The “Myth of the Plug-in Solution” By: Victor Hoisington, PMP, ITIL Today, almost every software vendor, and most intelligent device manufacturers (with embedded software) have multiple software license management systems acquired via acquisition, mergers, and divestitures. The problems that result are disconnected systems, manual processes, and the inability to create solutions from products that span the technology of the constituent companies. When this happens, IT is directed to fix these problems of inefficiency in a way to ensure no loss of continuity in the business (we need the revenue), so they try to merge existing systems in a patchwork way, retrofitting, and manually manipulating the systems so that they can deliver to their customers and keep the revenue recognition engine flowing. This works for awhile, but eventually these retrofitted systems simply don't work together and in fact, the situation may become worse. What happens next is that IT starts looking for a “plug-in” technology to fix their problems and make it all better, but – just like the common cold, there is no magic pill to make it better. I call this the “Myth of the Plug-in Solution”. The “myth of the plug-in solution” ignores some pesky systemic problems that probably existed before and that become worse after multiple years of poor definition of the business requirements and business intent behind software licensing and entitlement management . Or, the requirements have changed due to market conditions (e.g. new license models, cloud computing, virtualization, simpler customer experience, etc). As IT focuses on the systems and their connections, they sometimes lose track of the business drivers, and more importantly, the fact that a true solution will require a combination of process, policy, and technology. What's required is an examination of the underlying business requirements and supporting business processes with the involvement of stakeholders from across the entire business. What Flexera Software does when working with customers to solve these problems is to use a defined, top-down framework that starts by examining the business and market requirements then proceeds to understand and share “best practices” on commercial realization models (e.g. product structure and license models), the compliance and enforcement strategy, and finally the “prospect to support” use cases that define the customers' relationship with you. This business first definition of the requirements leads to the systems (of record) and interconnection strategies needed at the IT level and now we can begin to define the technology which most closely meets the needs of the business. Failure to lead with a business first philosophy will lead to propagation of bad solutions. Using a business first based framework to define a business solution and truly understand your business requirements, policies and customer use-cases will drive the correct combination of policies, procedures and finally technology to create the synergy needed to meet your needs and your customers' expectations. Want to know more about our framework and business first process, let us know and we'd be glad to help.
Posts Tagged ‘compliance’
If You Have a License Technology Problem, Start by Understanding Your Business Needs
Posted in Software Piracy 
Tags: Business, business-first, compliance, constituent, entitlement management, involvement, license models, like-the-common, meets-the-needs, plug, Requirements, revenue, Systems, the-business 
Comments OffThink Monetization Before Enforcement with Subscription Software Licensing Models
By: Cris Wendt If you are a software vendor, a subscription software license model can be an excellent addition to your product pricing portfolio. The subscription software licensing model can offer a lower cost of entry for your customer, making it a more cash-flow friendly if they need to closely manage cash flow. The subscription license model is often accounted as an operational expense rather than a capital budget item for the buyer, which may also be appealing to your customers who prefer this method of purchasing software (this is popular with engineering software where software license procurement is viewed as a project expense). And for the vendor, the subscription software license model offers the promise of a more predictable annuity revenue stream. This is quite appealing to a CFO who can plan and budget more accurately with known revenue streams. Of course, the subscription software license model isn't always a fit for all software in all markets. However, there are cases where we find that a subscription software license model is a perfect fit for the business, yet the software vendor is reluctant to adopt it. The argument I often hear can be paraphrased as, “Yes, it's the perfect model, but we can't have our software stop running because a license key expired. Our customer's business can't go down.” This is a case of backward thinking – there is an inaccurate technology view of the subscription software license model that affects its adoption. If the subscription software license model is the right monetization and customer-friendly model then it can and should be adopted. Next is the enforcement decision, which can be applied somewhat separately from the software monetization decision. It too, is a business decision, and not a technology decision. If your software is mission critical to your customer's business, and if you trust your customer, then your compliance philosophy should be never to stop the customer from running, but to monetize this over-usage when possible. An enforcement mechanism, such as a license manager, does not actually stop software from running. The license manager simply informs the software that the license has expired, and it is up to the business policy coded into the application that decides on what to do. There is an entire range of possibilities from simply messaging a customer that the software license has expired, all the way to the hard stop of an application. In fact, the business policy coded into the product can be designed to vary by a number of factors (mission criticality of product, product lifecycle, geographic region of sale, size of customer, etc.). If your customer is running your software in a mission critical environment, then simply give them a message that their license has expired. And, be sure that the associated entitlement management systems are providing the business information that a license is about to expire so that a sales conversation can be arranged. Subscription software license models are a great way to grow market share and increase customer satisfaction. If it makes sense, adopt the software license model, and tune the enforcement mechanism to align with your compliance philosophy.
