BASIS personnel and partners are on the move, traveling the world to research trends in computer technology, find out about new developments and gather information vital to the Business Basic community. Here, we present for you the information we've found.

Notes From GLOBEtrotter Developer Training

Greg Grisham, BASIS Product Strategist, shares information he brought back from GLOBEtrotter Software Inc., developers of BASIS' licensing software, FLEXlm.

BASIS has implemented FLEXlm licensing for some time now, and it is working as anticipated. We have, however, had quite of bit of feedback about the ease of use and the particular way we have implemented the licensing. I recently attended the GLOBEtrotter developer training for the FLEXlm software to review the various application options and potentially propose some alternative method of deployment. The training class was one day. A second day focused on the business aspects of software licensing, in which I heard some interesting information.

GLOBEtrotter has over 2,000 software publishers using FLEXlm on over 20,000 products. Over $14 billion of software shipped in 1998 uses FLEXlm. FLEXlm is rapidly growing as the product of choice for in-house software installation control for major corporations. Another interesting statistic was that off-the-shelf software accounts for only 15% of the total software revenue, the rest comes from vertical applications. The moral to this story is, while BASIS might be your first experience with FLEXlm licensing, it most assuredly will not be your last. Licensing is prevalent and becoming a standard in the corporate environment. Licensing is here to stay and is expected to be completely proliferated in the software market within the next two years. GLOBEtrotter seems a very solid partner to work with in this environment.

FLEXlm itself is an external application that subtly confirms that the underlying software is installed to the letter of the software agreement, which has historically been ignored. As with many software applications, FLEXlm is configurable-actually, quite configurable. The software vendor can add as much, or as little, security to his or her application as desired.

Two important principles underlie FLEXlm. First, in order to fingerprint a computer, you need to identify a particular aspect of the system that you consider integral to its configuration. The level of security is associated with the system characteristic you fingerprint. Second, you must communicate to the licensing body at some point during the licensing phase to complete the transaction. The days of taking diskettes off site and installing without confirmation are gone. The days of distributing software by hard-copy media might arguably be fading also. There are a couple of things BASIS could do differently, and some we could add to our current selection list. That will fall under our continuing effort to deliver better products. But the greatest service we can, and need to, deliver most immediately is expanding our education and training on FLEXlm and how it can help you in your business. BASIS and our customers are already recognizing some of the benefits of the per-seat licensing that FLEXlm delivers. This past year, with Y2K looming, we saw a number of licenses that needed to be upgraded. Under the old licensing scheme, if you had a 20-user system, you had to buy a 20-user license, even if that constituted two shifts working on the same machines. The FLEXlm licensing made it possible for those customer sites to buy only what they needed for total concurrent users. Another residual benefit our customers have noticed is the added security for their applications that FLEXlm provides.

As we look down the road to enterprise applications and e-business, we have to move quickly but conservatively. FLEXlm will play an important part in allowing us to achieve these kinds of complex networked applications and e-business interactions.

  In The European Theater

BASIS International Ltd. is seeking new and innovativeways of reaching out to our international customers. We recently participated in two shows in northern Europe, helping to promote BASIS and our partners in that part of the world.

Following on the heels of our BASIS TechCon99 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, our German subsidiary, BASIS International Software GmbH, hosted a TechCon99 in Stadt Bad Ems. Key German customers attended the October 28 and 29 conference. BASIS GmbH Manager Herbert Schmitz and technical consultants Falk Spitzberg and Peter Scholz gave presentations and information about current BASIS products, our partners' products and BBj to German, Austrian and Swiss customers. And John Schroeder, BASIS Chief Technical Officer, flew over to mangle his way through an opening address in German!

Just after the German conference, John was off to Vianen, the Netherlands, to join BASIS President George Hight at Euro TechCon99, hosted by LCS Systemen BV, BASIS' distributor in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. John and George spoke and presented at this conference along with President Jos Schrier from Aucon BV, a Dutch software consulting firm that specializes in automation packages for the automotive industry, and Peter Scholz and other Business Basic developers. Aucon and its new GUI application, built with Visual PRO/5®, are profiled in this issue.