problems.
1. Decreasing CPU usage
2. Minimizing GUI response time
Decreased CPU usage by over 75%
------------------------------------------------
The improvements
Improvements on the database side delivered in v3.5.1 dramatically decrease CPU usage by more than 75% when gathering statistics. This result was achieved on our load-testing setup, which contains historical data gathered from 30 license servers over a period of 10 months – that’s about 600 million records in a single table in the database!
The test
Using a mock setup to observe CPU usage, we monitored the activity of 20,000 users on 5 license servers, each containing 200 features, with a 5-minute update interval. This large-scale setup was to ensure that License Statistics will operate smoothly, efficiently, and continuously for even our biggest and most demanding customers.
During testing, License Statistics ran on a single machine with a 4-core CPU and 4GB of RAM. As visible from the screenshots, the system didn’t have the resources to run v3.5. On the other hand, everything worked perfectly well with v3.5.1, as CPU usage went up for about 70 seconds and then remained low for the rest of the 5-minute update interval.
Click to enlarge
The result
Our customers can now monitor an extremely large number of users while maintaining a low update interval and still have spare CPU power for other tasks.
Minimizing GUI response time to less than 2 seconds
---------------------------------------------------------------
We’ve also succeeded in increasing response time for the GUI. By merging CSS and JS files, we decreased the number of requests needed to render the pages. Furthermore, we applied proper caching of the data on the client side, thus lowering traffic over the network. And finally, we applied memory-caching on the server side to make it respond much faster. With all these optimizations in place, the server response time has gone down to less than 2 seconds for all the pages!
These have been just a few of the many improvements that are to come in the next releases of License Statistics. As we always strive to deliver top quality solutions, we can assure you that we’re not stopping until we know that YOU have the best tools for the job.
We further welcome you to participate in our customer-driven development through our issue tracking system, where we cooperate with our customers to help solve real business problems.
Friday, June 18. 2010
License Statistics v3.5.1 out now
We're happy to announce our first License Statistics release that improves further upon recently released v3.5, a major release that completely overhauled the License Statistics user interface and underlying code. With users quickly beginning to make use of this major release, we've been working quickly to ensure that License Statistics is even more stable and full featured. In the last 2 weeks since the release of v3.5. we've made more than 35 improvements to License Statistics to increase performance, stability and usability.
License Statistics v3.5.1 is the first patch release, which brings huge improvements to the web server performance. We've reduced the page request times by several seconds each, and have made many speed improvements that make the web server many times faster than before.
In addition to the web server improvements, we've improved the utilization graph and grid to allow you to get utilization for a set number of hours in addition to seeing utilization for an entire day, satisfying a popular request. As you can see below, the graph and grid display utilization between the hours of 8 and 2 in the afternoon.
Furthermore, we've solved over 10 important bugs that improve stability and usability.
We're happy to see the significant interest in our new version of License Statistics. We have been and are continuing to work hard on making it even better. We have a lot of planned improvements to come, and in only a few short weeks from now, you can expect to see even more nice surprises in the next versions of License Statistics.
As always, we look forward to hearing your feedback as you use this new version of License Statistics so that we can make the software even better in the releases to come.
Please see more at: License Statistics v3.5.1 Release Notes.
License Statistics v3.5.1 is the first patch release, which brings huge improvements to the web server performance. We've reduced the page request times by several seconds each, and have made many speed improvements that make the web server many times faster than before.
In addition to the web server improvements, we've improved the utilization graph and grid to allow you to get utilization for a set number of hours in addition to seeing utilization for an entire day, satisfying a popular request. As you can see below, the graph and grid display utilization between the hours of 8 and 2 in the afternoon.
Furthermore, we've solved over 10 important bugs that improve stability and usability.
We're happy to see the significant interest in our new version of License Statistics. We have been and are continuing to work hard on making it even better. We have a lot of planned improvements to come, and in only a few short weeks from now, you can expect to see even more nice surprises in the next versions of License Statistics.
As always, we look forward to hearing your feedback as you use this new version of License Statistics so that we can make the software even better in the releases to come.
Please see more at: License Statistics v3.5.1 Release Notes.
Thursday, June 17. 2010
LM-X now supports FreeBSD
Friday, June 11. 2010
License Statistics v3.5 is finally here!
We're happy to announce the next version of License Statistics, v3.5, is now available.
This is our first major release since v3.0 and includes more than 500 changes. This new version has taken a long time to complete and release, because almost 80% of the original code has been changed or replaced. Now, after months of work, we're ready to present you with this new version of License Statistics that we feel is superior to the previous releases in every aspect.
