Support For Client-Server Based License Management Schemes In The Grid

License Management is currently not supported in any Grid middleware. Since most small and medium enterprises (SME) use commercial applications with associated licensing issues, this lack of support is becoming a major obstacle for the commercial exploitation of these middleware and the corresponding Grid infrastructure. In order to resolve this obstacle, we have designed and implemented a complete grid-friendly License Management architecture, which supports the currently used client-server license schemes. In this paper we discuss the process of eliciting license management related requirements, the subsequently derived common components and their corresponding design patterns as well as details of implementation patterns.