Posted in Software Piracy Tags: Business, compliance, customer, Enforcement, License, license-manager, Product, software compliance, software licensing, software-license, the-enforcement, vendor, your-customer Comments OffAnother Perspective: Software Licensing Compliance and the ISO 19770-2 Standard
In response to our recent blog post: Software Licensing Compliance and the ISO 19770-2 Standard: Medicine or Vitamin?
Posted in Software Piracy Tags: compliance, contest, Licensing, Management, medicine, Process, review, Rights, software compliance, software licensing, software-asset, steve-klos, swid, technology Comments OffSoftware License Compliance: Manage Software For Multiple PC’s
Since the majority of companies make use of computer networks to save capital on equipment and programs, it seems sensible that there are a few problems that may well come about. One of those difficulties is actually programs, simply because a number of them are generally not supposed to be over multiple pcs. Various other problems also include software applications which might possibly be detrimental to the particular network and employ way too many resources.
The most effective solution designed for such difficulties is in fact software license management. Such a computer software could make it effortless to set up and therefore remove programs collected from various locations, and it will in addition provide additional info on top of conceivable obstacles. It can be in a nutshell a control centre that may help it become simple to display all the pc systems at the same time.
There are lots of difficulties involved with operating a computer network within a firm. Programs can get installed on the incorrect pcs, and furthermore unauthorized software programs may additionally wind up being installed. Also, it really is tough to keep track of everything that is going on included in the network, except if you are using some sort of software license management.
The fact that it is actually generally recommended for firms to make use of software license management could be because of insights on how simple and easy it can certainly make supervising most of the network. As a result of software inventory to software metering and additionally distribution, to asset management and reporting, you will have complete influence over what’s being placed on the computer systems and also precisely what need to be eliminated. In addition there are options for aggregate software title reports. The simple solution is to utilise software license management. This particular software permits you to keep track of many of the programs using one computer just as if these were all one.
Since you’re able to monitor all of the computers within one specific location, you can quickly and conveniently install programs, and you can in addition remove them as well. Since computer software will give you the entire listing of every different program and that is present, you’ll not really have to investigate every different pc singularly. It truly makes managing the entire network much simpler.
Should you be looking to get the best strategy to manage all the programs and computer software on numerous computer systems in a network, you ought to look at software license management. This tends to make handling the software of all the computer systems easy since it really helps to do it right from one specific location. You is going to manage to discern in cases where right now there are unauthorized applications that may require to be removed.
Software license management is really required if perhaps you are experiencing a complication having programs that should definitely not end up being installed on computers, otherwise in case you need to have to deploy applications on a number of computers terribly rapidly. Using the advanced software metering in which this unique software includes, you can possess entire control.
Massive Software piracy issue in the workplace, and I’m stuck choosing between compliance or termination!?
Over the course of the last 5 years I have worked for a small shipping/packing supplies company as an IT Technician. I have been asked numerous times to install software that my boss is (intentionally and knowingly) either obtaining from illegal sources (in which case he gets a huge discount and can install it on as many computers as he wants) or overusing his license agreements with his software. After surveying the plant, I found over 30 instances of Microsoft Office, 8 of Filemaker, 15 of WASP Labelor and Barcode software, 2 instances of Adobe Illustrator, and at least 30 of Symantec AntiVirus that were either pirated outright, obtained from illegal sources, or installed numerous times on a 1 user license agreement. I have complied and installed these programs (knowingly) because I needed to keep my job, but now I’m looking at the mess we made and wondering what would happen to this place if my boss were to get caught.
