Drive One
Integrating FLEXnet Manager at Ford Motor
Company
Jake Covert and Dale Eckart
Central License System / IT Operations
About Ford Motor Company
The automotive industry is facing unprecedented challenges.
Key part of Ford’s plan is to create new products our customers
want and value
Utilize CAD and CAE to create and improve our vehicles
Many third-party CAD and CAE software tools employ license
managers such as FLEXnet®
Pre-FLEXnet Manager
In 2005, Ford’s Central License System (CLS) had only 2
servers, utilizing a distributed environment (Sun 420Rs).
We experienced many operational challenges:
Reporting headaches
Manual report log rotation (even with script-assistance)
would soon become unmanageable.
Increasing use of custom scripts meant increasing
administration
CLS FLEXnet Manager history
Project evaluation initiated
Jan. 2006
FLEXnet ManagerTM decision made
Feb. 2007
FLEXnet Manager 1.95 (pilot)
Oct. 2007
FLEXnet Manager 11.0 (production)
Jun. 2008
FLEXnet Manager 11.5
Dec. 2008
32-bit to 64-bit OS Migration
Mar. 2009
FLEXnet Manager 12.0
Apr. 2009
CLS FLEXnet Manager history
Production and QA environments:
Linux SLES 9 32-bit, upgraded to SLES 10 64-bit
FNM Admin and Reporting on one server
MS SQL Server 2005 Enterprise
Enterprise scalability issues at first
Deployed to nearly a dozen global engineering centers,
including the Volvo, Mazda and JLR groups
Current State
Operational State
Global license management of 20+ license servers
which serve clients in over 34 countries.
FLEXnet Manager has allowed our department to
manage significantly more licensed applications and
servers with only modest increase in headcount.
The use of FNM alerts has enabled us to focus less on
custom scripts, and more on customer satisfaction and
service delivery.
Current State
Metrics Management System (MMS)
Ford built a data warehouse around the reporting services
of Microsoft SQL 2005 Enterprise.
Facilitated by features in FLEXnet Manager version 11.0
Opening up the backend database to direct SQL
access
Making the schema available to customers.
Enables us to provide high-level analytics, integrated with
our directory services and billing departments.
Current State
Support & Maintenance
Support request response times have been better
than expected.
Bug fixes have incrementally grown the stability of
the product.
Good engagement of the enterprise end-user
community through CELUG.
Business Benefits
Allows multiple organizations within Ford to have information on
global engineering tool usage
Usage-driven decision making has enabled right-sizing the
portfolio, allowing us to focus our resources where it matters most
Pertinent license usage and trend data is readily available to those
individuals to make tactical and strategic decisions with
confidence
Consistent metrics have helped us in creating better vendor
relationships, allowing the focus of topics to be shifted from
current license reporting accuracy to improvement of relations
Moving Forward
Ford is eager to see enhancements incorporated into
FLEXnet Manager:
Continued performance improvements for
enterprise-wide scalability
Third-party license middleware data integration
(e.g., LUM / RLM / Sentinel RMS)
FNM enterprise opportunities (Cisco CSM/GSM
load balancers)
FLEXlm, FLEXnet, and FLEXnet Manager are registered trademarks of Acresso Software Inc.