Category Archives

69 Posts for Licensing in the Cloud

May 30
2013 

Executives to Product Managers: “Show me the Money!”

by Todd Steel

I can tell you with first-hand experience that being a product manager is a tricky and thankless role!  On paper, your task is to understand customer needs and translate them into product requirements. You must then work closely with your R&D team to realize those requirements into a product that hits the market at the right time and at the right price.

Sounds simple, right? The reality is that its way more complex than that, with a myriad of decisions and trade-offs to make along the way.  Product managers have to  react to the realities of what is possible in the time and budget available, and constantly adapt to changing market conditions and competitive moves.

May 16
2013 

Adobe’s Move to the Cloud and the Lack of Choice

by Oren Bear

Recently, Adobe announced that it is moving the Creative Suite (which includes Photoshop and other graphic design applications) to Cloud-based licensing. The company will no longer distribute boxed versions with perpetual licenses. This move demonstrates a growing transition to Cloud-based subscription licensing, which SafeNet pioneered in 2010 with the introduction of the first Cloud-based software licensing service – Sentinel Cloud.

Adobe is positioning this announcement as very beneficial to its users, providing the customer with immediate access to the latest features and upgrades, enhanced collaboration, cloud based storage, and more.

Mar 11
2013 

Software Piracy: Why Duct Tape is Not the Solution

by Jennifer Lewis

In a recent study by the Business Software Alliance, the UK is the latest to throw a spotlight on the problem of software piracy. According to the study, 52% of small businesses in the UK have either bought or downloaded illegal software. In fact, the BSA now estimates that over half of all software in use by small and medium businesses in the UK is illegal.

That’s a shocking statistic – one driven according to the BSA by a combination of the current economic climate and a degree of ignorance towards how counterfeit goods propagate in the market. And we know from other studies, most notably the BSA’s 2011 Piracy report, that the situation in many other countries is significantly worse.

As pirates continue to attack, we are forced to spend cycle times of effort patching and plugging our code to defend against those that might steal it. With every cycle that passes, software pirates become more sophisticated, their vectors of attack harder to spot and defend against, with the skills required to do so ever more specialized and scarce.  Are you prepared, or are you fixing your software piracy problems with duct tape?

Feb 27
2013 

Software Protection: The Rules Have Changed

by David DiMillo

The software protection business has matured at a slow pace over the past decade. The industry has gotten better at developing improved customer experiences through more sophisticated web portals and web services, but ultimately the model’s foundation relies on license file transfer between the vendor and the end customer.

The improvements in the area of cleaner customer experiences through web services has allowed some vendors to minimize a fair amount of the friction this style of license enforcement has introduced into the traditional delivery and deployment model.

Feb 4
2013 

Software Vendors in an Online World – Get Ahead with Customer Insight

by Ansgar Dodt

What makes the most successful Internet companies so successful?  They understand that the Internet is much more than a delivery channel – it is a customer feedback channel.  So they get smarter every day, and improve constantly.  Software companies have yet to capture this opportunity – today the Internet is reduced to the conduit for ESD (Electronic Software Distribution), or the live application (Cloud).

Oct 29
2012 

Mobility Matters: Are B2B Software Developers Ready?

by Jake Fox

Over the last several weeks, I have been doing a fair bit of traveling. I found myself in the unfortunate situation of not having the use of my laptop for a few days while traveling internationally. Fortunately, I was traveling with a few key gadgets: my iPad, a cool iPad keyboard from Zagg, and my cell phone. I had almost everything I needed to get my job done and was able to get by well enough for the remainder of my trip. Although I am an avid iPad user both for business and personal use, this experience reaffirmed just how close we are in many ways to really being able to decouple ourselves from the traditional PC for many of the office- based work functions that most of us manage on a daily basis.

Oct 24
2012 

Authorization vs. Authentication – What’s the Difference?

by Andy Mayhew

It’s easy to confuse authentication with authorization.  The two are frequently used interchangably in conversation and are often tightly associated as key pieces of web service infrastructure.  But the two are really two different concepts which often are completely divorced from each other.  Authentication is the process where by an individual’s identity is confirmed.  Whereas authorization is the association of that identity with rights and permissions.

Sep 24
2012 

From Generation to Generation, The Dilemma of Build vs. Buy Endures

by Andy Mayhew

The build versus buy licensing dilemma is the oldest debate in the industry.  After all, managing the licensing of your software is an important aspect of any commercial application, but it is not the core product you are selling.

The build vs. buy debate centers around the balance between providing the features and functionality your customers want in your software, with your need to protect access to your software through licensing systems.  Developers approach this strategically and smartly, and prefer to not reinvent the wheel, utilizing libraries, previously written code, and third party services to provide the license scaffolding around the software solution.

Sep 20
2012 

Software Monetization and the Rise of Subscription-Based Pricing Models

by Jennifer Lewis

As software vendors move to software as a service, how are they handling the challenge of adapting their pricing strategies?  Recently, IDC’s Amy Konary sat down with TMC’s Erin Harrison, Executive Editor, Cloud Computing, to talk about the evolving pricing model in the software monetization market.

According to Konary, software monetization in the cloud naturally lends itself usage-based subscription models and increased transparency for tracking.  Automated tracking of entitlements and license usage down to the feature level has become expected, and cloud application developers need to carefully consider how they plan to integrate tracking and reporting into their solutions.

Sep 6
2012 

Flower Power or Growing Pains? Growing Your SaaS Business Model

by Itay Segev

When technical entrepreneurs build their companies, they don’t really know how to make money from their invention, and they invest more time on building their product without thinking of optimizing revenues. In the last couple of years, I’ve been engaged with some startup companies that have a great and existing product but no clear business model of how to actually monetize their software.

Cloud applications and services are not a trend anymore, and most of the new startup companies build their product in the cloud in order to minimize time to market and expand distribution. But, without a real business model, even the most helpful product on the market can have problems when it comes to software monetization.