Today, one might argue that the most important driver of growth and survival is innovation. Yet successful innovation— whether measured by the increased number or quality of ideas, or simply in dollars and cents—often feels like an elusive target.
Simple were the days when only perpetual licenses were sold, and each ISV decided on one locking criteria to build their price model around – like CPUs, cores or dongles. Add floating/concurrent licenses, and a volume discount plan, and you had a price list that was pretty straightforward. It was straightforward for customers, sales reps, customer services, configuration management, etc. Those days are long gone it seems; ISVs need to offer an ever-growing variety of software licensing models to keep up with customer demands and competitive pressure. Subscriptions, pre-and post-paid, usage-based licensing, capacity licensing, machine- or user-centric licensing (license follows the user) – the list goes on. Each license model makes a lot of sense for someone, so where should you stop?