tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11548692069174979642011-04-21T19:48:27.886-07:00My thoughts on the history and state of the Software License Management Business.Matt Christianohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09358938392627235322noreply@blogger.comBlogger61100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1154869206917497964.post-37429590168287733582008-02-13T15:21:00.000-08:002009-04-29T11:52:43.676-07:00

Well, approximately.Happy Birthday, FLEXlm!February, 1988 was the month when I started the development of FLEXlm. I recall that, at the time, we all felt that we might have a good 3-5 year run with the product before someone like Sun or HP came in and took away the market.We never would have expected it to be going strong 20 years later. I certainly would not have thought that some of the

Matt Christianohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09358938392627235322noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1154869206917497964.post-19152348131645933442007-03-12T09:47:00.001-07:002007-03-12T09:50:06.827-07:00

Redundant Servers. Seemed like a good idea at the time. But are they still?(Note: this post refers to the use of redundant servers in a license management system, similar to, say, FLEXlm(R) from Macrovision.)To answer that question, we have to step back to 1988. Do you remember 1988? Back then, PCs ran DOS. Unix was the Next Great Thing. And disk drives and systems failed - and stayed down for

Matt Christianohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09358938392627235322noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1154869206917497964.post-27038620280764464592007-02-08T11:42:00.000-08:002007-02-08T11:45:09.663-08:00

The Market Matures (2000-)By the year 2000, all the original players who had experienced reasonable success in the License Management business (GLOBEtrotter, Elan, and Wyatt River) had been absorbed by public companies. By this time, the FLEXlm product was the clear winner with over 80 or 90% market share.The next several years were marked by a slowdown in innovation as the original

Matt Christianohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09358938392627235322noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1154869206917497964.post-51087145862078276272007-02-03T13:33:00.001-08:002007-02-03T13:35:49.252-08:00

The Golden Years (1990-2000)The 1990's were the years when License Management really became accepted in the ISV community. From a start of fewer than 50 ISVs using commercial license management systems, by the end of the decade there were over 2000 ISVs shipping products with embedded commercial license managers. The adoption of license management, however, was primarily among vertical-market

Matt Christianohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09358938392627235322noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1154869206917497964.post-83749857013992183212007-01-23T18:17:00.000-08:002007-01-25T17:31:30.853-08:00

You Can't Tell The Players Without a ScorecardThere have been quite a number of players in the License Management Market over the past 18 years. This is the story of some of them.While there are many kinds of software and hardware solutions which might be called software license management, I want to make it clear that I'm describing license management systems that ISVs build into their

Matt Christianohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09358938392627235322noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1154869206917497964.post-70742555903072391492007-01-22T18:13:00.000-08:002007-01-22T18:59:30.737-08:00

The Early Years (1988-1992)When I talk of Software License Management, I am thinking of Network Licensing or Concurrent Use Licensing. The kind of license management made popular by FLEXlm(R) from GLOBEtrotter Software. (Note: FLEXlm is now a registered trademark of Macrovision Corp. following their acquisition of GLOBEtrotter in 2000.) And of course, everything contained in this document is my

Matt Christianohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09358938392627235322noreply@blogger.com3