API Solution Streamlines APCO's Software Licensing and Distribution

An API Solution for APCO

While APCO has expertise in engineering process controls for large physical facilities and systems, they found their skills in web systems engineering wanting. This gap in skills was apparent when, in partnership with a company that specializes in advanced industrial data analytics, the two companies were in need of solution to recognize network endpoints for particular state variables.

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A Case Study for APCO

Background

APCO helps a variety of large industrial systems to operate efficiently and effectively. From supporting safe water delivery with water treatment centers to ensuring the safe operations of refineries, they work with a wide range of industries and projects.

The Challenge

As part of their service offerings, APCO often partners with software providers to install technical programs for their clients, in this instance, an advanced industrial data analytics software. This software is licensed for a particular span of time, determined by contract. APCO and their partner faced a challenge: how could they disable the software when the contract expired and hadn't been renewed?

The proposed solutions did not have the right functionality to meet their needs:

If they established the licensing expiration within the software at installation, APCO would have to physically return to the site to update the licensing—an impractical solution, considering the quantity of clients and the resources required to regularly return to their site.
An alternative that was briefly considered but ultimately ran into the same issues: APCO could sell versioned software and require purchase for future versions. Still, APCO personnel would have to interface with the software onsite.
If they installed an established device to reactivate the licensing, they would have the inconvenience of re-engaging the codebase; additionally, this introduces the risk of organizations simply editing the code themselves to allow access.

Clearly, the solution would require a different approach.

The Approach

EM introduced a fresh perspective: what if the active or inactive status of a license were managed independently of the software itself? By delegating the oversight to an external server, the onsite software could simply send network requests to verify whether it is authorized to serve the user.

The external server would need to perform two main functions:

Allow CRUD (creation, read, updates, and deletion) of licenses
Respond to network requests with the status of a particular license

APCO needed a means to conveniently and easily edit the list of licenses and save them to the server. Additionally, they didn't want to let all traffic have unlimited access. The server should require authorization in the HTTP request header.

Simplify Management
For easy operations, APCO would need a user-friendly way to edit, manage, and update license records directly to the server.

Filter Traffic
A method to restrict server access was necessary. For security, the server would need to authenticate requests using authorization included in the HTTP request headers.

Serverless Computing
Since the requests would be intermittent, a long-lived runtime wouldn't be necessary. Utilizing serverless computing would be advantageous in this case.

The Solution

For convenience, the AWS ecosystem was selected to employ AWS Lambda for this solution. With the Lambda service, EM was able to execute code in response to a network request and respond efficiently, without the need to maintain a long-running server.

Configuring Convenient Licensing
EM simplified license editing and deployment for APCO by using a CSV file stored in the repository. GitHub's web interface allows users to edit the file directly and commit changes, creating an updated version seamlessly. Once updated, GitHub Actions parse the CSV, convert its contents into an array, and prepend that array to the top of the function. The function is then zipped and deployed via the AWS CLI, ensuring an updated and seamless deployment process.

Secure Access
EM configured a secure API system that requires a bearer token to be included in the request headers for proper authentication. If the token is missing or invalid, the system responds with a 401 error. Thorough testing ensured effective error handling across various scenarios. Thanks to EM's thoughtful design, APCO and their partners can now easily distribute and license their software.

Conclusion

By implementing a secure, efficient system for license management, EM empowered APCO to streamline their software licensing and distribution seamlessly and securely. The combination of a user-friendly, API-driven solution with robust error handling ensures smooth operations for APCO, their partners, and their clients. As a result, APCO can now confidently scale their software offerings with ease and reliability.

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