A software license server is a centralized computer software system which provides access tokens, or keys, to client computers in order to enable licensed software to run on them.
[1] Since that time, other computing technology firms have adopted the phrase "key server" to be used interchangeably with "software license server.
"[2][3] It is the job of a software license server to determine and control the number of copies of a program permitted to be used based on the license entitlements that an organization owns.
Typically, an end-user customer organization will install a software license server on a host computer to provide licensing services to an enterprise computing environment.
Publisher-specific license servers are more commonly used for industry specialized software products than for common software products due to the high value of the managed software products.