Case Study: Open Industry 4.0 Alliance (OI4) Community achieves secure access to industrial apps with Hilscher and CodeMeter

Open Industry 4.0 Alliance Community launches the Flagship Store in 2023 with Hilscher

The customer, the Open Industry 4.0 Alliance (OI4) community, faced the challenge of democratizing access to industrial apps in a fragmented automation landscape. Their goal was to create a truly open, vendor-agnostic app store to serve as a conduit for apps and services, but they needed to secure intellectual property against piracy and theft without encumbering the user process. The vendor, Hilscher, partnered with the alliance to develop this solution.

Hilscher implemented a solution powered by Wibu-Systems' CodeMeter technology for encryption and smart licensing. This secured the apps within Docker containers against unauthorized use while enabling flexible licensing models. The result was the successful launch of the "Flagship Store for the OI4 Community," which simplifies access to a library of industrial apps for registered users and provides a safe, vibrant ecosystem for vendors to share their IP without fear.