Introduction and Summary of Enhancements
This document is specificially written for PTC customers who have a working knowledge of PTCLM, PTC's proprietary license management software (Pro/SERVER) and serial number based license scheme. It should be used as a tool to understand PTC's new license management software (FLEXlm) and the new licensing scheme that involves the replacement of serial numbers.
Summary of Licensing Changes
- FLEXlm, a commercial license manager, will be implemented into all PTC software products and will replace Pro/SERVER as PTC's license management software. Please note that the Pro/SERVER and a PTC FLEXlm license server may run on the same machine in parallel.
- PTC's existing "serial number" based licensing scheme will be replaced by a new and greatly improved system that is more simplified and offers greater flexibility.
- Pro/SETUP, PTC's software installation tool, will become a much more simplified and user-friendly tool.
What is FLEXlm?
FLEXlm is a license management software developed by Globetrotter, Inc. and will be integrated into all PTC software products. FLEXlm has been chosen as the license manager of choice for more than 15,000 products worldwide. Today, FLEXlm manages software licenses on some of the largest wide area and local area networks in the world.
New Licensing Features and Enhancements
- With FLEXlm, customers will now be able to consolidate their license management of PTC software and other vendor applications to a single license management solution.
- FLEXlm functionality offers added flexibility to systems administrators. For example, licenses can be reserved or denied based upon username, hostname, or display name.
- Improved client/server communication for license acquisition and validation.
- More efficient license recovery. The FLEXlm license server will automatically reclaim a floating license if the client prematurely exits. This removes the necessity for the user to flush the license or wait for the license to time-out due to inactivity.
- Licenses of PTC software will now be defined with manageable text strings.
- The Pro/SETUP installation tool has been simplified; largely due to functionality available with FLEXlm and PTC's commitment to offering license codes electronically.
- The new Pro/SETUP tool will be able to "read" your license code files directly; removing the task of manually entering all license codes into the installation tool.
- Pro/SETUP will offer on-line installation help that provides detailed information as you install your software.
- Installation of multiple PTC products on a single license server has been greatly simplified.
- You can now have
one command execute multiple licenses of PTC software based upon availability.