Introduction

Thales' software monetization solution collects a significant amount of valuable data regarding usage of your software. This is helpful in:

>Supporting usage-based billing: Sentinel RMS gathers data regarding the use of features, users, products, and entitlements. Based on the strength of this data, you can allow your customers to only pay for what they have used in each billing cycle as against the traditional one-time sales model.

>Making smart decisions regarding your product strategy: You can be aware about how your products and features are doing in the market. You can see which features are popular and which features, despite your investments in them, are not generating satisfactory returns. You can offer suitable marketing schemes such as trial conversions, license renewals and extensions, pre-paid and post-paid limits and so on to keep pace with the times.

What is Usage Data?

Usage data is a record of the usage of a licensed application by end users. The usage data includes various metrics, such as which feature is used, who uses the feature, the number of times the feature is used, length of time that a feature is used and so on. You can also capture custom data specific to the application or its environment, as required.

Usage is collected as raw data by the clients integrated with the licensed application and is shared with the SCL Add-on components. This data is then processed, aggregated, and presented in the form of out-of-the-box and customized reports that can be used for billing and data analytics.

Composition of Usage Data

Usage data includes the following:

>Customer: Name of the customer who bought the licensed application.

>User: User who consumes the licensed feature. This can be a machine serial number or hostname or an actual user name as passed by the licensed application.

>Entitlement: The entitlement to which the licensed feature belongs.

>Product: The product to which the licensed feature belongs.

>Product Version: The version of the product to which the licensed feature belongs.

>Feature Name: Name of the feature being used.

>Feature Version: Version of the feature being used.

>Feature Start Time: (GMT) Time when the Login API (the Unified API that obtains a license authorization) call to a feature is executed.

>Feature End Time: (GMT) Time when the Logout API (the Unified API that releases a license authorization) call to a feature is executed.

>Hostname: The hostname of the machine where the usage data is stored. In network mode, the hostname of the RMS License Manager is displayed.

>Vendor-defined Data: Data passed by your application at the start of feature consumption via the Login API. The maximum allowed length is 255 bytes.

>Usage Count: The number of usage count consumed in a login session.

NOTE   Some of the information collected in a usage record may differ based on the deployment mode.