Managing In-License Brands

In-licensed technology may have any number of branding requirements. The marketect and tarchitect should work together to ensure that brand elements of in-licensed components or technologies are properly handled.

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In one project I worked on we wanted to operate a key in-licensed technology as a service under Windows' NT. This would allow us to automatically restart the service if it failed. Unfortunately, the licensor required us to display a splash screen for at least 10 seconds, with an OK button, to ensure that a human operator would see the licensor's brand. The service wouldn't start until the button was clicked. The licensor was unwilling to negotiate this requirement, and we needed to make certain that the component could be started and managed as a service. We solved the problem by writing a manager program that would start the service and sleep for 11 seconds. If the splash screen was still displayed it would simulate clicking on OK.