SaaS Licensing

For those who follow me, you know I appreciate good marketing campaigns, and SafeNet's "Peace, Love & Licensing" is one of them. Yes, I am a sucker for 1960s nostalgia, but the entire package is well done.

Cloud has accelerated move to strategic global subscription-based pricing.

Safenet white paper highlights the impact of virtualization on the cloud and software entitlements.

In order to get your SaaS licensing strategy right, there are several important elements that you cannot overlook. Entitlement management and user management tools are two essential components of a SaaS licensing strategy. These will help you simplify your billing processes while tracking important data such as customer usage, feature usage trends, regional usage and more. And it is this information that will prove vital when making decisions about your SaaS licensing product packaging and development strategies.

As early adopters of Software as a Service (SaaS) have realized, it is not easy to find the right feature bundling and pricing models. In fact, the number one question SaaS vendors ask once they are in the cloud is: "How do we optimize?"

A properly deployed licensing and entitlement management system will automatically track all product usage right down to the feature level and provide you not only with customizable ways to report on this data, she says, but will easily integrate into other back office systems that require this data to operate including but not limited to billing, ERP (enterprise resource planning), CRM (customer relationship management) and marketing automation systems.

One of the biggest considerations about cloud is the issue of control and visibility - not only for the end user, but also for the vendor offering a cloud-based service.

With worldwide software-as-a-service (SaaS) revenue forecast to reach $14.5 billion this year, there is no doubt that the cloud phenomenon is reaching a critical mass. Just take a look at the latest industry news and it's impossible to miss headlines about the latest SaaS companies that are taking their product public. Investment firms are pouring millions of dollars into this growing segment because of the promise it holds, yet only the strong will survive.

Software licensing is no longer a one-size-fits-all endeavor. Licensing software-as-a-service applications is quite different than traditional software monetization. According to Michelle Nerlinger, director of product marketing for software monetization solutions at SafeNet, a company that has specialized in software monetization for almost 30 years, "The experience for licensing on-premise is very linear, whereas, especially in cloud, it's continuous. It's always on going, you're always optimizing, you're always checking in with the users."

SafeNet is a company that has nearly 30 years of experience in the area of software monetization. In that time, SafeNet has seen the industry morph from one that was focused first on the distribution of physical CDs, then to the enablement of electronic delivery, and now, delivery of software applications as cloud services. Over the years, the company has identified four key factors that companies must consider when putting together a software monetization strategy: packaging, controlling, managing and monitoring. These factors hold true no matter how one chooses to develop and deliver their product portfolio.

SafeNet, a data protection company that specializes in software monetization and SaaS licensing, has released a white paper discussing the importance of customer usage data in relation to software in the cloud. The paper compares the traditional role of customer insight in the software industry to how that role has evolved dramatically over time, especially as more and more software applications move to the cloud.

There is so much talk surrounding moving software to the cloud, it's difficult to assess what should be taken as fundamental advice and what is specific to certain software vendors. While software companies are viewing the cloud as an opportunity to improve the way they deliver their products to their customer base and to improve software monetization by reducing or eliminating the costs associated with on-premise software, many worry that they will be unable to change the buying habits of their customers.

For nearly three decades, SafeNet has been a leader in the software monetization space, enabling independent software vendors to grow and optimize their monetization strategies through the adoption of flexible and innovative software licensing and entitlement management techniques. SafeNet's entire suite of software monetization solutions is built using the company's award-winning Protect Once, Deliver Many, Evolve Often design philosophy.

For independent software vendors, the growing end-user preference for cloud-based services is hard to ignore. This shift in demand has ISVs large and small debating when and how to introduce SaaS-like business models and eventually full-fledged cloud services into their product portfolios. Fortunately for these organizations, many ISVs have already begun testing the cloud waters and have been willing to share their mistakes, triumphs, and lessons learned. SafeNet and Saugatuck Technology teamed up to research these lessons learned and have boiled everything you need to know into six key challenges. Lucky for us all the major challenges are easily solved once you know what to look for!

For the software industry, the shift to the cloud is already in full swing, which means that there is no shortage of software executives and product line managers who have a lot of recent lessons learned and those who have a lot of questions to ask. Recognizing this opportunity, the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) is hosting an event to bring all of these curious and recently experienced executives together in one place to discuss, debate and explore a number of topics related to the cloud.

The cloud is everywhere - and everyone wants a piece. But, to effectively maximize and monetize SaaS-based solutions, independent software vendors (ISVs) need to go beyond rushing existing applications into the cloud. Instead, ISVs need to carefully plan, taking steps to properly architect applications for the cloud. Part of this process is realizing the importance of product versatility, process integration, business model flexibility, and tracking capabilities and then addressing these issues through service architecture and integration of a flexible licensing and entitlement management solution.

The cloud is here to stay. As a result, ISVs must learn to deliver software as a service (SaaS), and deal with the issues of licensing and monetizing SaaS offerings.

(Norwalk, CT - 4/10/2012) InfoTECH Spotlight, the leading website dedicated to information technologies, announced today that it has launched the SaaS Licensing Channel, sponsored by SafeNet, a worldwide leader in delivering innovative, reliable software licensing and entitlement management solutions to software, cloud service, and technology vendors, as the newest addition to its Online Community program.

Software publishers are increasingly making the business decision to go to market using cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) platforms, as opposed to applications that require local installation at the end-user site for product and service delivery and maintenance. What this means is that independent software vendors (ISVs) need to create licensing models that appropriately monetize SaaS applications.

The transition from locally installed software to cloud-based services is in full swing across the software industry. End-users are becoming increasingly attracted to the distributed cost, billing transparency, and flexible pricing benefits promised by cloud business models. Similarly, software publishers see the benefits of cloud-based delivery, including access to new markets, insight into customer behavior, and revenues derived from innovative licensing models. While the realization of these benefits may vary case by case, one thing is certain: the shift to cloud-based software delivery and consumption presents software publishers and their customers with the opportunity to reap many benefits.

In the last thirty years, the software publishing industry has changed dramatically, and the software licensing and monetization industry has changed right along with it. Licensed, on-premise solutions are waning as Software-as-a-Service applications continue to grow in popularity. This creates a crucial challenge for independent software vendors to create licensing models that can properly monetize SaaS applications.