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Proven at enterprise scale · Trusted by industry leaders
Why Software Licensing?
Software licensing solutions turn value into protected, scalable revenue
Keep Your Software Protected as You Grow
Business growth should not come at the expense of your software's integrity. Harden your licensing to prevent cracking, so that your IP, premium AI capabilities, and pirated versions of your software don't fall into the hands of malicious actors.
Consolidate Licensing Across Your Business & Deployments
Unify how licenses, entitlements, product catalogs, and customer data are managed across cloud, on-prem, hybrid, and embedded environments. Eliminate manual processes and control how every product is sold, delivered, and used in the field.
Scale Without Introducing Complexity
Grow confidently knowing your licensing operations can expand with your business. Gain the flexibility to easily introduce pricing and packaging and automate product fulfillment and delivery at scale.
HOW IT WORKS
The complete software licensing platform
Sentinel sits at the center of your software business — translating orders into entitlements, entitlements into licenses, and licenses into enforced, protected, and measurable usage in the field.
CORE SOFTWARE LICENSING CAPABILITES
Built for the demands of enterprise software businesses
As vendors support more complex portfolios, new pricing models, and changing customer expectations, vendors need a software licensing solution with robust, flexible capabilities. Thales Sentinel licensing adapts as your business needs change, helping you protect revenue while operationalizing the next stage of your growth strategy.
One platform for licensing across on-premises, desktop, embedded, IoT, hybrid, and SaaS — covering cloud, software, and hardware licensing needs.
Multi-tenant infrastructure with the reliability and SLAs enterprise deployments demand. 100% serverless, microservices-based, scaling dynamically to any load.
RESTful APIs, out-of-the-box and low-code connectors, and webhooks for real-time actions across CRM, ERP, CPQ, and billing systems. MCP-ready connectivity for AI agents and applications.
Centrally manage and enforce entitlements across your entire customer base and product portfolio. Real-time control without touching product code.
Advanced hardening prevents piracy, copying, license circumvention, and IP theft. Even in untrusted environments, your enforcement stays intact and your monetization model stays protected.
Support for every license model — subscription, token, feature-gated, floating, metered, and advanced consumption-based models.
Turn consumption into billing, renewal, and product intelligence. Third-party and custom usage data ingestion alongside native Sentinel telemetry.
IDP-integrated, user-based licensing with OIDC and SAML support — the right people can access the right products without device-binding.
Native Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics apps reveal real-time entitlement and usage data to drive renewals, upsell, and expansion.
UNIVERSAL DEPLOYMENT
One platform. Every deployment model.
License software wherever it runs — on-premises, desktop, embedded, IoT, hybrid, and SaaS — across cloud, software, and hardware enforcement, all from a single platform.
SaaS
Meter, gate, and monetize multi-tenant cloud services with usage-based and subscription models.
Hybrid
Mix cloud-managed entitlements with local enforcement for environments with intermittent connectivity.
Embedded & IoT
Lightweight runtimes for medical devices, industrial controllers, and connected hardware at the edge.
On-premises
Enforce entitlements inside customer data centers, with offline-capable activation and renewal.
Desktop
Dongle/USB licenses for the highest-assurance scenarios, fully unified with software and cloud keys.
Dongle / USB
Hardware-rooted licensing for the highest-assurance scenarios, fully unified with software and cloud keys.
INTEGRATIONS
Effortless back-office, ecosystem & AI connectivity
Sentinel licensing tools are designed to slot into your existing back-office and ecosystem workflows. Get pre-built connectors for major platforms including Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle, SAP, Zuora and Salesforce, plus MCP-ready capabilities for AI-enabled operations.
Integration cloud services
Link entitlement management to your back- office environment with intelligent business logic, minimizing integration complexity.
No-code Salesforce integration
Connect EMS to Salesforce and configure entitlement automation rules without writing a single line of code.
APIs, webhooks, & MCP readiness
Scale system-to-system communication with REST APIs, event-driven webhooks, and MCP integration for AI-enabled monetization workflows.
