Jordan_Hiller and me at 2021 kick-off.
Jordan_Hiller: Could we modernize the JMP deployment and license management model?
Jordan_Hiller’s experience and thoughts:
The JMP deployment and license management system is overly complex for a desktop software product. We have relied on the SAS infrastructure for deployment and license management. At first it must have been convenient and sensible to plug into existing SAS systems for JMP’s needs in this area; today the benefits of using the SAS framework are outweighed by the costs of administering and explaining and troubleshooting it for our customers. The deployment experience is at odds with our software values: ease-of-use, simplicity, transparency.
A fair proportion of my customer contacts involve soothing frustrated customers who are having difficulty with download or installation or license files. These frustrations are particularly acute for small sites with a handful of users.
Concrete suggestions:
- Remove the SAS Download Manager from the product.
- Provide the installer as a single zipped file, rather than a folder of many files.
- Separate the license file from the installer. Inclusion of expired license files in the depot causes confusion.
- Remove restrictions on the number of times the installers may be downloaded.
- Provide a mechanism for administrators to track users (controversial, I know).
- Investigate the systems used by IT departments at our largest customers for Software Asset Management, to ensure that our model is compliant with and supported by those systems.
My experience and thoughts:
Our current systems puts a burden on Champions and IT teams. The burden is enough to generate complaints. The most common license management complaints in the Rocky’s territory are related to tracking/identifying users, version/update management, downloading, and installing. I have empathy for this as I had the same complaints when I was a JMP champion.
In my past life, we accomplished user tracking by getting an installation report that identifies computers with installations. IT would then walk through the list with me to make sense of it before renewal. Often this exercise led to an upgrade so it’s worth thinking about (controversial, but I don’t mind bringing it up). What’s messy and painstaking about this approach is that someone must figure out who is an actual user and how many computers the user has JMP installed on (e.g. one user may have a desktop/laptop, lab, and factory floor computer). New releases and updates were communicated through an in internal six sigma team. There were many touch points for me as a champion and the six-sigma team that could be automated and run by IT. Perhaps the Champion’s role in all of this could be less active and more geared to verification? Champions are typically scientists and engineers whose job descriptions don’t include license administrator:smiling_face_with_smiling_eyes:
I do believe people care about being honest with installations. We have found a couple of IT folks in the Rocky’s who do not understand our licensing that had unlicensed users. Perhaps a more automated solution could help with this as well.
MATLAB has a licensing manager that makes software deployment and named user licenses assignment and tracking easier. I believe it is worth looking at. MATLAB’s tool is not perfect, but software updates are easier, and it makes license allocation and tracking individual users easier. I found the tool to be handy as it took work of my plate!
I concur with all of Jordan’s suggestions. I would also add -make it as streamlined and automated as possible. It would be awesome if the install and management parts of the JMP experience were just as joyous as using JMP.
