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SafeNet monetisation sees growth in and out of cloud

Shlomo Weiss (pictured, talking to IT Europa Editor John Garratt), General Manager, Software Monetization at SafeNet says that his bit of the market is a very exciting place at present. Traditionally there have been two main types of customer for his software monitoring and monetisation systems.

Shlomo Weiss (pictured, talking to IT Europa Editor John Garratt), General Manager, Software Monetization at SafeNet says that his bit of the market is a very exciting place at present. Traditionally there have been two main types of customer for his software monitoring and monetisation systems – the pure software companies and then the embedded device vendors. “All are evolving to become true software vendors as the hardware become commoditised. Vendors use us for protection such as intellectual property protection – they want feature based licensing and a user-based service so that they charge based on use.”

Speaking to IT Europa at the Cloud World Forum in London, he pointed to rising demand from all parts of the industry. Even the Internet of Things has started new interest: “We are seeing more device vendors who had no software before – want to manage entitlements and usages, turning usage on and off, as needed.”

“We launched cloud 2-3 years ago focused on traditional ISVs and pure SaaS companies. Now vendors are all moving to connected environment – on premise want to offer connected services. Or traditional software is connected to mobile, pure cloud and mobile and then the IOT companies – commonality is connectivity, usage and tracking.”

It looks like a lot of software needs a framework to license and enforce usage. “It is all coming together and lines are getting blurred, from on premise to IOT. And it is a fundamental shift – it is more demanding and getting more complex and the dynamics in the market are changing, so they need partners,” he says.

Is SafeNet in the role of aggregator then? “We are acting like one and using an ecosystem. We're open to all the different partners, we're close to Amazon WS, for example”.

And then the billing partnerships are needed for that side, integrated with applications. “We help everyone see the usage and that is where we fit in. This is how the ecosystem works – we are at the core and looking at usage and licensing and the end user, helping the ISV manage things.”

So not a cloud play then? “It doesn't matter to us if we are in cloud or data centre – it is all connectivity. We are at the centre of the connected world, but not necessarily running in the cloud.”

This matters as everyone is still asking about where data is held “Everyone talks about that in terms of different geographies and and challenges. We use APIs but we don't hold user data so for us it is less of an issue.”

But intriguingly, it looks like SafeNet is increasingly being used to help software firms monitor users. “We see usage down to feature level, so some user cases are for billing, based on factors such as bandwidth, another user might want to know which functions are being used so as to decide where to in product development and look at how its products are used. And then product improvement and checking if an app used at all. Picking up on the risk of churn and loss of customer, monitoring a trial or paid user.”

It seems that software companies' management are pushing for more stats on usage. “I think there is a genuine need as the market gets competitive. Typically the management will be billing simply at a early stage but as it matures they want to segment the market and package the software – offering customers different packages and modules to see what is being used. This is really taking off.”

The ability to switch parts of packages on and off means coding it all only once, then offering the various levels and not worrying about versions.

“We're ahead of the curve and see a lot of what ISVs are building into systems, helping them navigate how they launch. In the next year we will see a lot more of this, and it will cover all parts of the business. The hype on cloud doesn't hide the traditional on-premise vendor moving to bridge to the new ideas, but they are not leaving on-premise behind. Vendors want to offer all deployment models need a single system to manage everything.”

And the growth markets? All of them, but particular interest in financial services, insurance-related use of devices to monitor risk, and vertical markets growth for ISVs -for example medical device vendors and software companies moving more to monetisation of their systems.

“Seeing it coming from all directions to us at the centre of the storm,” he concludes.