PreEmptive Solutions Shelf Life Case Study

ISV Automates Subscription Activation Management Through Shelf Life Service

"Shelf Life allowed us to automate subscription activation and management without forcing us to retool our existing licensing and build processes." – Gabriel Torok, CEO PreEmptive Solutions, LLC

PreEmptive Solutions’ DashO is a widely deployed and trusted application security solution. DashO Suite sits inside many of the largest and most complex development organizations including EMC, HP, IBM, and Intel, as well as enterprises who rely upon custom applications to run their businesses. Leveraging the Shelf Life service, PreEmptive Solutions was able to introduce subscription-based activation management into this complex environment without compromising the quality or stability of DashO and without disrupting existing registration, activation and licensing systems.

PreEmptive Software and Services

• DashO Suite
  • Instrumentation Platform
  • Shelf Life

Microsoft Components

• Visual Studio 2008
• Microsoft Windows Server
• Microsoft SQL Server: Database Engine, Analysis Services, Reporting Services, Integration Servies, Microsoft MQ (MSMQ)
• Microsoft .NET 3.5 with ASP.NET Ajax
• Microsoft Active Directory

Business Needs

PreEmptive Solutions wanted to streamline the action process of its products. The challenge was how to cost-effectively offer a new Dotfuscator version without compromising PreEmptive’s quality and support standards.

Solution

"We were unwilling to cut back on software quality or support," said Sebastian Holst, CMO PreEmptive Solutions. "Instead, we focused on reducing the cost of sale, activation, and account management. We had to find a way to offer a self-service subscription model where we could automate the initial sale and activation, the annual reminders to renew, and the renewal process itself."

Using the advanced Shelf Life capabilities inside the DashO Suite, PreEmptive injected subscription behaviors into its products.

Shelf Life Applications

Shelf Life is used to improve application management by encoding custom behaviors into the applications themselves. Beta cycle management, application portfolio management, and software evaluation process management are all examples of where application Shelf Life can improve control and visibility.

In this case study, Shelf Life is used to automate the activation and renewal of subscription-based software. The DashO Suite was used by PreEmptive Solutions to enable an entirely new edition of DashO.

Shelf Life Functionality

DashO injects Shelf Life behaviors into classes post-build. That means that Shelf Life does not modify source code. The DashO Suite can inject alerts and custom behaviors that activate at a warning date or an end-of-life date.

• Custom behaviors are exactly what they sound like; they can turn off features, display messages, or even disable their host application.
• Alerts can include information about the host application, the runtime environment, and information about the installation itself. Alerts are securely transmitted to an endpoint for analysis at a later time.

Shelf Life Implementation

Joe Kuemerle, Lead Architect at PreEmptive Solutions describes the approach; "Our challenge was that to effectively automate our subscription model, we had to combine the current registration and activation processes and technologies for Dotfuscator and DashO with our website while adding an entirely new fulfillment and activation model. Shelf Life was a perfect fit and so we became one of the earliest adopters of our own solution."

"It was fantastic to see how using one edition of our products enabled the creation of another," added Bill Leach, CTO, PreEmptive Solutions. The implementation included the following:

• The website was extended to offer an ecommerce front-end.
• Shelf Life injected custom expiration behavior which calls a Subscriber Activation Web Service.
• The Subscriber Activation Web Service returns an expiration date and other required information.
• DashO alters its behavior accordingly, including resetting the expiration date.
• As the annual expiration date approaches, users are directed back to the website via the warning date custom behavior also injected by Shelf Life. The same component can reset the expiration date to a new date.

Benefits

"Utilizing Shelf Life to introduce new subscription behaviors post-build reduced development expense, shortened time to market, and ultimately was the tipping point in enabling a new stream of revenue for PreEmptive Solutions," continues Holst.

Reduced Development Expense

Injection of communication logic, linking of activation logic into existing code, and sophisticated time-checking are all provided by Shelf Life.

Shortened Time to Market

The post-build platform approach and rigorously tested components reduced the development burden and many testing requirements.

Innovative Behavior

Expired installs continue to run but the only functionality enabled is the ability to renew.

Increased Revenue

An entirely new stream of revenue can now be cost-effectively developed – providing a level of service and capability previously unavailable our user base.

Improved Market Intelligence

PreEmptive Solutions is now able to correlate client usage levels as they approach renewal anniversaries to better assess adoption, user behaviors, and platform requirements.