The biggest change in version 3.5 is that we now use MySQL as the internal database. This important enhancement allows for much faster data storage and eliminates the need to produce HTML files in the background. MySQL is provided as an embedded database requiring no effort to setup. This release also includes support for external MySQL databases.
Another significant improvement is the web interface, which has been entirely reworked into a much more modern implementation. This new version includes authentication and account management. In addition, a new dashboard lets you see useful realtime statistics about your license servers and features. We have also added several widgets to make sure you always have some of the most critical information right at your fingertips:
• License server list with status notification
• Most utilized features
• Expiring features
• Idle user list
If you haven't done so already, be sure to try out these and other new features at our live installation.
Ready to try License Statistics internally? Download the evaluation!
Furthermore, we've added support for RLM license servers and improved the support for IBM LUM servers.
Under the hood, the data design has changed completely. This redesign will enable us to create many new report types in upcoming releases that were completely impossible to make before. Using custom SQL queries it's possible to create such reports with this release. Subsequent releases will feature easier report generation as well as many other planned features.
As always, this release has been made in conjunction with our customers. We've addressed a lot of feedback in this release and we're constantly listening to your suggestions and requests to improve License Statistics.
Please see more at: License Statistics v3.5 Release Notes.
This is our first major release since v3.0 and includes more than 500 changes. This new version has taken a long time to complete and release, because almost 80% of the original code has been changed or replaced. Now, after months of work, we're ready to present you with this new version of License Statistics that we feel is superior to the previous releases in every aspect.
The biggest change in version 3.5 is that we now use MySQL as the internal database. This important enhancement allows for much faster data storage and eliminates the need to produce HTML files in the background. MySQL is provided as an embedded database requiring no effort to setup. This release also includes support for external MySQL databases.
Click to enlarge
Another significant improvement is the web interface, which has been entirely reworked into a much more modern implementation. This new version includes authentication and account management. In addition, a new dashboard lets you see useful realtime statistics about your license servers and features. We have also added several widgets to make sure you always have some of the most critical information right at your fingertips:
• License server list with status notification
• Most utilized features
• Expiring features
• Idle user list
If you haven't done so already, be sure to try out these and other new features at our live installation.
Ready to try License Statistics internally? Download the evaluation!
Furthermore, we've added support for RLM license servers and improved the support for IBM LUM servers.
Under the hood, the data design has changed completely. This redesign will enable us to create many new report types in upcoming releases that were completely impossible to make before. Using custom SQL queries it's possible to create such reports with this release. Subsequent releases will feature easier report generation as well as many other planned features.
As always, this release has been made in conjunction with our customers. We've addressed a lot of feedback in this release and we're constantly listening to your suggestions and requests to improve License Statistics.
Please see more at: License Statistics v3.5 Release Notes.
Tuesday, April 27. 2010
3rd release of LM-X this year is here!
Monday, April 26. 2010
LM-X Supports Visual Studio 2010
Monday, April 19. 2010
License Statistics v3.5 just around the corner
Wednesday, April 7. 2010
License Saver and FLEXlm/FLEXnet TIMEOUT
Friday, February 5. 2010
X-Formation proudly presents the new and improved License Saver 2.0
You asked for it... and now here it is. License Saver - our freshest license optimization release that will free your idle licenses back to the pool for others to utilize, without the need for purchasing more licenses!
The idea is relatively simple... a user checks out a license, and then later walks away from his machine (to lunch or to a meeting), forgetting to shut down his application. So, what do you get? A license that is lying idle and unused. Now if you multiply this occurence by the number of people in your company who do this simultaneously, or at least their idle time overlaps, and you are left with a situation in which users actually requiring the licenses have been locked out unable to their work and meet deadlines - a perfect example of unnecessarily lost productivity. Furthermore, this type of situation can make you believe you need to buy more licenses. Big mistake!
I know what some of you may be thinking... my license server has a timeout feature, so I don't need your product. Wrong! The timeout feature simply just does not do the job, and there are a number of reasons why License Saver is a far more superior alternative. But let's just briefly go over the 2 most important points:
1. The timeout feature is not flexible and doesn't really do what it's supposed to. Many license servers have a set minimum timeout period which cannot be changed. Furthermore, after the timeout period has passed the license is still held back or 'reserved' by the server and does not get immediately returned to the pool for others to use. Btw, restarting the server doesn't help this either - tried it
2. Not all applications can actually use the timeout feature. So, if your vendor doesn't support this, then you are out of luck. Not only that, but vendors that do support the timeout feature also set their own timeout period. This means the license will only be returned to the pool after the timeout period for both the license server and application has passed. If you intend to use this then I certainly hope you're patient.