Out-of-the-box portals
Fully functional vendor, partner, and customer self-service portals ready to go on day one.
Out-of-the box license model flexibility
- Perpetual
Sell with no expiration date. - Subscription / Term
Offer access for a fixed term. - Hardware
Assign access to specific users. - Device-Based
Tie access to specific devices. - Shared / Concurrent
Let a set number of users access at the same time. - Account-Based / SSO
Pre-paid, post-paid or pay-as-you-go.
- Usage-Based
Charge based on actual consumption. - Outcome-Based
Tie pricing to results delivered. - Tiers / Editions
Package offers for different needs and price points. - Feature-Based
Control access by feature or capability. - Trials
Offer limited-time or limited-access evaluations. - Offline / Air-Gapped
Support use in disconnected environments.
THREAT-READY LICENSING
Hardened licensing for untrusted environments
The Sentinel solution integrates software licensing with advanced protection through the Sentinel Envelope, so that your product is protected even when your software is deployed in environments you don't control.
License copy protection
Stop licenses from being copied or reused without your permission. Cryptographically bind entitlements to the device, user, or hardware key so licenses can't be cloned or misused.
Piracy protection
Prevent illegal distribution of your product. Sentinel hardens the enforcement layer with anti-tamper, anti-debug, and runtime integrity checks and more so the licensing logic can't be bypassed or removed from your binaries.
IP protection
Encrypt and block reverse engineering of your algorithms, AI models, and proprietary logic so you can sell into new markets and channels without risk.
SUPPORT & SERVICES
Help your business achieve ambitious goals
Most teams choose to deploy Sentinel without extra support. Thales' Professional Services are there for organizations that need more help migrating from a homegrown, competitor, or legacy hardware system — or for those who want a managed program with dedicated specialists. Because you don’t know what you don’t know. But we do.
1200 +
Enterprise engagements
80
Licensing experts
7
Delivery languages
Business value consulting
Identify missed software revenue, define success criteria, and establish a clear case for change.
Solution engineering
Technical validation in your environment. Proof of concept design, integration scoping, and migration planning.
Implementation services
Managed deployment with predictable timelines. Architecture, entitlement setup, and full production readiness.
Premium technical services
Continuous strategic partnership post-go-live with a named Technical Account Manager and regular reviews.
Choose licensing infrastructure that can scale with your software business
As software portfolios grow, licensing needs become more complex. What starts as a simple way to control access can quickly become a strategic requirement for monetization, entitlement management, usage visibility, and protection.
HOMEGROWN
Built for yesterday's requirements
Internal licensing systems address immediate needs. As product complexity scales, maintenance overhead and need for flexibility become a persistent drain.
LIGHTWEIGHT
Fast to start. Quick to outgrow.
Entry-level platforms reduce time to deployment, but limited entitlement management and weak protection become blockers quickly.
THALES SENTINEL
Future-proof architecture
A dynamic monetization platform supporting every product, full usage metering, robust entitlement management, and Thales-grade software and AI model protection.
Recognized by our users
Customers love Sentinel on G2
Join the software vendors who rate Thales Sentinel Software Monetization Platform among their most trusted licensing partners.
What was most helpful for our adoption of Thales Sentinel was the great level and depth of onboarding support by the Thales team. The tool itself gives us an easy to use UI to manage each aspect of creating entitlements integrated into our order system and having the customer activate their licenses."
Related resources
Frequently asked questions
A software licensing platform is a system that controls who can access your software, what they are entitled to use, and how that access is enforced. It does two jobs at once: it protects against revenue erosion caused by software misuse, and it lets you operationalize your monetization strategy without re-engineering the product every time pricing changes.
It gives you an operational hub at the core of your business for shipping any monetization model faster, with easy configuration of new pricing and packaging. Whether you are moving to usage-based pricing or launching use-case-specific product bundles, the platform is what turns a growth strategy into something you can actually sell.
