Altair Units Licensing

Altair Units licensing information.

Altair 2023 licensing is based on Altair License Manager (ALM). The conversion formula for Altair Units to License Features (what is actually in the license) is 1 to 1000. For each Altair Unit (AU) purchased, there are 1000 license features available in the license. This should not be confused with products that are licensed as product feature based. Unit based applications draw license features, and feature-based product licenses draw their respectively named feature from the license (such as CatiaV5Reader).

The licensing system has been designed to allow products of the Altair Partner Alliance (APA) to be licensed via Altair Units. As part of the license agreements to enable partner software, product usage data must be sent to Altair. This is done automatically for customers using managed licensing. For customers using on-premises servers, the Usage Report Tools (URT) must be installed and configured as part as the server installation.

The software applications use three types of licensing: Altair Unit Licenses, Named User Licensing, and Feature-Based Licenses. A more complete description of each licensing type follows.

Altair Units Licensing

Altair Units licenses allow any of the applications to run, as long as there are sufficient license features available and the required product license features are present in the license. One Altair Unit (AU) consumes 1000 license features.

Altair Units licensing has the following characteristics:
  • Must use managed licensing or an on-premises server (as opposed to node locked licenses)
  • Enforces Global Licensing (see Global Licensing)
  • Provides the advantage of the Altair unit-based business model (leveling/stacking/decaying of units, see below)
  • Leveling and stacking is not confined by the number of machine cores
  • License decay function for massive use of solvers for simulation driven innovation
  • Multi-physics and co-simulation licensing, which determines the license draw just based on the number of cores that are used, and effectively lowers the cost.

The Altair License Manager tracks and records the total quantity of units the customer purchased and how many of those units are currently being used by each user. Realtime status is available from Altair One for managed licenses and the almutil tool for on-premises licenses. Refer to the Altair License Manager documentation for more details.

Note: If you are using on-premises licenses, Altair License Manager 15.2 or later is required to set up Altair Units licensing.

The Altair Business Model: Leveling and Stacking

By implementing leveling, customers can use multiple applications at the same time without incurring additional unit draw. Many of the software applications level with each other. This leveling is based on an application running on the same host and username. For most applications, the actual cost of running multiple applications on the same host/username is simply the cost of the most expensive application running. The lower draw applications simply run at no additional unit draw.

For example, if a user starts HyperMesh (21 AUs) and then starts an instance of HyperGraph (6 AUs), that user will only be using 21000 license features from the license. The same goes for multiple instances of the same application. For example, a user can open multiple instances of HyperMesh, and still only draw 21000 features.

Applications that stack always draw the associated number of units, regardless of any other applications or concurrent usage on the user/host.

Named User Licensing

Named User licensing allows unique “users”, identified using their email credentials from Altair One for authorization and use of the software. The unique user herein is part of the organization (company) that has procured the software for using Altair Managed Licenses. The Company administrator (admin) will have access through the Altair One Managed Licensing portal to manage the users in the account. Only selected products are available under the Named User licensing.

Feature-Based Product Licensing

Feature-based licensing allows an application to run as long as the feature name is available in the license file and the server has not reached the number of available features checked out. Think of this model as the more familiar seat-based type; there is a set number of seats or copies allowed at any given time. Feature-based product licensing does not require or check out Altair Unit license features. However, it does require a checkout of one GlobalZone feature for the appropriate time zone (see Global Licensing).