Trends in the healthcare market are placing unprecedented value on the software that lies at the heart of today’s intelligent medical devices. This puts manufacturers under enormous pressure to innovate not only the types of products they build, but also how they go to market. At LicensingLive! 2015, I spoke at length about the licensing issues facing one of the world’s leading medical technology companies, Stryker Corporation, and how it has risen to the challenge.

Software monetization experts will connect on October 9^th and 10^th for SafeNet’s annual LicensingLive conference, being held this year in Cupertino, CA.  Now in its 8^th year, LicensingLive! has connected software publishers with peers, technology vendors, and industry analysts to discuss the latest software licensing trends, advice, and best practices.  This year’s theme, “The Evolved Software Experience,” focuses on how cloud computing has changed the experience consumers demand from their software, and will help guide how software vendors can provide an improved cloud-comparable experience while maintaining their hybrid portfolios.

SafeNet just announced that their Sentinel LDK software protection solution is now the most secure software licensing implementation available with the launch of AppOnChip functionality.  Part of the Sentinel® Envelope file-wrapper technology, AppOnChip allows software developers to go beyond authorizing application usage.  At run time, blocks of the application execute code are triggered on the token, strengthening the requirement of having a physical key and protecting the software from unauthorized usage.   ISVs can quickly and seamlessly enable this enhanced security feature which is provided at no extra cost during this introductory period.

SafeNet’s Software Monetization CTO, Michael Zunke, highlights ease of use for both the ISV and the legitimate end user as one of the many benefits of AppOnChip.  For the additional benefits of this innovative technology, read the full AppOnChip press release or learn more about AppOnChip from the SafeNet website.

It’s easy to confuse authentication with authorization.  The two are frequently used interchangably in conversation and are often tightly associated as key pieces of web service infrastructure.  But the two are really two different concepts which often are completely divorced from each other.  Authentication is the process where by an individual’s identity is confirmed.  Whereas authorization is the association of that identity with rights and permissions.

The build versus buy licensing dilemma is the oldest debate in the industry.  After all, managing the licensing of your software is an important aspect of any commercial application, but it is not the core product you are selling.

The build vs. buy debate centers around the balance between providing the features and functionality your customers want in your software, with your need to protect access to your software through licensing systems.  Developers approach this strategically and smartly, and prefer to not reinvent the wheel, utilizing libraries, previously written code, and third party services to provide the license scaffolding around the software solution.

As an engineering and product management team tasked with designing license enforcement into your products, you have many decisions around how your products will interact with the licensing code.  Here’s a proven technique that will help you control how licensing gets implemented across your product lines while making the product teams’ lives easier at the same time: build an abstraction layer.

What do you really want from your software licensing solution? Strong, robust protection is great for you and your company. With piracy and reverse-engineering threats lurking around every corner, you need a solution that will strengthen your security. But what else should you be looking for out of a software licensing solution?

Software publishers and machine manufacturers who look to protect and license their software with hardware keys (dongles) spend a significant amount of resources testing and evaluating the functionality of different solutions before making a decision to buy. While critical, technical functionality is not the only aspect of such solutions that matters – physical design is and should be a key factor in the evaluation.

In today’s day and age, we are always just around the corner from the latest technological breakthrough. Just look at the innovation that software licensing has undergone in the past ten years, and you’ll see how far we’ve come.

With all of the talk about hybrid software protection, the cloud… it is so easy to forget about the many benefits of the timeless hardware key. I’d like to take just a moment to pay homage to the ‘classic, iconic’ dongle and how VSM Software Ltd., the leading provider of software to SVP Worldwide (Singer Husqvarna and Pfaff), is using Sentinel HASP HL to address all of their licensing needs.

The ongoing debate around virtualization shows no signs of getting old. Virtualization has always created a ‘conflict of interests’ between those who worry about the technology (the software vendors) and those who enjoy the benefits it offers (the end customers of the aforementioned vendors).

There was a temporary sigh of relief in the world of automated license enforcement when new methods and techniques became available to bind software licenses in a more secure and reliable manner to a virtual machine . Almost overnight, all the concerns and fears of license duplication and misuse (albeit accidental or intentional) went away. The ultimate goal of eliminating the requirements for ISV’s to make a ‘VM/no VM’ decision at the time of deploying or activating their software was finally achieved. End customers could deploy applications where they liked, the vendors no longer had to care, and the world was a happy place.

Or so it seemed….