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