If I was the one to turn him in, would that exemplify me from my part in this or would I still be held accountable?
Posted in Software Piracy Tags: between, Choosing, compliance, issue, Massive, Piracy, Software, stuck, termination, workplace 4 Comments »The Ten Step Process: Step 2 – Use Software Licensing Methodology to Enable Product Agility in the Marketplace – Converting Your High-Tech Company…
By: Cris Wendt While there are cases where the up-sell of additional hardware capacities (more channels or throughput), or additional capabilities (more hardware functions) can be facilitated by unlocking these capacities and capabilities with license keys, it's important to understand some of the key ways software is different from hardware. These fundamental differences will enable you to think about ways of bringing new products to market. While a full discussion of these differences and issues is well beyond the space afforded in this blog, the following software licensing considerations should help you understand how the software product marketer thinks and how you, as a high-tech manufacturer, need to start thinking: Think “Right-to-Use” – Customers don't own anything when they buy software. Customers buy a right-to-use the software, based upon the terms and conditions of the software license terms or the software license agreement. Unlike buying physical goods where customers can do pretty much whatever they want with the goods, software usage is limited to terms specified in the license agreement. When thinking about creating software products, an innovative way to think of the software is, software as a service (SaaS) – a service that is performed on an ongoing basis as it is being used or consumed. So in this sense, you may ask yourself how would you price the software if it were a service – what is the service my customers want, what are the metrics of usage that I can price, and how much would I charge? Clearly Define the Terms AND Limits Of Usage Rights – These terms and limits become an important foundation in the pricing and associated revenue models so it's important to be clear about usage terms and limits when creating products and packaging. Extending the terms of a license may be offered commercially, enabling you to generate more up-sell revenue. For example, you may allow a particular software product to be used only on one physical machine. This means you price the software and define the usage limits for a software usage profile based upon usage for a single machine. If you find that customers occasionally want to move the software to another machine, to obtain more value, you can charge an additional transfer fee, or, perhaps provide a concurrent license at a higher fee. Use the Common License Model Attributes As the Key Usage Parameters To Build Your Pricing And Revenue Models License Term – this refers to whether the right-to-use is a perpetual license, or, a time-based right-to-use (subscription license). The industry trend is a movement toward time-based license models. License Metric – this refers to a unit of usage upon which you can base pricing, one that ideally scales with usage. This should match how the customer uses your product and is willing to pay for additional usage. Some common metrics are “per device”, “per user”, “per concurrent user” and “per managed capacity” (e.g. number of channels, channel bandwidth). Product Features/Package – this refers to an aggregation of technical features that form the basis of a meaningful customer product. Build Your Software Products Lines Based On Value And Markets – when building your software products (consisting of different product models with associated price points) be sure to consider the different ways that the software will be used to derive value for different types of users and/or markets. For example, it's possible to sell a virtual appliance software license for $1,000 that is licensed to be used in one physical site for small customers, whereas a price point (for example) of $2,500 can be created that allows the virtual appliance to be used in any geographic location, possibly for cloud computing applications required for large enterprises. Alternatively, a time-based or rental license can be sold that allows a customer to use a virtual appliance for a short period of time, unusually during high usage (such as a tax preparer may see). This is where a good understanding of customers and usage profiles for different markets can pay dividends when creating product lines. Add Programs and Discount Structures – with the product lines in place (and evolving over time), you can create a series of discount structures and various license programs to target different markets or channels (e.g. managed service providers, service providers, channel partners, etc.) Ultimately, you will want to trade-off simplicity and precision when making decisions in order to balance revenue opportunity with operational costs, but thinking about the fundamentals above will help you think about new ways to monetize your offerings. Next Week – Step 3: Balancing Revenue Recovery and Customer Satisfaction with Your Compliance Strategy
