A Runtime Activity-Aware Framework for Dynamic Floating License Reclamation in Enterprise CAD Environments Study in Smart Manufacturing

Abstract

Floating licensing has become the predominant software licensing model for enterprise Computer-Aided Design (CAD) applications, enabling organizations to optimize the utilization of expensive engineering software through concurrent license sharing. However, conventional floating license management mechanisms allocate licenses solely based on application execution and are unable to distinguish between actively used and idle application instances. Consequently, engineering users frequently retain valuable licenses while applications remain inactive during meetings, breaks, or prolonged periods of inactivity, leading to reduced license availability, increased user waiting time, and unnecessary software procurement costs. This paper proposes a Runtime Activity-Aware Framework for Dynamic Floating License Reclamation that enhances license utilization through continuous client-side monitoring of application runtime activity. The proposed framework periodically evaluates process activity using accumulated processor execution time over a configurable observation interval to determine whether a CAD application is actively performing computational work. When sustained inactivity is detected, the framework transparently suspends the application process while preserving its execution state. The suspension interrupts the application's communication with the floating license server, enabling automatic license reclamation without modifying either the CAD application or the license management infrastructure. When the user resumes work, the suspended application is restored seamlessly and automatically reacquires an available license, allowing uninterrupted continuation of the engineering session. The proposed framework is implemented as a lightweight client-side monitoring agent and validated through deployment in a real industrial engineering environment using a commercially deployed floating-license CAD platform. The framework was evaluated using longitudinal operational data collected from a production enterprise deployment, including engineering workload records and concurrent floating-license utilization data. The results indicate that runtime activity-aware license reclamation can improve enterprise software license utilization while preserving engineering workflow continuity through transparent application suspension and recovery with minimal computational overhead. The proposed framework provides a practical and vendor-independent approach for optimizing floating-license utilization in engineering organizations without requiring modifications to existing CAD applications or enterprise license servers. The study contributes a reusable methodology for intelligent software resource management that can be extended to a wide range of floating-license engineering applications.