Yes. A licensing platform supports the shift from one-time sales to subscription, term-based, usage-based, and XaaS models. It also puts entitlement and usage data in front of your sales and customer success teams, which is what makes renewals, upsell, and expansion conversations concrete rather than speculative.
A modern platform should cover the full range, not a subset:
- Consumption: usage-based, token, metered
- Capacity: floating, concurrent, device-based, user-based, account-based
- Packaging: feature-based, tiered, trial
- Disconnected: offline, air-gapped
- Traditional: perpetual, on-premises
A good question to ask when buying a software licensing platform is whether one platform handles licensing models, or whether each new model means a new system. This will ensure that the solution you choose today can scale with you as your business grows.
They connect access rights, usage data, and billing logic in one place. For subscriptions, the platform manages term-based access, renewals, and entitlement changes. For usage-based pricing, it tracks consumption, applies usage rules, supports prepaid or postpaid models, detects overuse, and exports usage data into your billing, CRM, revenue, or BI systems.
They enforce licenses inside the product itself, which is what stops cloning, copying, misuse, and bypass attempts. The protection extends beyond the application to the assets inside it — proprietary algorithms and AI models included. Enforcement techniques include device, user, or hardware-key binding, anti-tamper controls, anti-debugging, runtime integrity checks, encryption, and obfuscation.
Integration should not require a rip-and-replace project. Look for APIs, SDKs, webhooks, connectors, developer environments, migration services, and the ability to coexist with homegrown or third-party licensing systems while you transition. The goal is automated fulfillment, provisioning, entitlement updates, usage tracking, and renewals with minimal manual work — the difficulty is driven by the complexity of your existing environment, not by the platform.
Five things: entitlement management depth, license model breadth, IP and code protection, usage metering, and deployment coverage across SaaS, on-premises, hybrid, embedded, offline, and device-based. Then check the integration surface — CRM, CPQ, ERP, billing, support, portals, data warehouses, and BI tools. Finally, evaluate the vendor rather than only the product: migration support, roadmap planning, and experience with complex deployments determine whether the platform still fits in three years.
For SaaS, licensing governs account, user, feature, tier, subscription, and usage access inside a cloud service. The platform meters usage, gates features, manages subscription rights, and supports usage-based or hybrid pricing in a multi-tenant environment.
Cloud-native licensing is API-driven and integrated into the application, identity provider, entitlement system, and billing stack. The platform needs to scale dynamically, support multi-tenant infrastructure, manage real-time entitlements, and connect usage data back to billing, renewals, and product intelligence.
Yes. Offline and air-gapped licensing uses locally validated license files or hardware keys, so entitlements are enforced without a network connection. This matters for defense, industrial, medical, and critical infrastructure customers, where connectivity is restricted by policy rather than by circumstance.
Yes. Platforms built for universal deployment — including Thales Sentinel — let you manage licenses across every product line and customer use case from a single system: cloud, on-premises, desktop, embedded, IoT, hybrid, SaaS, software, and hardware.
They pair cloud-managed entitlements with local enforcement, so you control licenses centrally while still supporting on-premises, desktop, edge, embedded, offline, or intermittently connected environments. The requirement is consistent enforcement across deployment types — one set of rights, not a separate system per product line.
Building is viable when your licensing needs are narrow and stable — one model, one deployment type, no near-term plans to change either. The cost shows up later: every new pricing model, deployment target, and integration becomes engineering work that competes with your roadmap, and anti-tamper protection in particular is a specialist discipline that is expensive to maintain in-house. Most teams that build eventually buy; the question is usually how much was spent first.
Entitlement management is one component of a licensing platform. Entitlements define what a customer has purchased and is permitted to use. The platform is the wider system that creates, delivers, enforces, updates, and reports on those entitlements, and connects them to license generation, activation, usage metering, and your commercial stack.
Timelines depend on how many products you are licensing, how many deployment models you sell into, and how much existing licensing logic needs to be migrated. A single product with a standard model can go live in weeks. A multi-product portfolio with legacy entitlements and an in-house system to retire is a phased program — which is why coexistence with your current system matters more than raw implementation speed.