- Key server (software licensing)
Key server for
software licensing is a colloquial or generic description that refers to a centralizedcomputer software system which providestoken s, or keys, to client computers in order to enable licensed software to run on them.In 1989, Sassafras Software Inc developed their trademarked KeyServer software license management tool (Sassafras 2006). Since that time, other
computing technology firms have adopted the phrase "key server" to be used interchangeably with software license server (UC Santa Cruz 5/26/2006) (Big Bang Software Pty Ltd 2006).It is the job of a software license server to determine and control the number of copies of a
software program permitted to be used based on the license entitlements that an organization owns. Typically, anend-user customer organization will install a software license server on ahost computer to provide licensing services to an enterprise computing environment.Publisher-specific license servers are commonly provided by software publishers, or through third party providers, to manage software licensing for a specific software publisher's products. Publisher-specific license servers are more commonly used for industry specialized software products than for common software products due to the high value of the managed software products (MacVector, Inc 2007).
The server
component of a client-server application may also contain an internal license server (IBM 2007) (OpenLink Software 2007).References
- Sassafras Software Inc. http://www.sassafras.com/profile.html Company Profile
- UC Santa Cruz 5/26/2006 http://nsac.ucsc.edu/support/keyserver.html Admin Computing: Key Server
- Big Bang Software Pty Ltd 2006 http://www.bigbangextensions.com/kb/49 menumachine Error Message
- MacVector, Inc 2007 http://www.macvector.com/KnowledgeBase/usingkeyserveronosx.html Using KeyServer on Mac OS X
- IBM 2007 http://www-306.ibm.com/software/lotus/notesanddomino/domino-server-licensing.html Lotus Notes and Domino
- OpenLink Software https://shop.openlinksw.com/info.vsp?c=salesinfo Client-Server licensing
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