“Software Monetization” – What does it mean to your business?

Industrial companies are increasingly using software as the driver of their future growth. Sustainable growth is fed by profits. But to grow profitably, you need to ensure that your software infrastructure has the proper licensing controls built-in, so that you can get paid for the fair use of your products.  This is what we mean by “software monetization”… turning your products, whether software or software-driven devices, into dynamic, profitable businesses.

Protect and Defend

The first step is IP protection. Adopt a technology that gives you a satisfactory degree of security to prevent unlicensed use, and to deter imitators (grey-markets) who would use your IP to compete against you. We all know that no software is totally hack-proof, but you have to make malicious attacks against your products non-trivial.

Control through SOFTWARE MONETIZATION

Once you have protection built-in, you can ensure that your customers fairly pay you for their use.  The best way to accomplish this is through tamper-proof licenses that specify the terms of use in the license. Licenses can define expiration dates, rights to future updates, where and how much of your software can be used, and license sharing attributes, among others.

SeamlessNESS

Consider how your customers will obtain licenses or activate your software. Fully leverage near ubiquitous connectivity to simplify installation and authentication, whether it is through in-product activation or by supporting floating licenses by deploying license servers in the Cloud. Your choices should reflect how your customers use your products, as well as their own preferences. For example, some customers will insist on staying off the public Internet, so make sure you have a strategy for these cases.

Shake the Trees

Increasing profitability comes from both your current base, as well as new markets. Monetization means extracting revenue from existing bases by giving them choices of new feature bundles, and by scaling price to the value that they receive. New pricing models, such as monthly/annual subscriptions, token-based licenses, and usage metering may cast a wider net into your existing markets. Perhaps a super-low price point, or even a free version is a way to broaden your base. Conversely, there may be valuable features that you currently bundle that could be offered as an up-sell opportunity. Monetization also means delivering totally new products/features using the same licensing technology to derive new sources of revenue.

Product Lifecycle

Your customers are always on the move, and that means your licenses have to move with them. With software licensing, you have mechanisms for customers to self-serve. After your customers easily convert a trial versions into paid versions, they can later move licenses to a new machine, or add new modules, or upgrade to a new release. In all cases, access is in their hands, but you are always in control.

Software licensing also helps manufacturers simplify supply chains by reducing the number of unique physical devices needed to address multiple market segments while extending the useful lifetimes of these devices.

Business Intelligence

What if you could know which parts of your products were used the most, how often? With software licensing, you can gather and monitor actionable product usage data, not just to calculate an invoice, but also to gain marketing insight into how your product is used, and where to allocate precious development resources.

Software licensing services easily tie into CRM and E-Commerce/payment platforms for speedy quote-to-cash.  This means timely revenue recognition and an improved customer experience.

Build on the Shoulders of Giants

In-house development of software monetization tools offers little competitive advantage. Worse, it can derail engineers from development of new features where true product differentiation and competitive advantage lives.

Fortunately, today’s software developers welcome the paradigm shift toward designs built on a combination of licensed code and in-house application software. By acquiring a 3rd-party software monetization solution rather than building it, development organizations enable themselves to focus their efforts on delivering more innovative products more quickly within shrinking market windows.

This article discusses the Top 3 Software Licensing Models – subscription license, perpetual license and consumptive license.

Software customers and publishers negotiate pricing based on both the perceived value of the application and how the application will be used.  The software licensing model defines how the product will be used.  Let’s define the top 3 software licensing models.

Perpetual license – a non-expiring license to use an application. The customer has no obligation to pay for support or update services.

Advantages: Simple to deploy and manage. Customers may be able to expense the purchase as capital.

Potential downside: Difficult to securely handle machine upgrades and software redeployment. Publisher is locked into the old license policy for years.  Customers may end up using very old software versions to save money if they elect to forego maintenance.  This in turn could lead to poor publisher reputation when software becomes outdated. For the customer, perpetual licenses require larger initial outlay.  For the publisher, perpetual licenses require a steady stream of new license sales to maintain revenues. Pressure to discount is high.

Subscription license – a renewable license, usually annual, including software support and updates during the coverage period. The license is automatically terminated unless it is renewed.

Advantages: Encourages steady, predictable revenue flow to publisher. Lower initial cost for the user, faster approval cycle. Allows for short-term rentals. License policy can be changed at renewal time. Limits license exposure to overuse when machines are decommissioned or upgraded. Customers are able to annually expense the budgeted license renewal fees. Less price discounting pressure. Encourages on-going client-vendor relationship.

