According to recent industry research, experts estimate that software pirates and hackers steal $35 billion worth of software each year. Securing and managing source code has become vital, a matter of survival for software producers. Knowledgeable software customers are demanding new and innovative packaging and licensing models to allow them purchase exactly what they want, when they want it, and use it how they want to. For the Independent Software Vendors (ISV's) software management solutions are vital in order to control and manage the demands of their customers as well as protect their software from pirates and hackers.
The three major points involved in software management solutions are: Software Licensing, software protection and software packaging.
Software Licensing
ISV's need flexible licensing solutions that allow for quick creation of new pricing models and product configurations so the ISV's can target new market segments effectively. They also need license-compliance solutions that ensure software security.
Software Security
Even with electronic licensing in place, many software and hardware companies continue to lose product revenues due to piracy and hackers. However, there are licenses that allow companies to recapture this revenue with tamper-resistant and trusted storage technologies—a set of powerful options that guard against unauthorized access or usage.
Software Packaging
Specific licenses for trial versions also exist, enabling software to be immediately placed in the hands of prospective customers. The specialized license protects evaluation copies from hacking and reverse engineering, as it packages the evaluation copy into a code-less file - ensuring that all IP is safe from theft.
Pay-Per-Use restrictions may be set per feature, for example the number of documents to be processed, in order to price certain segments of the application according to ongoing use. Once installed and used, the user may apply for a refill of the feature "cartridge" or alternatively pay periodically based on the actual use of the specific licensed feature.
Pay-Per-Time restrictions enable the ISV to limit the time which the application or a specific feature can be used. Settings can be applied in advance per time quota or per actual usage.
In today's market, ISV's need to apply complete software management solutions goes beyond tailoring software to customer-specific needs. Therefore, today's vendors seek a complete software management solutions that will cover the three major aspects of software security, software licensing and software packaging. As the software business grows more complex, real-time sales figures and usage data needs to flow uniformly, enabling decision makers to rapidly adapt in a dynamic market.
For more information on software management solutions for ISV's visit www.securelm.net
By: Shelly S