SaaS APPS

SLASCONE simplifies the entire licensing process for SaaS applications.

LICENSING OF SaaS APPS

BUSINESS REQUIREMENTS

You can find more information about the general licensing features of SLASCONE (applying to desktop/mobile/SaaS/Iot) here. This section focuses on the specific requirements of SaaS applications.

In the context of typical licensing/entitlement scenarios, let us define SaaS in the following way:

A multitenant/multiuser application which is deployed and managed by the software vendor, running in some datacenter or public/private cloud. There is only one physical installation.
End-customers typically access the application through a web/mobile/desktop client and a unified authentication (sign-in) process, via username or email. The way the users access the application is typically irrelevant in the context of entitlements, since these are user based.

Licensing and entitlements in SaaS scenarios have to be considered in the context of B2C (e.g., commercial apps such as Netflix or Spotify) or B2B (e.g., a business platform such as Salesforce).

B2C

In B2C scenarios the user is the tenant. Authentication is performed by the SaaS application itself and authorization by SLASCONE. Contrary to desktop apps, no license keys are necessary in the whole lifecycle (although they can be used).

SaaS B2C applications typical licensing requirements include:

Easy onboarding/registration of new users.
Change of edition/subscription type, e.g., from free to premium.
Restriction on the number of devices that are allowed to be active simultaneously (e.g., streaming apps).

SLASCONE’s role in such scenarios is to simplify the definition and management of the application’s editions: normally there are multiple editions such as basic, silver, golden etc. Upon registration, the user and his entitlements are created in SLASCONE. Each time the user successfully logs into the SaaS application, the application performs a lookup in SLASCONE and fetches all relevant entitlements.

The greatest benefit of using SLASCONE in such scenario is the decoupling of the application and authorization. Business users can easily define or change product editions, trials, or pay as you go models, without having to involve the application engineers. For example, when the end-customer upgrades from a free to a premium edition, this info is only changed in SLASCONE, nothing has to be changed in the application.

This decoupling becomes even more valuable in case that the software vendor develops multiple applications (not necessarily SaaS), since instead of having isolated authorization silos within each application, SLASCONE provides a central authorization gateway.

B2B

SaaS B2B applications typical licensing requirements include:

Easy onboarding/registration of new tenants (companies).
Change of edition/subscription type, e.g., from free to premium.
Setting the number of allowed users/quotas.

In B2B scenarios a company (or legal entity) is the tenant. A tenant has several users with different roles. Upon tenant registration, the tenant and its entitlements are created in SLASCONE, e.g., the tenant might have acquired the basic, silver or golden edition of the application. The tenant’s edition (entitlements) control global functionality regardless of the user.

The way the users are managed depends on the application.

In most cases user management is an integral part of the SaaS application: an administrator can add, edit or remove users and assign them a role within the application itself. In such a case, SLASCONE typically provides the number of maximum users (but not their usernames).
In less common cases, the allowed usernames (or email addresses) are managed in SLASCONE. User management can be then performed using SLASCONE’s Customer Portal or through its underlying API functions.