Gemalto provides secure licensing for Snell Advanced Media's xFile post-production software

Gemalto, the digital security company, is providing a comprehensive, flexible and secure licensing solution for Snell Advanced Media (SAM), a provider of live production, editing, playout, infrastructure and image processing technology with six offices in the Asia Pacific region. 

SAM's new product suite of software tools, xFile, has transformed SAM's post-production solutions from being purely hardware-based to software-based. SAM looked to Gemalto to provide a way to improve operational efficiencies including audit reporting, renewal reporting and product activation, and to prevent IP theft. The company chose Gemalto's Sentinel Entitlement Management System (EMS) and Sentinel Rights Management System (RMS) to streamline licensing operations and protect valuable intellectual property (IP).

"Before we could offer our software commercially, we knew we had to protect our applications from reverse engineering and tampering," said Jeremy Courtney, Head of Media Processing Software at SAM. "Operating in the dynamic media and broadcasting space means we are dealing with an increasingly digital-savvy client base, and offering that extra security and ease-of-deployment for our software packages is what makes all the difference. One of the advantages of our On Demand framework is its flexibility and scalability and we wanted the same in the protection and licensing solution that we chose. The addition of Sentinel RMS and EMS has further enhanced that."

Sentinel RMS enables SAM to easily offer and enforce a variety of licensing models and packaging options for its xFile products. In addition to offering new ways to package and sell our products, Sentinel RMS protects the intellectual property in the applications, reducing the risk of IP compromise.

Sentinel EMS manages software entitlements for its individual products in the suite and back office licensing operations, including software fulfillment and activation. SAM integrated the Sentinel EMS license server with its SAM store to enable online customer self-service - including payment, automated order fulfillment, activation, maintenance releases, and upgrades. Once payment clears, Sentinel EMS records the entitlement privileges and returns an activation code to the customer. Gemalto also supplied a Salesforce.com Connector to enable future integration of Sentinel EMS with SAM's customer relationship management (CRM) system.

"SAM's transformation is indicative of what we are seeing in the device vendors market. To stay ahead of the curve in the relevant industry, vendors need to be forward-thinking to realise the value of a software-driven business model and the potential such a transformation could have on pricing and packaging models," said Jamie Longmuir, Regional Director at Gemalto. "The collaboration between Gemalto and SAM reflects the importance that software licensing and entitlement is having on a business that is looking to grow and secure its competitive advantage."