The ‘Internet of Things’ turns all hardware and appliance OEM vendors into software providers. Licensing and entitlement management technology serves as the key mechanism that enables these manufacturers to protect and monetise the embedded intellectual property running as software on these connected devices or the external software applications associated with them.
Increasingly, the value of your intelligent device is based on the software or firmware delivered with the device. The flexibility of software allows you to sell many differentiated products while streamlining your manufacturing process. Protecting your software R&D investment is critical to monetising your platforms and ensuring a steady revenue stream. But the fact is, paper – and trust-based licensing programs are no longer adequate.
Moving to electronic licensing allows you to protect and grow your revenue, without complex changes to your manufacturing processes. This whitepaper describes how you can use electronic software monetisation technology to protect and enhance your products, and how to distribute updates and upgrades to your already-deployed device, regardless of your industry: networking, telephony, imaging, printing and medical devices.
Now that software is a differentiator for intelligent device manufacturers, what used to be solution-specific devices are becoming a platform on which to build solution-specific software. This trend mimics the early days of software development on what has now become the general-purpose platforms we all use today. As a result, intelligent device manufacturers have all the opportunities, and all the challenges, of software developers. Fortunately, device manufacturers have available to them the tools and best practices to manage their software offering.
To monetise their embedded software, device manufacturers rely on Flexera Software FlexNet® Producer Suite for Intelligent Device Manufacturers. It can help you maximise the value of software that’s embedded or bundled with your devices by:
- Applying licensing to the Internet of Things
- Innovating product faster
- Reducing manufacturing costs
- Simplifying distribution
- Usage-based licensing models
- Technology adoption and impact
- Actions to take now and within the next 12-18 months
The software has been designed to enable device manufacturers to unlock new licensing, packaging, pricing, and promotional models; streamline manufacturing, inventory, and distribution management; and simplify product updates.
