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AMV Offers Cloud, On Prem, and Hardware Key Licenses with Thales Sentinel
AMV, a provider of civil and structural engineering software, modernized its licensing strategy with Thales Sentinel EMSaaS. After more than 15 years of relying on hardware-key licensing, AMV introduced software and cloud licensing to give customers greater flexibility while maintaining support for existing hardware-based deployments.
This case study explains how AMV unified hardware, software, and cloud licensing through one centralized entitlement management platform. Discover how Sentinel EMSaaS helps simplify license administration, accelerate license delivery, reduce manual operations, and support international growth while protecting valuable software intellectual property.
What you will learn:
- How AMV expanded beyond traditional hardware-key licensing.
- How to manage hardware, software, and cloud licenses through one platform.
- How remote activation and license updates improve customer onboarding.
- How centralized entitlement management reduces manual administrative work.'
- How flexible licensing models support subscription, perpetual, trial, and time-limited offerings.
Case Study
AMV develops software for civil and structural engineering, serving several thousand customers. Founded in 1985 and headquartered in Ronchi dei Legionari, Italy, the company provides structural engineers in both the public and private sectors with calculation, dimensioning, and design software.
AMV had relied on Thales Sentinel HL hardware keys since 2009 to protect and license its applications. Recently, the company expanded its licensing strategy by introducing Sentinel SL (software licensing) and Sentinel CL (cloud licensing), enabling customers to choose the model that best fits their operational requirements.
The Challenge of Hardware Key Licensing
For more than 15 years, Sentinel HL hardware keys successfully supported AMV’s predominantly on-premises customer base. As customer expectations evolved, however, exclusive reliance on physical dongles became increasingly restrictive. Every new license required a hardware key to be prepared and shipped, increasing fulfillment time, administrative effort, and costs while delaying customer onboarding. The need for shipment also made it more difficult to serve international customers and respond quickly to licensing changes.
At the same time, many existing customers continued to value hardware-key licensing. Rather than replacing Sentinel HL, AMV wanted to introduce software and cloud licensing alongside it, allowing customers to adopt new licensing models at their own pace. The company, therefore, sought a unified licensing platform that would support hardware key, software, and cloud licensing from a single platform while continuing to protect the intellectual property embedded in AMV’s decades of engineering expertise.
The Solution: One Platform for All License Types
Having relied on Sentinel technology for many years, AMV selected Sentinel EMSaaS, the Thales-hosted Entitlement Management System, to support its transition to hybrid licensing. Implemented in September 2025, EMSaaS provides a single hosted environment for managing Sentinel HL, Sentinel SL, and Sentinel CL.
The EMSaaS platform centralizes the administration of products, entitlements, activations, renewals, revocations, and license updates allowing AMV to manage every licensing model through one system while continuing Sentinel’s robust software protection and IP security.
Key capabilities affected AMV’s decision to move to EMSaaS:
- Support for Sentinel HL, SL, and CL licensing in parallel
- Centralized license administration and customer portals
- Continued software protection and access control
- REST APIs for CRM integration to automate order creation, updates, and trial provisioning
Because EMSaaS is hosted by Thales, AMV benefits from Thales’ enterprise licensing infrastructure without the operational overhead of deploying and maintaining it internally.
The implementation was designed as an evolution rather than a migration. Existing hardware-key customers continued to be fully supported while AMV introduced software-based and cloud licensing for organizations seeking faster deployment and greater flexibility. The project was completed with guidance from the Thales Sentinel technical support team in Italy.
Advantages of Adding On-Prem and Cloud Licensing
AMV chose to add on-prem and cloud licensing for these reasons:
- Improve customer experience through faster license delivery.
- Support perpetual, subscription, trial, and time-limited licensing.
- Manage hardware, software, and cloud licenses through a single platform.
- Maintain IP protection.
- Continue reducing software misuse and revenue leakage.
Modernizing Software Licensing: Business Impact
Shortly after introducing software and cloud licensing, AMV reported significant operational and commercial improvements.
The company can now match licensing to each customer’s technical and business requirements. Organizations that prefer hardware keys continue using Sentinel HL, while others can choose Sentinel SL for software-based licensing or Sentinel CL for cloud licensing.
For customers adopting Sentinel CL, licenses can be delivered, activated, and updated remotely without waiting for physical hardware, accelerating onboarding, and reducing fulfillment effort. Cloud licensing also enables authorized users to access licensed applications from multiple work locations, improving flexibility for organizations supporting hybrid work.
Removing the dependency on shipping hardware has also simplified AMV’s ability to serve customers beyond Italy, supporting the company’s international growth strategy.
Internally, centralized administration has reduced manual licensing tasks and laid the foundation for greater workflow automation.
“Using Sentinel software and cloud licensing, and API integration capabilities, we have substantially reduced the time spent on manual operations,” says Gianluca Fabris, Senior Software Developer. “Future CRM integration is expected to streamline these workflows even further.”
Looking Ahead
AMV plans to continue offering Sentinel HL, SL, and CL while expanding its digital sales capabilities through e-commerce. The company is also evaluating user-based authentication and usage-based licensing to support future commercial models. Because Sentinel supports perpetual, subscription, trial, and time-limited licensing, AMV can continue evolving its licensing strategy without disrupting existing customers or replacing established deployment models.
Summary
By implementing Sentinel EMSaaS, AMV transformed its licensing operations from a hardware-key-only model into a unified platform supporting hardware, software, and cloud licensing. The company now delivers licenses quicker through remote activation, simplifies license administration with centralized management, supports a broader range of licensing and commercial models, and is better positioned to expand into international markets. Throughout this transition, AMV has continued to protect its valuable engineering intellectual property while giving customers the flexibility to choose the licensing model that best fits their technical and business requirements.
“We’ve been using Sentinel technologies for decades to protect and license our software. With Sentinel EMSaaS, we evolved this experience into a more flexible and centralized platform. Thales’ hosting provides the infrastructure, and the license updates of all types—hardware, software, or cloud—are quick,” concludes Fabris.