Posted in Software Piracy Tags: compliance, customers, high-tech manufacturers, markets, pricing, saas, software licensing, terms, usage, virtual appliances Comments OffSchool houses rock: university response to the threat of contributory copyright infringement and forced compliance of the Digital Millennium Copyright … Rutgers Computer & Technology Law Journal
Product DescriptionThis digital document is an article from Rutgers Computer & Technology Law Journal, published by Rutgers University on September 22, 2004. The length of the article is 10958 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.Citation DetailsTitle:… More >>
School houses rock: university response to the threat of contributory copyright infringement and forced compliance of the Digital Millennium Copyright … Rutgers Computer & Technology Law Journal
Posted in Software Piracy Tags: compliance, computer, contributory, Copyright, Digital, forced, houses, Infringement, Journal, Millennium, response., rock, Rutgers, school., technology, threat, university Comments OffThe Ten Step Process: Converting Your High-Tech Company into a Thriving Software Company
By: Cris Wendt Last week we described what we see in many of the high-tech manufacturing markets – companies wanting to transform from a pure-play hardware company to a successful software company – and some of the associated problems— software licensing, packaging, and delivery, entitlement management, license enforcement , etc. Over the next few weeks, we'll describe how high-tech manufacturers can think like a software company by adjusting their business and licensing models, deployment methods, and operational and business processes to be more like a software company. We've laid it as a 10 Step Process: Understanding the Opportunity that Becoming a Software Company Can Offer Use Software Licensing Methods to Enable Product Agility in the Marketplace
Posted in Software Piracy Tags: compliance, deliver-digital, design, design-secret, entitlement management, marketplace, process-journey, supply-chain Comments OffDo antivirus companies really prosecute? Or does compliance merely appeal to conscience?
Licenses for antivirus programs may range from 3, 5 or more computers. Most of them, however, can use one active code to operate the trial program. So virtually, you can activate as many software copies as you want. If one exceeds the legal requirement, do these antivirus companies really run after you? Would they be able to detect?
Posted in Software Piracy Tags: Antivirus, appeal, companies, compliance, conscience, merely, prosecute, Really 5 Comments »Harte-Hanks Trillium Software Selected by Chaucer Insurance for Data Governance, Risk and Compliance
READING, UK–(Marketwire – November 4, 2009) - Trillium Software, a business of Harte-Hanks, Inc. (NYSE: HHS) and a leading enabler of Total Data Quality solutions, today announced that insurance company Chaucer Syndicates Limited of the United Kingdom will implement the Trillium Software System. The software will help Chaucer to ensure the quality of the data it uses to guide its syndicates towards maintaining a profitable, yet risk-balanced business book compliant with their approved underwriting capacities.
“Effective governance of our underwriting business requires reliable business intelligence, and this is dependent upon quality data,” said Philip Gregory, business intelligence manager at Chaucer. “The Trillium Software System will automate our data quality process improving on and saving one hundred man-hours a month in manual cleansing work. Also, a dashboard will provide real-time data quality metrics giving confidence scores for consideration when using the data in important decisions.”
Additionally, Chaucer will use the Trillium Software System to facilitate collaboration on data quality amongst the various stakeholders in the organisation. The insurer seeks to build a sense of joint ownership and responsibility across the Information Systems (IS) department, business intelligence and analysis teams, risk analysts, syndicate underwriters and their staff.
Chaucer’s business intelligence systems access a data warehouse holding some 17 years of raw policy and claims data received from brokers, its syndicates, and from Lloyd’s electronic messaging systems. Chaucer’s data warehouse is continually growing with data from these feeds. In the future, Chaucer will be able to standardise this data, match it with any existing records and de-duplicate it to provide clean single views.
“Consistent, trustworthy data is essential to all business processes and as organisations grow, so they must implement robust, enterprise-wide data governance techniques to care for their data, prove it is correct and maintain it as a core asset,” said Ed Wrazen, vice president of product marketing at Harte-Hanks Trillium Software. “The Trillium Software System is an integrated, unified and scalable platform for data quality across every data source and business function, and will support Chaucer Syndicates to ensure that its data is consistent, actionable and trustworthy.”
