Introducing Sentinel LDK-EMS

Welcome to Sentinel® LDK-EMS™, a powerful, role-based application designed to manage the business activities required to implement and maintain Sentinel LDK in your organization. Sentinel LDK-EMS is a web-based solution that provides software publishers with a centralized tool for all license and entitlement management functions, as well as a variety of advanced data collection and reporting functions.

Sentinel LDK-EMS streamlines the major work flows in the licensing life cycle of a protected software application, from the moment of development, through packaging, marketing, selling, and order taking, to distribution and upgrading. Sentinel LDK-EMS also enables you to license your SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) applications. You can manage application usage, disable or enable your applications when required, generate usage data and reports, and generate billing-related data.

Sentinel LDK separates the software protection process, which is implemented using the Sentinel Licensing API or Sentinel LDK Envelope, from the licensing and production processes, which are implemented using Sentinel LDK-EMS. This enables you to modify your company’s licensing strategy as needed when circumstances change, as well as implement these changes quickly and efficiently.

The primary component of Sentinel LDK-EMS is the Sentinel LDK-EMS Web Server. Your organization's users can access Sentinel LDK-EMS from client machines in the network using a web browser. Sentinel LDK-EMS provides a centralized, license management interface for your customers, handling the following major work flows:

>License planning: Business decision-makers, such as product or marketing managers in an organization, can define products, business rules, license terms, and protection levels. The output of the license planning process is a repository of licensed products that are stored in the Sentinel LDK-EMS database—ready for customer orders.

> Entitlement generation and production: Staff in your organization’s orders department receive and fulfill orders from customers.

>Software activation and online updates: These are performed by means of Sentinel LDK-EMS when the software is at the end user’s site.

Before you start using Sentinel LDK-EMS, you may want to prepare a detailed licensing plan for use with Sentinel LDK. This plan could include the licensing requirements for all the protected software applications to be sold by your company and distributed for trial use.

NOTE   While it is recommended that you have some level of licensing plan for all your applications prior to implementing Sentinel LDK-EMS, it is not a prerequisite. You can make licensing decisions as you work with Sentinel LDK-EMS. You can also vary your licensing plan at any time.

Preparing your licensing plan can include:

> Defining your software licensing strategy

> Analyzing your software products

> Identifying the functional components of these products

> Defining product models and licensing models

> Specifying licensing and protection options

For detailed information on preparing a licensing plan for use with Sentinel LDK-EMS, and on Sentinel LDK concepts, see the Licensing section of the Sentinel LDK Software Protection and Licensing Guide.