Seller issued licenses in License Manager - AWS License Manager

Seller issued licenses in License Manager

Independent software vendors (ISVs) can use AWS License Manager to manage and distribute software licenses to end-users. As an issuer, you can track the usage of the licenses you issue centrally using the License Manager dashboard.

License Manager uses open, secure, industry standards for representing licenses and allows customers to cryptographically verify their authenticity. License Manager associates each license with an asymmetric key. As the ISV, you own the asymmetric AWS KMS keys and store them in your account.

Seller issued licenses require cross-Region replication of license metadata. License Manager automatically replicates each seller issued license and its associated information to other Regions.

License Manager supports a variety of different licensing models including the following:

  • Perpetual – Lifetime licenses with no expiration date that authorize users to use the software indefinitely.

  • Floating – Shareable licenses with multiple instances of the application. Licenses can be prepaid and a fixed set of entitlements added to them.

  • Subscription – Licenses with expiration dates that can be automatically renewed unless specifically deactivated.

  • Usage-based – Licenses with specific terms based on usage, such as the number of API requests, transactions, or storage capabilities.

You can create licenses in License Manager and distribute them to your customers with an AWS IAM identity or through bearer tokens generated by License Manager. ISV customers with an AWS account can re-distribute the license entitlements to AWS identities in their respective organizations. Customers with distributed entitlements can check out and check in the required entitlements from that license through your software integration with License Manager.