This is not the case with License saver. Not only do you release licenses straight to the pool so they are immediately available for others, but you can also specify the time they are released regardless of your license server's settings. And you can set any time you like and do it individually for the applications you are watching. Want to release a license manually, right now? No problem. This feature is available as well. And here comes the best part... License Saver works with ANY application! Your vendor has set a timeout period of 4 hours? Forget about it. Time is money, and you can start saving it now with License Saver.
Ready to evaluate? Follow this link to download your free trial now: License Saver download.
The idea is relatively simple... a user checks out a license, and then later walks away from his machine (to lunch or to a meeting), forgetting to shut down his application. So, what do you get? A license that is lying idle and unused. Now if you multiply this occurence by the number of people in your company who do this simultaneously, or at least their idle time overlaps, and you are left with a situation in which users actually requiring the licenses have been locked out unable to their work and meet deadlines - a perfect example of unnecessarily lost productivity. Furthermore, this type of situation can make you believe you need to buy more licenses. Big mistake!
I know what some of you may be thinking... my license server has a timeout feature, so I don't need your product. Wrong! The timeout feature simply just does not do the job, and there are a number of reasons why License Saver is a far more superior alternative. But let's just briefly go over the 2 most important points:
1. The timeout feature is not flexible and doesn't really do what it's supposed to. Many license servers have a set minimum timeout period which cannot be changed. Furthermore, after the timeout period has passed the license is still held back or 'reserved' by the server and does not get immediately returned to the pool for others to use. Btw, restarting the server doesn't help this either - tried it
2. Not all applications can actually use the timeout feature. So, if your vendor doesn't support this, then you are out of luck. Not only that, but vendors that do support the timeout feature also set their own timeout period. This means the license will only be returned to the pool after the timeout period for both the license server and application has passed. If you intend to use this then I certainly hope you're patient.
This is not the case with License saver. Not only do you release licenses straight to the pool so they are immediately available for others, but you can also specify the time they are released regardless of your license server's settings. And you can set any time you like and do it individually for the applications you are watching. Want to release a license manually, right now? No problem. This feature is available as well. And here comes the best part... License Saver works with ANY application! Your vendor has set a timeout period of 4 hours? Forget about it. Time is money, and you can start saving it now with License Saver.
Ready to evaluate? Follow this link to download your free trial now: License Saver download.
Tuesday, December 22. 2009
Welcome new customers
We are very happy to announce that today we have added 2 new companies to our customer reference list:
Altair – A leading global provider of technology that strengthens client innovation.
Privately held with more than 1,300 employees, Altair has offices throughout North America, South America, Europe and Asia/Pacific. With a 20-year-plus track record for innovative product design and development, advanced engineering software and grid computing technologies, Altair has more than 3,500 corporate clients representing the automotive, aerospace, government and defense, and consumer products verticals. Altair also has a growing client presence in the life sciences, financial services and energy markets.
Altair products and services include: Altair® HyperWorks®, PBS GridWorks™, Altair ProductDesign, HiQube, LLC, solidThinking, and ilumisys, Inc.
Vestech – an innovator in speech recognition technology.
Vestec’s goal is to commoditize, standardize and demystify speech recognition through use of unique emerging artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. The company believes speech recognition has not enjoyed broad acceptance due to the high cost of speech-enabling products, unavailability of useful turnkey speech applications and reliance on expensive professional services for sophisticated application development.
Altair – A leading global provider of technology that strengthens client innovation.
Privately held with more than 1,300 employees, Altair has offices throughout North America, South America, Europe and Asia/Pacific. With a 20-year-plus track record for innovative product design and development, advanced engineering software and grid computing technologies, Altair has more than 3,500 corporate clients representing the automotive, aerospace, government and defense, and consumer products verticals. Altair also has a growing client presence in the life sciences, financial services and energy markets.
Altair products and services include: Altair® HyperWorks®, PBS GridWorks™, Altair ProductDesign, HiQube, LLC, solidThinking, and ilumisys, Inc.
Vestech – an innovator in speech recognition technology.
Vestec’s goal is to commoditize, standardize and demystify speech recognition through use of unique emerging artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. The company believes speech recognition has not enjoyed broad acceptance due to the high cost of speech-enabling products, unavailability of useful turnkey speech applications and reliance on expensive professional services for sophisticated application development.
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This is a blog on the topic of software license management provided by X-Formation.