Solvency II, a regime for all EU insurers and reinsurers, is due to come into effect in 2012. It aims to enforce solvency requirements that better reflect the risks companies take. Ensuring access to good quality data should assist Chaucer in complying with the reporting requirements of this new legislative compliance directive.
About Chaucer
Chaucer Syndicates Limited is the Managing Agency of Chaucer Holdings PLC, a specialist insurance and reinsurance group listed on the London Stock Exchange. Chaucer provides the capital and expertise required to underwrite business at Lloyd’s, the world’s leading insurance and reinsurance market organization.
At the core of the business are Syndicate 1084, which underwrites marine, aviation, energy, property, specialist lines and motor insurance, and Nuclear Syndicate 1176. Syndicate 1084 is rated ‘A’ (Excellent) by A.M. Best.
For more information on Chaucer, please visit www.chaucerplc.com.
About Harte-Hanks
Harte-Hanks is a worldwide direct and targeted marketing company that provides marketing services and shopper advertising opportunities to local, regional, national and international consumer and business-to-business marketers. Visit the Harte-Hanks Web site athttp://www.harte-hanks.com or call (800) 456-9748.
Harte-Hanks Trillium Software enables organisations to achieve Total Data Quality by providing a full complement of technologies and services providing global data profiling, data cleansing, enhancement, and data linking for e-business, customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning, supply chain management, data warehouse, and other enterprise applications. For more information about Trillium Software and its offerings, call (978) 436-8900 in the United States and in the United Kingdom call +44 (0) 118 940 7666, or visit Trillium Software online at http://www.trilliumsoftware.com.
This document may contain trademarks that are owned or licensed by Harte-Hanks, Inc. and its subsidiaries, including, without limitation, Harte-Hanks, Trillium Software, Trillium Software System, Total Data Quality and other names and marks. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders.
Posted in Software Piracy Tags: Chaucer, compliance, data, Governance, HarteHanks, Insurance, Risk, Selected, Software, Trillium Comments OffTrade Compliance – What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You
Dual-use items are any items that can have both military and commercial applications. These items may appear to be innocuous but, in the hands of the wrong people, can be used for destructive purposes. Examples of dual-use items include communications equipment, machine tools, handcuffs, information security, electronics, lasers, and encryption software. In addition, there are thousands of metals, compounds and chemicals that are controlled because they can be used for military applications.
Many firms whose primary business is not considered ’sensitive’ are unaware of their obligations under the EAR. Companies are proud to export U.S. products overseas but many have never given much thought to the consequence of these activities.
The penalties for violations of export laws can be severe. Companies considered household names have paid significant fines for violations of U.S. export laws. Many smaller companies have been penalized as well. Recent examples include a Florida company having paid a $1,102,200 civil penalty for illegal exports of fingerprint equipment and other crime control items and a New Jersey-based freight forwarder was sentenced to a $250,000 criminal fine and five years probation as well as a $399,000 administrative penalty for the shipment of items to India without the required export license.
The penalties for violations have recently been increased in an effort to improve compliance with the BIS regulations. On October 16, 2007, President Bush signed into law the International Emergency Economic Powers (IEEPA) Enhancement Act. The Act provides for civil penalties amounting to the greater of $250,000, or twice the value of the transaction that is the basis of the violation, that may be imposed for each violation of IEEPA. Willful violators can expect criminal penalties including fines up to $1,000,000 and/or up to 20 years in prison.
Questions Every Exporter Must Ask
• Have we had all of our items, technology and software classified by the BIS or other competent expert?
• Do we know our customer (i.e. do we check our customers against the government lists of denied parties, specially designated nationals, and other required databases)?
• Have our employees involved in export transactions received the necessary training to ensure compliance?
• Do we have adequate recordkeeping practices in the event of a BIS enforcement audit?
• Do we have a formal export compliance program in place to ensure compliance to U.S. laws and regulations?
Maintaining control of your exports is not a cost of doing business. Aside from being the ‘right thing to do’, it can save money, avoid negative publicity and improve export shipment flows. What you don’t know can hurt you.
For more information on trade compliance or export compliance consulting visit http://www.wearecompliant.com