Thebes

Application and license sharing is sometimes called an application grid. This class of examples has many different variations. Once a plug-in allows access to an application or license server based upon supplied attribute assertions, license management and application load sharing become much simpler.

If an organization has a certain number of licenses for an application, these are often controlled with a license server, where the application goes to look for available licenses. No matter how many instances of an application there are, only a certain number can be in use at any given time. Attribute based authorization to a license server can facilitate access to available licenses. Applications can be included in basic install images, available on every desktop, with users checking out a license for local use by offering their assertion to the license server. This has applications in cloud computing, allowing large numbers of virtual machines in the cloud with the enterprise’s entire suite of offerings available. This arrangement allows the enterprise to not only control access to licenses, but also offers load balancing via the cloud. Combining this power with the ability to use local file systems with the same credentials will then improve security. A user can sign on once, gain access to a virtual machine with the required application on it, access a license for this application, and store work on a local file system, all with a single sign-on.

Applications that maintain their own licensing controls can still benefit from this infrastructure, by leveraging policy controls and application plug-ins. Whether the application is installed on the user’s machine or shared on a larger server, the attributes offered to the application will be verified against the policies in place for the application. This provides the same level of license and load balancing as the previous example.

Finally, for applications in high demand, enterprises can take advantage of batch scheduling software commonly used in the high performance computing world to queue work and control load on each individual resource. Since the plug-ins for batch schedulers already exist, this solution can make access to expensive and popular resources more equitably available.