BAZIS – Russia – Cabinet furniture production
A light logistic approach
The challenge
The main objective is the software roll out to customers. At a closer look the licensing platform should be an entry point for end users with granted rights only to access their specific licenses, safe enough to guarantee a protected environment even without dongle distribution in the field, and fully powerful for optimal and swift data processing even on a time box implementation scenario.
The solution
CmDongle units located at the Bazis-Center server end ensure complete licensing protection, while CodeMeter time-based licensing model does the rest for the deployment and remote management of licenses over the Internet. For an efficient and comprehensive protection system, Wibu-Systems’ technology is also adopted for perpetual licenses too.
The success
The software BAZIS is the first Russian CAD/CAM/CAE system, where time-based remote software licensing has been successfully implemented. High performance and cost reduction are the distinctive traits, especially in comparison with SaaS models.
The Customer
Founded in 2002, Bazis-Center is specialized in the development of complex automation systems for engineering design; through its applications more than 1,500 furniture manufacturers have selected BAZIS technology for staging planning and creation of own cabinet production.
Alexey Pletnev,
Protection Systems Developer
“CodeMeter is the ultimate generation solution for software protection. It fully meets all criteria we jotted down when we started our quest for a protection system. The licensing platform we have qualified for our CAD/CAM software offers in fact cross-platform support, attack resilience, choice of form factors, high performance and extreme usability.”
New license models for modern times
In the old times “manufacturing” was used in connection with huge plants, where CAD would run on multiple workstations. At present though, manufacturing may be associated with a little room sized 10x15m, where only a couple of working machines are running, for example, for custom furniture production.
Such small structures do actually still need computer-assisted design applications, just like it used to be in the past. Even if the automation software is definitely cheaper than the industrial assets, the economic scenario startups face is extremely challenging.
In turn, CAD developers have to find new ways to deliver their software; time-based management is a viable way that increases their sales again; at the same time this license model allows new companies to enjoy a complete and competitive system to face the automation complexities with the proper tools.
Different alternatives to business enabling practices
When it is about rolling out a CAD system effectively, restricting the access exclusively to paying customers is of paramount importance. There are different currents of thoughts:
- The popular cloud-based technology, including SaaS, comes with many technical and economic benefits but one major drawback: the specificity of a CAD environment is that of generating tremendous volume of graphic data that need to be constantly exchanged between server and clients. A cloud-based approach, which seems so attractive at a first glance, loses then all its appeal.
- A management system that rolls out time-limited licenses is synonym for the end user of the same high-grade product that a perpetual license customer would enjoy; by integrating hardware and software based protection measures, developers can also stop hacking; however the logistic burden related to the handling and distribution of USB dongles to each individual client might increase the cost of ownership beyond the financial resources of publishing vendors.
CodeMeter embodies the perfectly balanced solution
The software BAZIS is a complex CAD system for the automation of furniture production which offers great flexibility and intuitive usability. Primarily, BAZIS had to be protected by the latest cutting edge technology. Bazis-Center availed itself of CodeMeter comprehensiveness and developed an own time-based system for license roll out. At the very core of the project, there was the objective of distributing licenses over the Internet, doing away with local client dongles, and rather having one hardware unit centrally plugged in the server of Bazis-Center.
This infrastructure solves all main issues about remote licensing for both software developers and end users:
- remote access to the contents of the CmDongle available centrally on the server, and same performance metrics for all clients
- minimal network bandwidth for remote access to the license server (for standard operation of the system, a 3G-modem would do)
- full BAZIS functionality for both time-limited and perpetual licenses
- software protection shield against illegal duplication
- constant software update without any annual maintenance service.
With the development of a web interface featuring the same look and feel typical of the customer, Bazis-Center has completed the implementation and allowed therefore clients to access their time-limited licenses.
Why saying “yes” to CodeMeter
“The community of BAZIS users is growing larger. In order to protect the software from illegal access, several methods were used, including dongles. Since BAZIS was launched to the market, it was soon under attack and the initial protection measures were easily cracked. After several attempts with various DRM solution providers, we resolved for CodeMeter. The first licenses protected with Wibu-Systems technology appeared in 2010. Not a single copy of our BAZIS software was detected in global public repositories on the Internet to this very date. And above all, the available diversity of licensing models help us implementing flexible and easy-to-use software for our clients.”
Alexey Pletnev, Protection Systems Developer