Alternative solutions

This section presents the most relevant products and solutions that are in use for license management today or have the potential to become alternatives to SmartLM in the future. An attempt is made here to compare the features of each of these solutions. This is not an exhaustive list of all the solutions in the market or under development. We also name a few other known license managers that are used for single applications, but that do not take part of our benchmarking exercise. Before looking into the different license management systems we highlight some of the commonly used licensing models:

  • Trial - license runs for a predetermined number of days following the initial use of the product
  • Network (concurrent)/Floating - license and its usage (seat or count) managed by central server
  • Standalone or Named User (personal license) - license a specific machine or user
  • Pay-per-use - license usage (for payment) managed by actual usage, not seat limit or count
  • Perpetual – license is granted to an individual by a centralized server for use on and off the network
  • Evaluation – Licenses have a fixed expiration date
  • License Roaming - allow a floating license to roam to a system which will subsequently be disconnected from the network
  • Node Locked - The license is tied to a specific machine
  • WAN/time zone restricted – license restricted for use in a specific time zone
  • Time-limited - licenses restrict usage periods and allow subscription-based licensing models
  • Token-based/product suite - licenses let you bundle products in many ways using token counts

Comparison of features

The following tables provide a comparison of features between the five most relevant license managers and SmartLM.

Product Grid middleware support Indepen- dence from academic Grid middleware License Reservation Multi vendor single manager Access Control Provides Statistical Information Interface to Distributed Resource manager
FlexNET [1] X X   X X(*) X (LSF, Moab, PBSpro **)  
Sentinel RMS (Safe-Net Inc.) [2] X     X X    
Reprise License Manager [9] X X   X X    
LM-X [10] X     X X    
GenLM X X   X X X  
SmartLM X X(***) X X X X X

Table 1: Comparison of features I

(*)The user has to purchase a tool for this or has to create his statistic from the license log file (detects just check out and check in of licenses).
(LSF, Moab, PBSpro **): LSF, Moab and PBSpro are commercial add to the customer has to purchase.
(***)All others except SmartLM don’t offer any kind of integration with Grid middleware, hence the independence for them from academic Grid middleware.


Product Integrated Accounting and Billing Support for Authentication based on Grid standards Built-in aggregation of licenses from different administrative domains Feature based licensing Support for negotiation of license usage Support for re-negotiation of license terms at run-time
FlexNET [1]   (*) X      
Sentinel (SafeNet Inc.) [2]   X X      
Reprise License Manager [9]     X      
LM-X [10]     X      
GenLM   X   X    
SmartLM X X X X X X

Table 2: Comparison of features II

(*)Aggregation is only possible by the application itself. It is possible to search different locations for licenses during one start and get licenses from different locations. Aggregation is not possible by a license server.


Product Temporarily host and use ISV licenses at another site Effective user-specific price available beforehand Final accounting based on effective usage Pay-Per- Use Model
FlexNET [1]   X    
Sentinel (SafeNet Inc.) [2]   X X  
Reprise License Manager [9]   X    
LM-X [10]   X X  
GenLM     X X
SmartLM X X X(*) X

Table 3: Comparison of features III

(*) Effective usage for all the other license management systems is elapsed time, however, SmartLM goes way beyond this, being able to provide many more types of effective usage.