The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
May. 02, 2017
Filed:
Mar. 23, 2012
Jerrold M. Heyman, Raleigh, NC (US);
Michael L. Nelson, Raleigh, NC (US);
Andrew G. Tonkin, Morrisville, NC (US);
Jerrold M. Heyman, Raleigh, NC (US);
Michael L. Nelson, Raleigh, NC (US);
Andrew G. Tonkin, Morrisville, NC (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
Techniques for implementing software licensing in a massive parallel processing environment on the basis of the actual use of licensed software instances are disclosed. In one embodiment, rather than using a license server or a node-locked license strategy, each use of a licensed software instance is monitored and correlated with a token. A store of tokens is maintained within the licensing system and a token is consumed after each instance successfully executes. Further, a disclosed embodiment also allows jobs that execute multiple software instances to complete execution, even if an adequate number of tokens does not exist for each remaining software instance. Once the license tokens are repurchased and replenished, any overage consumed from previous job executions may be reconciled. In this way, token-based licensing can be adapted to large scale computing environments that execute jobs of large and unpredictable sizes, while the cancellation of executing jobs may be avoided.