Tag Archives: software licensing

Apr 24
2012 

How Sage Software Cured Their Acquisition Headache

by Alex Lating

Acquisitions are good, right? Sure they help your company grow, but what other baggage do they bring? Obviously, you will gladly expand your customer base and available resources. But what are you going to do about an inherited homegrown licensing system that is completely incompatible with yours? Read how one company expanded, without the additional headache of managing disparate licensing systems.

Sage is an international business software, services and support company working primarily with small and medium sized businesses. Throughout the years, acquiring other companies has allowed Sage to continue to expand globally. However, these acquisitions also led to multiple homegrown licensing systems that did not work cohesively.

Apr 10
2012 

Putting Customers First: Why ISVs Need Flexible Pricing Models

by Prakash Panjwani

I have spent much of my last seven years promoting software licensing and monetization. Of course, market dynamics have changed over those years and our solutions and thinking has evolved accordingly. More recently, with the launch of Sentinel Cloud in 2011, we have been very focused on encouraging our customers to start aggressively adopting usage-based models – primarily because their customers – end users – want such pricing schemes.

So, you can probably imagine my reaction as the following story unfolded….

Mar 28
2012 

Do software vendors intentionally allow ways to bypass their enforcement mechanism?

by David DiMillo

This is a juicy question was posed on Quora (http://b.qr.ae/HmF392). I was intrigued by a couple of the responses and added my own.  Here is my view…

The answer is yes but mostly no. Confused?

Here’s how it usually works…

First, software vendors separate compliance strategy from piracy prevention because they are inherently different beasts. This can be done by placing their customers along a compliance continuum.  On the left you have customers who go to lengths to be compliant and will gladly pay for software they use regardless of whether the software has license enforcement or not. On the right you have users who intentionally use pirated software and wouldn’t pay for it if they couldn’t steal it. The vendor’s focus is clearly on the left end of the scale since this offers the largest revenue opportunity.  The right is often nothing more than noise.

When vendors introduce license enforcement, the most common philosophy (by far) is to consider the enforcement a tool that will help keep their honest customers doing the right thing and to facilitate creative licensing models. All software license enforcement tools have some level of vulnerability. However, the software market usually considers the higher-end commercial enforcement products more than adequate to cover ~90%+ of their continuum, working from left to right.

That 10% is essentially the topic of the original question posed in this post. The software vendor asks itself if it really cares about investing additional time and resources making the enforcement more air-tight to further prevent piracy by users who would never pay them.

All said, there is always a point of diminishing return and vendors choose to not care a whole lot about usage where they’d never see any revenue.

I agree with the premise that many companies would rather see users stealing their software than paying a competitor. However, applying the notion of the compliance continuum, the real money is typically on the left end of the scale with companies that wouldn’t use pirated software in the first place so the revenue in question is likely a fudge factor at best.

What do you think?

Mar 23
2012 

The Top Five Barriers to Software Monetization Success

by Jennifer Lewis

We recently ran an article on our software monetization channel that discussed the common barriers that prevent ISVs from building an effective monetization strategy.    Are you looking to improve or even define your software monetization plan? Here are five barriers that you should prepare for:

  1. Control
    Control is twofold. Preventing the unauthorized use and distribution of your application protects revenue by ensuring all use of your application is paid for. Equally important is your ability to protect the source code of your application from being exposed to accidental or malicious parties alike in order to prevent code manipulation and reverse engineering. Keeping the product usable and efficient, while providing maximum protection of your valuable IP, can become a big problem for ISV’s if not considered early in the development and software licensing process.
Mar 19
2012 

When someone steals your hardware, you know that it’s missing. When someone is stealing your intellectual property, you may never know.

by Alex Lating

For high-tech equipment manufacturers, times are changing.  It is clear that the inevitable process has begun, hardware is being commoditized and, moving forward, business will be based more and more on software.  Are you ready?

Iritech is a global manufacturer in the biometric authentication equipment and software industry.  As one of only two manufacturers of both the biometric equipment and the identity matching software, Iritech knew right away that preventing reverse-engineering of its identity matching software would be an integral part of its business plan to maintain its unique position in the biometrics market.

