It is now common for software companies to offer prospective clients “free trial” application versions. However, turning “try and buy” downloads into actual revenues has proven a challenge.?‚? SecureLM has developed a solution that has helped ISV?¢?‚¬?„¢s raise their conversion rates for this business model.?‚? 

SecureLM enables software vendors to lift conversion rates by effortlessly creating and tracking trial versions – turning any piece of software into a time-limited or “try and buy” version without modifying or recompiling code – and automatically creating a registered trial user database for usage tracking and marketing.?‚? SecureLM also offers a framework for ISV’s to imaginatively deliver and grow their targeted promotions. The toughest code security enables evaluation packages to be dispensed with the highest confidence to prospects. As new potential customers enjoy time to assess new solutions, SecureLM can track the evaluation copy’s usage and obtain information necessary for sales staff to close the deal. Evaluation packages can be set to last according to prescribed activations, time limits, feature usage and module consumption. Software can be hosted or actually delivered with executions via the web, phone or disk.

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I was zipping through Wikipedia and I found this great chart that they have which compares all types of software licensing. Here is the chart, I love Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_software_licences

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Here is the official guide to free ware straight from the source. Learn the differences between the different types of free ware.

• Free software
• Open Source software
• Copylefted software
• Non-copylefted free software
• GPL-covered software
• The GNU system
• GNU programs
• GNU software
• Non-free software
• Semi-free software
• Proprietary software
• Freeware
• Shareware
• Private software
• Commercial Software

Read the full article HERE

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Dr. Nikolai Bezroukov has written a great paper about Dynamic Licensing and how it relates to copyright issues. Here is the abstract for his paper. The whole paper is linked below.

“In the third part of the paper we will approach the software development as a process similar to biologic with stages of childhood, adolescence, maturity, and subsequent decline and death. This approach presuppose that the license should be viewed not as a static (casted in iron) document, but is an dynamic algorithm that perform balancing of the requirements of various user groups on different stages of development by activating different modules on each of such stage. The paper provides a software licensing taxonomy based on rights of major user subgroups ( author, user, contributors and developers of derivative products) that compose a virtual multidirectional space and that, like for spaceship entering atmosphere, there is a trajectory of the product in this space; some trajectories are better for the survival of the crew. The author stresses the value of algorithmic simplicity of the license as an important factor of success of the mature free/open software product. “

Full Article Here

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Is it possible to bill the client according to his use of the software each month?
There are definitely sophisticated applications out there that can generate billing reports, and even charge the end-users directly using their credit card information.
License Manager Benefits

?¢?‚¬?¢?‚? ?‚? ?‚?  Support both Hosted solutions (web services) and stand alone applications
?¢?‚¬?¢?‚? ?‚? ?‚?  Codeless integration to the vendor’s software.
?¢?‚¬?¢?‚? ?‚? ?‚?  Out-of-box tool set for flexible package designs based on time, users, usage and activations (on demand)
?¢?‚¬?¢?‚? ?‚? ?‚?  Advanced billing and e-commerce options to allow the software publisher to publish, sell and charge for his software/service on line
?¢?‚¬?¢?‚? ?‚? ?‚?  Hack proof licenses enforcement via web, phone and file
?¢?‚¬?¢?‚? ?‚? ?‚?  100% managed with native .NET support as well as Win32 applications
?¢?‚¬?¢?‚? ?‚? ?‚?  Intermediary Partners Portal offering full visibility to vendor and channel for end user license usage actions.

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One of the many benefits of Dynamic Licensing Management is the Pay-Per-Use function.

Restrictions may actually be set per feature (i.e. number of documents to be processed) in order to price certain portions of the application according to ongoing use. Once it is installed and in use, the user may apply for a refill of the feature “cartridge” or alternatively pay periodically based on the actual use of the feature.

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With the need to license and charge software and services more flexibly, new licensing schemes need to support dynamic sales models that customers are demanding for today. Customers want to pay only for software they need and actually use.

Vendors need to use licenses to control and supervise their installed software or services and improve their ongoing customer relationships. Pricing needs to be dependent on factors regarding:

?¢?‚¬?¢?‚? ?‚?  ?‚? What features and functions make up the software offer?
?¢?‚¬?¢?‚? ?‚?  ?‚? When the software can and will be activated? By time, numeric executions?
?¢?‚¬?¢?‚? ?‚?  ?‚? Who can use the software? Concurrent network users, single users, specific machines, or machines and users with hardware keys etc
?¢?‚¬?¢?‚? ?‚?  ?‚? Where is the software activated? Hosted location or remote servers.

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Added benefits from using Dynamic Licensing solutions:

Aside from utilizing software licenses efficiently and saving costs, Dynamic licensing solutions will also reduce many of the other costs associated with desktop management, including the costs of patch management, application deployment, application upgrade and application support.

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The Manual Approach
Smaller organizations tend to use completely manual methods of license management. These organizations work with fewer PC?¢?‚¬?„¢s, although surprisingly, such an approach is sometimes found in larger organizations. It generally involves PC administrators keeping a spreadsheet of which applications are installed and updating it manually when new applications are added to any PC?¢?‚¬?„¢s.

The information is also used to renew or make changes to licenses. This approach is error prone and can lead to the worst of both worlds, where the company pays for more licenses than it needs and yet is still not compliant with its licensing arrangements.

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An alternative and refined type of software licensing is called Inventory and Usage Software.

This method records two parameters,?‚?  firstly whether software is installed and the second whether and how it is used. However, such software does not provide the ability to automatically uninstall applications, so this becomes a manual task.

Nevertheless there is potential for some cost savings by noticing when software is not used and removing it accordingly. But, most IT organizations do not have the workforce to do this, thereby rendering this function ineffective This approach may be adequate for managing relatively small numbers of desktops, but it creates management problems where there are larger populations of desktops, especially in geographically distributed environments.

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