To make it easier for application developers and data management professionals to access the software tools they need, while also reducing the cost and time associated with managing software tool licenses, Embarcadero today announced Embarcadero ToolCloud.
Built on the latest generation of Embarcadero's license server technology, the ToolCloud is lightweight on premise server software that enables administrators to centrally provision and manage Embarcadero tools, set and enforce licensing and access policies, and deploy tools on-demand to users on their network. According to Embarcadero, organizations can save time and money by centralizing and simplifying software licensing by not having to keep desktops up-to-date with the proper tool configurations and by avoiding over-buying licenses.
Embarcadero ToolCloud offers license management and usage reporting, guarantees compliance by enforcing licensing policies, and enables users to run multiple versions of the same tool side-by-side without conflict. The ToolCloud capabilities are standard with network-named and network concurrent licenses of Embarcadero All-Access, and are also available for individual Embarcadero products, such as DBArtisan, ER/Studio, Rapid SQL, Delphi, C++Builder and others.
"The ToolCloud is about a new way of letting IT departments make Embarcadero tools available to their end users," Philip Rathle, senior director of product management, Embarcadero, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "ToolCloud is a private tool cloud. It is basically a lightweight server software that houses both the licenses and the products in one place, and the products are packaged in such a way that we refer to as InstantOn where they can actually be launched from anywhere." Being able to shift products and licenses around quickly and easily among users, and enabling those to be centrally controlled, has emerged as a requirement from organizations, particularly over the past year, with the difficult economy, notes Rathle.
With ToolCloud's delivery of tools on-demand via InstantOn, users can "click-and-run" Embarcadero tools when they need them and run them on local desktops with no installation, application or dll conflicts. According to Embarcadero, organizations can save hundreds of hours by not having to keep desktops up-to-date with the proper tool configurations, and the ToolCloud also provides usage tracking by user, products and groups so administrators know how many licenses are being used, when and by whom.
Additionally, centralized license management simplifies license management by providing one place to administer all tool licenses, and also enables complete control over who can access which software licenses. Administrators can easily reallocate licenses and make changes. The ToolCloud manages InstantOn versions so end users can access older versions of tools to support older versions of databases and applications, and run multiple versions without installation or desktop conflicts, avoiding time-consuming installs and uninstalls of multiple product versions.
For more information about ToolCloud, go here.