Altair Offers Hosted, Temporary Licenses in Response to COVID-19

Software provider Altair will offer customers hosted software licenses and temporary software licenses to help end users that have shifted to work-from-home scenarios as a result of the Coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic. As the spread of the disease has accelerated, more state governments in the U.S. have asked that all non-essential businesses close their offices to help prevent additional infections.

In a blog post, Altair founder, chairman and CEO James Scapa announced that to address issues related to remote working such as maxing out corporate VPNs, cost, security issues and productivity loss, customers could now move existing licenses from on-premise servers to hosted servers utilizing Altair Hosted HyperWorks Units (HHWUs). According to the company, HHWUs are an existing Altair solution that can:

• Enable employees to work from anywhere without overloading corporate VPN servers or drilling a hole into the firewall for license access.
• Secure data with prevailing security policies on the device of choice as the software is only requesting a license on a secure network channel.
• Reduce IT overhead of maintaining on-premises license servers (reduced cost of hardware) and supporting them.
• Improve ease of access and execution of Altair software from anywhere/everywhere and on public cloud infrastructure.

In addition, Altair can provide temporary software licenses for clients working from home without access to their enterprise Altair software solutions with no additional fees or charges. Cusotmers that want to move their HyperWorks Units from on-premises to Altair hosted servers or require temporary software licenses should contact their account representative.

 "As we respond to this new reality, we will remain focused on driving our business forward and supporting our customers and partners," Scapa wrote. "We will do everything in our power to keep our employees, customers, and partners safe and productive. We are committed to maintaining our service and support at a very high level during this uncertain time, and we are available to help you in any way we can."