ENTERPRISE TECHNOLOGY
that software piracy has a considerable or significant impact on their business, 59 % claim that competitors stealing intellectual property has a considerable or significant impact on their business. Slightly more than half also say that licensing violations, made either knowingly or unwittingly by users, and limited flexibility of licensing models negatively impact their revenue.
Amongst independent software vendor organisations surveyed, no more than half are using any single type of software monetisation tool to ensure the security, flexibility and profitability of their offerings.
Survey results, licensing While most software vendors worry about the misuse of their software, from theft and piracy to unintentional licensing violations, almost half of enterprise respondents 48 %, report that their organisation has been out of compliance with at least one of their software licenses.
This same group of respondents estimated that slightly more than a quarter of their software 27 % was unlicensed, half of them 47 %, saying it is because license agreements are inflexible. When asked about how independent software vendors could improve their services, 80 % of user respondents think software vendors could provide more clarity around processes and audits and 72 % think software vendors could improve usage tracking and audits.
Survey results, IoT Gartner estimates that 6.4 billion things will be connected in 2016, up 30 % from 2015. While this growth is not news, software vendors are still struggling to identify the way to monetise the Internet of Things. When Gemalto asked software vendors and enterprise end users about monetising the IoT, 69 % of respondents said they think it could provide their organisation with new monetisation opportunities. However, 69 % think there is a lack of clarity about how organisations can monetise the IoT.
21 % of respondents are already exploring IoT monetisation opportunities. 50 % will
Among top difficulties cited were inflexible license agreements that do not meet business needs, usage audits, slow time to activation, long on-boarding, lost licensing keys
explore opportunities within the next year and 80 % will explore them within three years. The things that are holding companies back from exploring IoT monetisation opportunities include security concerns 48 % and lack of expertise 25 %.
The software market is undergoing a fundamental change. On-premise software, SaaS and intelligent devices are all increasingly being deployed and consumed in cloud-connected environments, changing the customer experience and disrupting industries. As software vendors adapt their offerings to meet evolving needs of the market, several key themes have emerged.
Anywhere, anytime access End customers expect access to software applications from any device at any time, whether deployed on-premise, in the cloud or across hybrid environments.
User centric licensing With end users looking to access software from any device, licensing mechanisms need to evolve to become user-centric. License delivery and enforcement needs to be connected to the individual instead of the device they are using or the company they work for.
Usage tracking The growing demand for pay-per-use is driving independent software vendors to implement tools to track usage to enable usage-based licensing and business analytics.
Common user experience End users expect a single licensing experience, regardless of how or from where they access software. From the user’ s perspective, licensing should be consistent across on-premise, cloud and hybrid environments.
It is clear that software vendors are not living up to user expectations. Survey respondents clearly stated they are out of compliance in part because of inadequate licensing models, and clearly this is having a negative impact on software vendor monetisation initiatives.
The software monetisation solutions of the future need to be able to handle multiple delivery methods and license models with a single back-end enforcement technology. They need to enable granular packaging, incremental revenue mechanisms and capture usage data, all via the cloud, whether or not the software is cloud-based. These solutions will help software vendors deliver user-centric and list based pricing that will deliver better experiences and increase monetisation.
From an execution perspective, the right licensing solution will have the ability to manage, modify and update entitlements in real-time or near real-time via automated services. This is whether the user or the vendor is the one making the updates, minimising engineering involvement. Integration with ERP, CRM and billing systems will be the next level of licensing automation.
Offering flexible license models, tracking and controlling usage and managing entitlements are common challenges for all software vendors whether they provide on-premise software, SaaS, intelligent devices or IoT solutions, and they will need to address these challenges. As it is clear the changes taking place in the industry are just beginning.
16 Issue 03 INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS