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While the focus of implementing software security is understandably on protecting the end-user, the software publisher is also concerned with protecting intellectual property. Commercial software publishers typically implement licensing to control use of products as well as control access to proprietary data and processes embedded within products.
Recently, edaption designed and implemented a software licensing framework to secure several lines of education software products offered by a Fortune 500 firm. The products are desktop applications used in K-12 classrooms to teach a variety of subjects, but primarily focusing on math and science.
A major benefit of the new framework is smoother integration, including significantly less time and effort to implement than the previous licensing scheme required. In fact, the duration was reduced by a factor of ten, from several weeks to implement licensing in each product to only a few days per product.
Another important benefit of the edaption solution is the ability to plug in various licensing models. Unlike the scheme that was replaced, the new framework is not tied to a specific license model. Implementing a new model or new security features in the old framework required extensive code changes both in the framework and the protected applications. Now changes can be implemented in the framework and rolled out to the applications with minimal modification.
The new licensing scheme also provides customer organizations a streamlined installation and configuration process. New features offer the flexibility of different license and purchase options. For example, customers can choose from any combination of per-computer licenses, subscription or permanent licenses, and even floating licenses distributed from a central network location. Purchase and activation of licenses occurs over the internet, allowing almost instant access to full product features after installation.
Software development performed overseas can cost a fraction of that using domestic resources, thus many U.S. companies are offshoring projects. Some overseas IT firms are outstanding, but others have elicited horror stories from former clients. Unfortunately, minimal barrier to entry allows bad as well as good vendors to vie for a piece of your IT budget.
After receiving unusable code from an offshore firm, later found to be an overcommitted one-man shop, a Fortune 500 company brought us in to rewrite their system. Another company endured a months-long fight with a vendor to gain possession of source code they had paid for. One group was victimized by a common ploy – a low-ball quote for initial work followed by exorbitant prices for fixes. In fact, one problem we resolved in a few minutes had been quoted at a few hundred dollars.
Off-shoring can be a viable cost saving option, but how do you protect your company? Opening your own office in another country is the best model we’ve seen; managing your own employees is vastly safer than dealing with third party risks. Of course, this is an option only for companies with ample resources.
Ensure success by managing the process. Provide clear expectations, ask questions, and insist on verifying completed work. Don’t expect to hand off a project and wait for delivery. Be prepared to devote resources to oversee the project as you would for an in-house effort. Before signing any agreement, know your vendor; research the firm and get references. Also critical is maintaining possession of all work products. Insist on frequent deliveries or host the code on your server, providing the vendor with access you control.
Finally, understand the long term costs of offshoring such as maintenance and support. Seek the help of a qualified company that has experience dealing with and managing offshore development. The slight additional cost of using a coordinator is like insurance for success of the project and your company.
The Parish Episcopal School (PES) is a leading independent school encompassing several buildings across two campuses covering 60 acres in North Dallas. With over 1,100 students and 200 faculty/staff, budgeting is a constant challenge. Tax deductible gifts to an independent school's Annual Fund supplement tuition for operating expenses and specific programs such as technology. For example the PES Annual Fund has benefited students with $1 Million for technology equipment and projects.
In past years the Annual Fund process was manual and time intensive, with dozens of volunteers making thousands of calls to solicit pledges. Pledging required submitting paper forms to the school, where they were manually entered and tracked. The PES Annual Fund campaign is now online with help from edaption solutions. Now pledging is as simple as visiting the school's web site.
Pledging takes only a minute and is available 24/7. All pledge and donor information is encrypted during transmission, implementing a high level of security. Pledges are automatically entered into the school's system reducing data errors, eliminating lost paperwork, and providing up to the minute campaign status. The improved process has paid off with increased pledges over prior years. The most recent completed campaign exceeded the $1,000,000 goal.
edaption consultants recently completed successful internationalization and localization (i18n/l10n) projects for two Fortune 50 clients. The work included end-to-end system modifications including databases, business rules processing, middleware, external system interfaces, and user interfaces.
The first system generates government mandated Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS), the documents required to accompany all transported chemicals. MSDS are critical to the Chemical industry since incorrect or incomplete documents can result in millions of dollars in fines as well as potential environmental hazards. This system was deployed to generate MSDS in every major language in Europe, Asia, and South America.
The second is an identity management (IdM) system. IdM, which IDC estimates to grow to a $2 billion market, is becoming increasingly strategic within the enterprise. This is true in terms of cost savings realized by implementing companies as well as in terms of revenues for the IdM providers. We modified a large scale J2EE based identity management system, allowing it to be deployed in Europe and Asia and localized for several languages including Chinese, Korean, Thai, Japanese, German, and Norwegian.
edaption solutions has been involved in other large scale i18n/l10n projects, including developing a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system installed for financial institutions in North America, South America, and Europe.
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