This relationship will allow Thinkbox to give customers pay-per-use access to Thinkbox products including Deadline, Krakatoa and Sequoia as well as select third-party applications via the Thinkbox’s e-commerce portal, with minutes consumed only while the Slave application is rendering. The collaboration also reinforces the value which Licensing-as-a-Service (LaaS) affords independent software vendors doing business with Microsoft Azure.

Thinkbox’s Deadline is the foundation on which an organisation’s hardware and software tools work together. Compatible across Windows, Linux and Mac OSX render farms, the latest version of Deadline adds usage-based licensing on top of its perpetual license model for cloud-based and on-premise resources – resulting in dramatically new and more flexible ways to work, enabling more simulations and faster iteration. By working with Flexera Software and Microsoft, Deadline render farms can be built entirely or expanded in Azure, permitting Thinkbox customers to add extra machines when demand increases — lowering overhead and saving money.

Today, many enterprises require flexible, hosted offerings but are concerned that deploying their applications to the Cloud will violate their software agreements or result in software audit true-up penalties due to unanticipated overuse. The Azure and FlexNet Licensing-as-a-Service collaboration enables Thinkbox customers to deploy their applications to Azure and be assured they will remain in compliance with software agreements, while at the same time giving them flexibility and scalability in how they monetise and protect their applications.

Microsoft Azure Marketplace is an online applications and services marketplace that allows application producers to offer their solutions to Azure customers around the world. Through collaboration with Microsoft, Flexera Software’s Software Monetisation solution, including FlexNet Licensing and FlexNet Operations, empowers application producers with a swift on-ramp to Azure to maximise revenue with Cloud-centric licensing models and seamless bursting.

Flexera Software’s presence in Azure Marketplace makes it easy for application producers or in-house application developers to rapidly and cost-effectively transition their software solutions to Azure, while ensuring their intellectual property is being protected. Moreover, application producers can use Flexera Software’s usage management capabilities to gain insights into how their products are being used and optimise subscription-based revenue-generation.