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Xcitex Leverages Sentinel HASP Time-Based Licensing for its Motion Software

January 04, 2013

When it comes to high-end software, customers want a test drive before they buy. At the same time, high-end software also requires strict licensing enforcement since even a few unauthorized instances can have a noticeable influence on the software developer’s bottom line.

These two requirements often conflict with each other, but Emmy Award-winning motion-analysis software developer Xcitex found a way around the problem.

Xcitex develops some of the foremost motion capture and analysis available on the market. It is used by research facilities, sports and biomechanics engineers, military test ranges and automotive crash facilities, and in 2006, its engineers won an Emmy for Outstanding Innovative Technical Achievement for its golf analysis work for CBS Sports.

“High-end users want to see and touch software before they purchase it, not just buy it from a spec sheet,” explained Peter Carellas in a case study.

Balancing its need for licensing protection with customers’ need to try before they buy, Xcitex went looking for a robust rights management product. The company found its solution with SafeNet’s Sentinel HASP.

“Sentinel HASP hardware keys are an effective mode of providing security without locking applications to specific computers,” said Carellas in the case study. “Our business model integrates many of the advantages of the HASP key – time verification, string checking and runtime counting – into our marketing and sales plans.”

Sentinel HASP provides robust software security solutions with innovative features such as licensing in virtual environments and the first and only software licensing and IP protection solution on the market that supports J2EE applications. It offers time-based authorization, reverse-engineering protection and code obfuscation technology, among other features, making it ideal for Xcitex and its software protection needs.

“Sentinel HASP allows us to put copies of our software in our dealers’ and potential customers’ hands for demonstrations and trials,” said Carellas in the case study. “We would not feel comfortable sending out our software without the key’s time limit feature. And because we can strategically expire access to our applications, it has even minimized our need for credit verification during the purchase cycle.”

Xcitex integrated Sentinel HASP into its motion analysis software and has secured thousands of software installs. Carellas said that trust is at the heart of any licensing system; it must be bulletproof against hacking, and that’s what Sentinel HASP has provided.

“Certainly, we had initial questions about the resistance of the Sentinel HASP key to hacking, but these concerns dissipated over time as we gained both mass endorsements from our customers and the endorsements of their respective IT departments,” he said.

Summarizing Xcitex’s experience with the software, Carellas noted: “The Sentinel HASP security has been reliable and robust, and we’re very pleased.”

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Edited by Peter Bernstein

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