Flexera Software helps producers secure their applications, protect their intellectual property and enforce compliance in Amazon EC2 Cloud, Microsoft and VMware virtualised environments

Maidenhead, UK – Sept 12, 2011 - Flexera Software, the leading provider of strategic solutions for Application Usage Management solutions for application producers and enterprises, announced today a new release of FlexNet Producer Suite®.  The latest release empowers software application vendors and intelligent device manufacturers (IDM’s) to migrate their applications to the Cloud and virtual environments, as well as protect their intellectual property (IP) and ensure compliance in those environments.  Today’s announcement references enhancements to three solutions within FlexNet Producer Suite: FlexNet Operations®,  FlexNet Publisher® and FlexNet Embedded®.

“Geo-Slope could not have achieved its level of global success without the combination of granular licensing control and effective intellectual property protection that Flexera Software provides,” explains J. Paul Bryden, manager of sales and marketing at Geo-Slope.  “As we look at our plans for virtualisation and the Cloud, it’s comforting to know that Flexera Software offers a predictable and reliable pathway for us to deliver, protect and monetise our applications in those environments.”

Security and IP Protection
Critical to software vendors and IDMs delivering applications to the Cloud and other virtualised environments is ensuring security and IP protection.  Without these essential safeguards, software vendors could not practically protect their products against unauthorised use.  Today’s enhancements to FlexNet Producer Suite enable application producers to migrate their on-premises applications to an Amazon EC2 Cloud environment via the support of unique binding elements that are available only within the Amazon EC2 infrastructure. Binding prevents packaged software and virtual appliances from being cloned and run outside of an Amazon EC2 Cloud. This new binding capability from Flexera Software is the only Cloud licensing solution available that prevents license leakage in an Amazon EC2 environment.

In addition, FlexNet Producer Suite’s support for VMware ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V enables software vendors and IDMs to prevent revenue leakage for products used in virtual environments or in virtual appliances.  Virtualisation-aware license models let producers configure trials to be allowed or denied in virtual environments.  Application producers can also configure license model policy to allow (or deny) activation of standalone products or license servers in virtualised environments.  Moreover, standalone software and license servers can be bound to a fingerprint that includes the virtual machine’s unique identifier.  To track these issues, producers can view activation requests denied due to virtualisation policies in the activation history.  Furthermore, FlexNet Producer Suite now supports secure physical binding on virtualisation platforms that do not have a console environment, such as VMware ESXi.
“Software vendors and intelligent device manufacturers must be able to secure their applications and protect their intellectual property in virtualised environments, otherwise offering virtualised solutions would not be commercially viable,” said Mathieu Baissac, vice president of product management at Flexera Software.  “FlexNet Producer Suite leads the industry in providing the infrastructure upon which producers can economically and confidently secure their applications for virtualisation.”

Software Compliance
Lack of control and certainty around software compliance are significant core issues that must be addressed to facilitate broad-based adoption of Cloud-based and virtualised applications.  FlexNet Producer Suite now offers ‘detect-n-deny’ and ‘detect-n-report’ virtualisation-aware license models for VMware ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V.  This enables application producers to define license policies for software deployed in the Cloud, in virtualised environments and for virtual appliances, as well as to gather data on the virtual environment in which a device or license server is deployed. Flexera Software is the only licensing solution provider capable of detecting and reporting back to the license server and/or back-office system to help protect against unlicensed usage.

“Cloud and virtualisation technologies offer software vendors and intelligent device manufacturers tremendous opportunities to deliver their applications in innovative ways more closely aligned with how customers want to access them,” said Baissac. “However without trustworthy and reliable methods to license products in the Cloud and enforce compliance – there could be unknown and unintended consequences.  FlexNet Producer Suite is at the forefront of taming this new ‘wild west’ we’re seeing in the Cloud and virtual environments.”

New Web Interface for Monitoring License Access, Usage and Compliance
FlexNet Producer Suite now offers a first-in-industry browser-based user interface enabling license administrators to quickly monitor and control access to software licenses. With full Microsoft Active Directory integration support out of the box, administrators can easily connect and provide secure access from existing Active Directory services without writing a custom implementation or relying on unmanaged authentication services.

“We wanted to give our customers easy access to tools that provide visibility into license usage and compliance,” said Baissac.  “This latest release includes the industry’s only Web interface, delivering a dashboard that shows statistics around license consumption and compliance throughout the enterprise.”