Potential downside: Increased license management overhead. Requires accurate record keeping to manage license life cycle.

Consumptive license – This license has a periodic fee based on usage. Payment can be before or after use. Example cases: overdrafts, utility-pricing based on time or work done, etc.

Advantages: Maximum license and pricing flexibility. Price most closely related to value. Encourages steady revenue flow to publisher. Lowest initial cost for the customer. The customer is never denied a license.  License policy can be changed at any time. Customers may be able to expense the license fees as they occur, perhaps monthly. Least price discounting pressure. Encourages on-going client-vendor relationship.

Potential downside: Requires most license management overhead. Reliable license usage reports must be created periodically, and mid-cycle to check against budget. Licensing must be integrated into CRM or accounts receivable systems. Customers may have issues with privacy.

This Article Describes Cloud-Based License Management and in particular several problems solved by this approach.

Traditional floating licensing requires a license server installation on the end customer’s network. Although this deployment strategy is still the most common, you can improve the situation by moving the license servers into the cloud. Let’s look at the issues where Cloud-Based License Management can be of some considerable help.

The crux of the matter is that when you deliver licenses to your customer, you lose control. When you manage your customer’s licenses in the cloud, then you retain control. It’s that simple.

Some of the advantages of delivering licenses in the cloud are…

Customer Preference – Some customers don’t want to set up a license server. They feel this is the vendor’s responsibility. Most small customers don’t have in-house IT support. Licensing in the cloud eliminates the need to install and maintain the license server locally.

Reduce Support Time – Installing a license server can sometimes cause problems. Licensing in the cloud eliminates this task altogether.

Instant Revenue – The publisher can recognize revenue immediately. No more waiting around for the customer to track down the hostid of the server.

Use Anywhere – Your customer can run your software anywhere: on virtual machines, in classrooms, labs, at off-site training, and at trade shows, etc.

License Rehosting – Traditional floating licensing makes it difficult to securely rehost a customer’s license server when it fails or when it is decommissioned.  This is not an issue with licensing in the cloud.

Suspend/Reinstate Licenses – Traditional floating licensing also made it difficult to terminate or suspend licenses. With the license server in the cloud, you can easily deal with non-payment or lapsed subscriptions.

Modify license inventories – With cloud-based license management, it is easy to change license counts up or down, and handle version upgrades.

Usage-based licensing – Pricing software based on usage relies on accurate records. In traditional license server deployments, license usage data is collected at the customer site, making it difficult to collect. With cloud-based license management, the report log containing the usage data is on the cloud, not at your customer’s facility.

Always up-to-date – Your cloud-licensed customers take advantage of upgrades to the server software immediately when released. Backward compatibility of the client-side ensures this.

Failover Servers – Maximize license server up-time with automatic failover server setup, at multiple datacenters.

Post Use Billing – an alternative to Subscription or Permanent License Grants

There are situations where it is impossible to anticipate the level of usage of a software package before it is actually used.  In cases like this, a fixed number of permanent licenses or subscriptions may not satisfy your customer’s needs.  Many ISVs and their customers prefer a licensing option which allows the software to be used in excess of some predetermined limit, and then invoiced after-the-fact for the actual usage which exceeds this limit. This type of license model has been referred to as Pay-Per-Use, or Metered or Post Use Billing.

Of course, your life is full of real-world examples of post use billing: your water bill, your electric bill, etc.  Why not adopt this common model to software as well?

RLM supports most flavors of this license model with a combination of metered licenses and an authenticated usage report log.

RLM supports metered, or pay-per-use licenses, with the METER keyword in the license line. When you create a METERed license, the license server maintains a number of meters each with an individual count. When your application runs, the license server decrements the meter after each successful license checkout, and (optionally) periodically while the application continues running.  To utilize this effectively, the license server needs to be under your control, ie. not installed on your customer’s network.  RLMCloud is perfect for this, since you control the servers and hence the meters.

Alternately, you can issue more floating licenses than your customer has purchased, then use the report log to determine usage in excess of the purchased licenses.  At the end of the month, for example, you would invoice your customer for the excess usage.   This is possible because RLM’s usage report logs are authenticated  so that you can verify that they haven’t been modified.  Even better, if the license servers are under your control in RLMCloud, you have continuous access to the report logs.

By using a Post Use Billing license model in addition to your normal permanent or subscription licenses, you can help your customers utilize your software more effectively as well as increase your revenues.