UniKey - Case Studies



Reduce Cost by UniKey Floating License for GIS Software

The Software

The software is a powerful geospatial software package for managing, distributing and accessing complex geospatial imagery. Everything today's GIS professionals need to work with and produce top quality images in one easy to use solution. In addition to a robust set of imaging tools, the software allows users to include geography markup language to downstream applications. The interoperability of this software with leading GIS applications enables customers to view imagery more rapidly using their existing software. Multiple users have to share use of an application, whereas a normal license is locked down to a single computer.

 

The Requirement

A restricted amount of user licenses can work on unlimited amount of working places. In other words, when a customer buys one or more Floating Licenses, they can use them everywhere where respective software has been installed. If the user has several computers which will not use the software at once, they don't need to purchase licenses for all these computers. It is just enough to purchase Floating License for the estimated most number of simultaneously run copies of the software.

 

The Floating License

A floating license is a license which is generated by a license server and is not locked to a particular PC. This enables users to share a pool of licenses more efficiently. One floating license is needed for each concurrent user. For example, with one floating license, any number of users can have the software installed, but only one can use it at a time - the others must wait for them to finish using it. With two floating licenses, again, any number of users can have the software installed, but only two can use it at the same time - the others must wait. The waiting users see a warning message. When one user finishes using the software, another user can begin.

 

The Solution

Floating licensing requires a computer to act as a license server. Any number of copies of the software may be installed at users' location. When a userruns a copy of thesoftware, that copy will check out a license from the license server. As many users may check out licenses as you have licenses loaded into license server.

If all the floating licenses are used in the same local network the installation procedure of floating licenses is the same as for the Named User licenses. Within the same network the license management is done by communication between the users that are connected to the same local network and that run at the same time. Any new user that is started after the number of running instances is equal with the number of purchased licenses will display a warning message and will disable the open file action. If the floating licenses are used on machines connected to different local networks a separate license server must be started and the licenses deployed on it.