Mar 1
2012 

5 Ways that an Entitlement Management System Can Help Your Company Work Smarter, Not Harder

by Alex Lating

As your company continues to grow, you may find that you have acquired a varied collection of licensing systems.  Each product line has its own registration process, and its own set of problems. This may be manageable for awhile, but eventually multiple product lines affect almost every department within your company, and the repercussions are reaching your customers. A disparate licensing system can hinder internal communication and wipe out resources.  Your staff is no longer focusing on your core competencies, but rather spending all of their time on your licensing system.

With an entitlement management system, streamline your back office and create one cohesive licensing system to maintain. Here are the 5 ways that an entitlement management system can help you empower your employees to work smarter, not harder.

Feb 21
2012 

Frost and Sullivan Presents the 2011 Global Product Line Strategy Award in Software License Management to SafeNet

by Alex Lating

Each year, Frost & Sullivan conducts intensive best practices research to determine how best-in-class companies worldwide manage growth, innovation and leadership.  By analyzing each company’s performance and comparing it to its top competitors, they assign performance ratings.  Frost & Sullivan also looks at the key industry challenges that can be addressed by product line strategy.  An effective product line strategy for the software license management industry has to not only accommodate new business models, but also readily support new deployment options, new platforms, and new product architecture.

SafeNet trumped its competitors in five key areas: breadth of product line, size of addressable customer base, impact on customer value, impact on market share, and breadth of applications and markets served.  SafeNet’s Sentinel suite of products, including Sentinel HASP, Sentinel RMS, Sentinel EMS and Sentinel Cloud, provides its customers with a one-stop licensing experience that fully addresses a variety of use cases, platforms, business models and deployment scenarios.

Feb 3
2012 

Sentinel Cloud Takes Center Stage in IDC’s Latest Vendor Spotlight

by Jennifer Lewis

Recognizing the need for ISV’s to effectively monetize SaaS applications, Amy Konary from IDC recently published “Licensing for SaaS Applications: ISV’s Take to the Cloud.”   In this white paper, Amy reviews the evolution of the SaaS market and specifically addresses how licensing has changed the software monetization strategy for ISV’s heading into the cloud.

In addition to providing sound guidance for ISV’s about options with their software monetization models, this report also discusses the software licensing and entitlement management solutions that SafeNet offers, and how the latest SafeNet offering, Sentinel Cloud Services, allows SaaS vendors to embrace new market opportunities and create an extensible growth strategy.

When it comes to software licensing strategy, challenges are at every turn.  In this report, Amy provides solid recommendations and guidance for ISV’s to seize this opportunity to take to the cloud.

Read the white paper: January 2012: IDC’s Licensing for SaaS Applications: ISV’s Take to the Cloud.

Jan 25
2012 

Sentinel Cloud Wins CODiE Award for Best DRM Solution!

by Michelle Nerlinger

 

Last night, the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) announced the winners of the 2012 CODiE awards – an awards program 27 years in the making dedicated to recognizing excellence in the business software, digital content, and education technology industries. I am pleased to announce that SafeNet’s software licensing and entitlement management solution for cloud services, Sentinel Cloud, was awarded the industry’s Best Digital Rights Management Solution CODiE award!

SafeNet's CODiE Award
Prakash Panjwani with SafeNet’s CODiE Award for Best DRM Solution
Oct 5
2011 

Does Your Software Licensing Solution Offer Interoperability?

by Jam Khan

Rarely does an IT system work better in a silo, so a dialogue about the benefits of interoperability seems as redundant as making the case for world peace. Interoperability is a widely used, and often abused, term, but for those that deal with it at a practical level, with poorly integrated systems, it can be somewhat of a holy grail. This is particularly true for electronic license and entitlement management systems.

Electronic licenses and entitlements are unique in that they require coordination between IT, Operations, Product Management and Engineering. They must be integrated into the fabric of a software company’s products, and work seamlessly with order processing and fulfillment systems.