End-Users Drive Software Licensing Innovation

From the early days of network computing, users of high-value software urged their vendors to provide innovative licensing models that matched the way they used their software. They wanted low-cost licenses that were restricted to heavy users, and were willing to a pay higher price per license for the added convenience and utility of floating licenses that could be shared among more infrequent users on the network. Vendors responded by implementing a software license manager that offered a menu of license choices allowing the customer to decide which license model or collection of models best fit their overall usage profile.

Vendors Reap Benefits from Software Licensing

Software vendors benefited from these trends by winning deals in situations where the customer previously would not have purchased. Vendors have been able to collect more revenue than ever because they no longer have to offer discounts for infrequently used licenses.

Instead they can accommodate each user type with a license that grants the appropriate usage rights at the right price. Graphically, you can see the benefit of multiple price points – increasing the area covered under the qty/price curve. That area represents revenue.

End-Users Are Still Pushing the Envelope, But Is Anybody Listening?

Today, users are hungry for more. They are frustrated by excessively high prices from the dominant legacy software licensing vendors who restrict access to software usage data—data that users see as their own—not the application vendor’s data and certainly not the licensing vendor’s data.

Users are often confused by mysterious license policies imposed by their application vendors, the details of which are hidden from them within a catch-all license keyword.

What’s more, users still complain about how difficult it is to maximize license utilization across their enterprise and fine-tune access to various groups or locales. They say that some applications don’t even bother to search all available license servers before they report that all the licenses are in use, leaving some very expensive licenses idle and unused.

End-Users want More Control, Transparency and Freedom

• • Better control over when/where/which users can access software assets
  • Unfettered access to usage data and tools to track and allocate costs
  • Improved license administration tools
  • More predictable and consistent licensing models across vendors
  • Transparent policy spelled out in the license key
  • Auto-maximized license utilization
  • Better control over license queuing
  • Better performance measurement tools to plan for and deploy new licensed applications
  • Simpler Internet-based activation and license installation

When Reprise Software entered the license management business in 2006, we combined our knowledge of managing the FLEXlm business with new information that we gleaned from the end-user base to create a new open and innovative solution to the current licensing problems. The Reprise License Manager™ (RLM) was born.

RLM innovations provide better value for end users while simplifying implementation and deployment for vendors.

RLM addresses current and future needs by modernizing ideas that worked well in the past. It is designed for software vendors of all sizes who are looking to upgrade from their current licensing system (in-house or legacy vendor) as a way to increase end-user value through the use of new innovative licensing models and long overdue license administration functionality.

Please contact us for information more about Reprise Software’s RLM.