Saturday, July 07, 2007
So, what does entitlements have to do with software patches?
I was thinking that software vendors who haven't looked at entitlements management are missing out on a big opportunity in terms of patch management...
If your software has LiveUpdate or equivalent patching capability, then you need to noodle the notion of entitlements. Imagine the capability of having appliances and software support the notion of entitlement keys. Software and appliances can be configured to require entitlement keys to receive updates from an upstream Conary repository, and the Entitlement Service upstream uses the keys to authenticate the appliance and determine what updates it is allowed to receive.
The same thing could be applied within a large enterprise where users are allowed to determine which software users can install for themselves. The problem with licensing at large is that it requires humans to manage it. You shouldn't have to involve a human to install software especially if software installation is straightforward.
| | View blog reactionsIf your software has LiveUpdate or equivalent patching capability, then you need to noodle the notion of entitlements. Imagine the capability of having appliances and software support the notion of entitlement keys. Software and appliances can be configured to require entitlement keys to receive updates from an upstream Conary repository, and the Entitlement Service upstream uses the keys to authenticate the appliance and determine what updates it is allowed to receive.
The same thing could be applied within a large enterprise where users are allowed to determine which software users can install for themselves. The problem with licensing at large is that it requires humans to manage it. You shouldn't have to involve a human to install software especially if software installation is straightforward.
