SAP Entitlement Management and Wibu-Systems CodeMeter

Bridging the gap between sales, provisioning, and fulfillment

As an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) or an Intelligent Device Manufacturer (IDM), there is one important goal you should pursue relentlessly: To sell your products as easily and profitably as possible all over the world. Very often, all your knowledge and experience in your specific markets are concentrated in your software and technology, making it imperative for you to protect your intellectual property.

But monetizing software also means creating, managing, and distributing entitlements efficiently and transparently to the intended users. The licensing models for end users should be flexible enough to accommodate the needs of different regions, markets, and industries. The complete entitlement process has to fit seamlessly into the existing End-to-End Business Process and IT landscape.

SAP Entitlement Management is a perfect fit for the comprehensive management of commercial entitlements when combined with a smart technology on the end users’ side of the systems like CodeMeter from Wibu-Systems. Both systems complement each other ideally to cover the full lifecycle from sales and provisioning to the implementation and management of entitlements on end users’ PCs or industrial devices, irrespective of the operating systems they are running on.

SAP Entitlement Management

The solution that meets the needs of increasingly savvy consumers by creating innovative business models and solution product bundles, SAP Entitlement Management, helps streamline and automate entitlement processes and dynamic authorization management to support intelligent business scenarios:

• Multitenant cloud deployment
• Flexible adaption to changing business models
• Increased transparency for entitlements
• Automated processing of even high volumes of entitlements

CodeMeter by Wibu-Systems

Building on a heritage of three decades in licensing and IP protection, Wibu-Systems’ products and services have expanded to cover an extensive range of monetization applications via the integrity protection of technical know-how. Using strong encryption, including award-winning proprietary technology, and intelligently designed workflows, Wibu-Systems’ CodeMeter addresses cybersecurity from several angles:

• Protection: Developers benefit from the holistic protection capabilities of CodeMeter, including top-notch encryption mechanisms, for their software, firmware, and sensitive data on a variety of platforms, against piracy and reverse engineering.
• Licensing: Developers benefit from the ease of managing licenses and user rights via CodeMeter. Flexible licensing options enable the paradigm shift from hardware to software, with usage or time-bound licenses, the ability to upsell and activate features remotely, and a complete array of servitization factors.
• Security: Developers benefit from safeguarding their software from tampering and cyberattacks from third parties.

Both CodeMeter and SAP Entitlement Management systems work hand-in-hand to fulfill the entitlement requirements of any Independent Software Vendor or Intelligent Device Manufacturer. SAP Entitlement Server manages the commercial entitlements in the cloud, leaving CodeMeter to take care of the distribution and monitoring of the “technical” entitlements on the users’ PC or device. Whether the user prefers hardware options like CmDongles, plain software activation (CmActLicense), or cloud-based licenses, the technical entitlements are designed to work perfectly in online and offline scenarios. Both systems communicate with web service interfaces to transfer the commercial entitlements into the technical entitlements in the field. From the perspective of entitlement management, there is a single, seamless process that bridges the gap between sales, provisioning, and fulfillment and opens the door to the rich world of SAP Order Management and CodeMeter for software and IP protection as well as license delivery and activation.

All entitlements (licenses for products or sub-functionalities of software) an ISV or IDM wants to sell to distributors/resellers or directly to end users are defined in the systems, carefully aligned with the vendor’s sales strategy. Perpetual licenses, time or usage-based licenses, or network licenses are only a few of the vast array of available license models.

When the vendor receives an order, (1) one or multiple related entitlement records are created in SAP Entitlement Management, following the chosen entitlement lifecycle management rules. (2) Service APIs and reporting and analysis tools allow the vendor to keep track of the status of all entitlements in the field. The event framework allows licenses to be renewed (e.g. for subscription or pay-per-use models) with the comfort of an automated process.

The commercial entitlement needs a local representation on the end user’s PC or device. This is the moment where the popular CodeMeter License Central entitlement system enters the process. SAP Entitlement Management sends a request with all relevant entitlement information to CodeMeter License Central (3). CodeMeter License Central uses the information (4) and creates a ticket (an alphanumeric activation code) which serves as a password to eventually activate the technical licenses on the user’s PC or device (5).

Using the backchannel to SAP Entitlement Management, the ticket is now stored in the SAP Entitlement record to complete the information (6). The ticket ID is then updated in the sales order of the Enterprise Resource System such as a SAP S4/HANA system (7) and, as the sales process requires, sent to the distributor/reseller or directly to the end user (8).

The final step (9) is the activation of the entitlements on the PC or device of the end user by using Wibu-Systems WebDepot portal, which allows the online or offline activation of all licenses that are part of the ticket. These licenses can be stored either as a software file bound to the device’s hardware digital fingerprint, in the secure crypto chip of a dongle, or in a cloud container bound to a known user.

Once this activation process has been completed successfully, all license checks (with the exception of a cloud license) are performed locally, with no need for a permanent server connection. All license updates in the field are processed in the same way, using the online or offline license capabilities of CodeMeter License Central.

With the combined functionality of SAP Entitlement Management and CodeMeter License Central, the entire process chain from the sales order to the technical entitlement on the device side is fully covered.

Interested in a personalized offer for our CodeMeter technology? Just answer a few questions and our team will get back to you with all the information you need.

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