Licensing
Today, most publishers who implement B2B software licensing use paper licenses. End-users manage license compliance using either expensive 3rd-party packages, or manual, error prone processes, or not at all. End-users hate paper licensing because they are convinced they are over-buying, and publishers hate it because they are convinced end-users are over-installing.
Accidental or otherwise, worldwide piracy rates-and therefore lost revenue-exceed 37%
| Solution: Online License CenterTM
e-Licensing + e-Commerce + Outsourcing
The Online License Center solves these problems. Offered as an outsourced e-Business service, it allows a publisher to provide its end-users with:
- Web purchase of license-enabled products
- Web purchase of additional licenses
- Web fulfillment of licenses
- Web-based end-user license management
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Electronic Licensing
The solution is electronic licensing. Every time an end-user runs an e-License-enabled application, the system dynamically enforces the licensing terms.
Electronic licensing allows a wide variety of usage models to match the publisher's marketing strategies and the end-users' needs:
- Per-machine licensing
- Per-user licensing
- Concurrent-use licensing
- Licensing of specific features within the same SKU
- Subscription-based (time limited) licensing
Electronic licensing is an entirely new paradigm. Give away the software, sell the licenses.
By 2004, 75% of the software will be electronically licensed. By 2008, virtually 100% will be electronically licensed (IDC).
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E-Licensing Challenges
Today, operating a licensing program-paper or electronic-is costly and has customer satisfaction problems. A publisher must provide systems for:
- License ordering
- License delivery
- Billing
- Tracking which users have what licenses
- Customer support for licensing issues
- Business rules and infrastructure for license management (redeploying licenses, etc)
- IT infrastructure and support for operating the e-Licensing technology being used, etc.
Most current systems are expensive, cumbersome, and suffer serious customer satisfaction issues.
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