Licensing in the Cloud

One of the various definitions of sell according to Merriam-Webster is “to develop a belief in the truth, value, or desirability of”. There can be numerous reasons for the success …
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Every business will be a software business. That’s what Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella famously said in 2015, but he wasn’t the first. In fact it’s an idea and phrase that has now become so pervasive among the “technorati” that actually digging into it and fully understanding its meaning for the average business may sometimes become overlooked.

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Innovation in farming technology can tell you a lot about how the IoT affects business models in the 21^st century. Whether you’re a device manufacturer or software developer, it is important to evaluate the type of offering you bring to market in light of emerging markets and trends. In this article, we present five lessons every IoT player can learn from technological advancements in agriculture.

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In 1997, a pair of management consultants – Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema – published a book entitled The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose Your Customers, Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your Market, which suggested that companies could only become dominant players in their industry by achieving a proficiency in one of the following areas:

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The WSJ recently ran an interesting article on the key challenges of moving to the cloud.

“When on-demand enterprise applications emerged about a decade ago, they were touted as a cheap and more flexible alternative to buying software outright – a move that comes with upfront infrastructure and licensing costs, on top of ongoing fees for maintenance, support, and upgrades. But in practice, these promises have been hard to fulfill”.

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It’s been said before, but the software landscape really is changing. According to IDC and other leading analysts, over the last couple of years, a sizeable proportion of app spend went on SaaS applications. It’s also worth noting that more than 30% was spent on replacing traditional on-premise applications with SaaS offerings, year on year.

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At this year’s LicensingLive! event in Cupertino, CA, I spoke about the importance of Customer Success Programs, what they involve, and what businesses hope to achieve with them. The success of a software company is often measured in terms of how well it engages its customers. After all, a business without an active user base is like a bird without wings – it simply won’t fly. Read More

ISVs have long relied on product keys (otherwise known as software license keys) to ensure that their software is only being used by those entitled to do so. Oftentimes, these product keys are also used to control use of specific features, based on the agreement the end user has with the ISV. Despite the value these product keys hold, they pose a number of challenges for both ISVs and end users.

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One of the highlights of the software industry calendar, Cloud World Forum, took place on June 24-25, 2015 at London’s Olympia Grand. The two day expo was aimed at helping C-level decision makers achieve business agility through cloud, analytics, mobility, and social technologies. With 300 speakers from across the IT community, there was something for enterprises of all sizes; SMEs and startups alike. Of course, we were front and center with our presentation, “Transforming Your Business in the Digital Economy”, which sparked some interesting conversations over at our booth.

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Maximizing the potential of any software product is a function of two aspects; maximizing sales and minimizing the waste investment (optimizing cost). Software publishers of cloud delivered applications don’t have to deal with the challenges of physical delivery of the product, yet their ability to reach all the market segments could be limited. Software publishers can realize greater potential from their offerings by optimizing the mix of their packages, pricing and investment in the right features.

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