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Only this month our industry has downsized by 2 major players!
Acresso has acquired Intraware.
Acresso Software (Acresso), a privately-held company and an investment of private equity firm Thoma Bravo, LLC, announced today it has completed the acquisition of Intraware Incorporated (NASDAQ: ITRA), a provider of digital delivery and entitlement management services. Intraware is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Acresso.
SafeNet (Vector capital) has completed it’s bitter takeover of Aladdin systems.
Aladdin Knowledge Systems Ltd. (NASDAQ: ALDN) today announced that it has entered into a definitive merger agreement to be acquired by an investor group lead by Vector Capital, a leading private equity firm specializing in the technology industry, in a transaction valued at approximately $160 million.
Vector now own both SafeNet and Aladdin i.e. the whole “dongle” hardware DRM market!
Commenting on the announcement, David Fishman, Partner, Vector Capital, said, “We are very excited about adding Aladdin to our portfolio of outstanding technology companies and believe that placing Aladdin’s DRM and Authentication assets under common management with those of our portfolio company, SafeNet Inc., a global leader in information security, makes considerable strategic sense and will greatly benefit all stakeholders. Aladdin is an exceptional company, with significant potential and a strong commitment to its employees, partners and customers worldwide. We understand Aladdin’s industry and business well, and look forward to working collaboratively to ensure a smooth and expeditious transition.”
So what does all this mean for you the “customer” – well it means less choice, less competition and greater control in the hands of the largest players in the Industry.
For Nalpeiron, who have already weathered our only major competitor Microsoft, and continued to double our growth year on year it’s good news in many ways.
More and more customers of these large players are joining the only viable independent alternative, Nalpeiron, and also making the change to an “outsourced” model with compelling features, pay as you go pricing and a total “hosted” solution out of the box in 24 hours.
The great thing is that our service is now totally unique and there is “clear blue sky” between us and the competition.
Also, so many customers are looking to save costs in these tough times and they are moving away from expensive inflexible dongles ($30-40 each) to Nalpeiron where they can get far more for far less. License costs run as low as $1 – a huge saving over Vector’s offerings from SafeNet and Aladdin.
As for Acresso, they are a mixed bag of Installshield and Macrovision and now they have yet another totally different technology platform in the mix but there appears no clear strategy with all three product areas being so different and totally unconnected.
Acresso’s pricing and support policies have also driven many new customers to Nalpeiron where they don’t have to pay the license “tax” of a % of revenue every year to Acresso and can pay way less for better features and do that “as they go” offering better cash flows as well as savings in overall annual cost to the ISV.
Of course it will take a while to see what happens but the challenge of merging different cultures from different countries (US and Israel) will be interesting to watch for Nalpeiron!
Just read an interesting article on the software pirate scene and it noted one important fact for our customers:
The economic downturn could presage an upswing in piracy next year, despite ongoing legal campaigns by the Business Software Alliance, Microsoft and others.
"We’ve seen an increase in piracy during past recessions," said Victor DeMarines, vice president at antipiracy software vendor V.i. Laboratories Inc. "It’s very cyclical."
You may want to start thinking about and making provisions for how you handle any additional activity in your area and specifically your product.
Is it attacked yet and if so what are you doing about that? Also, if not have you made any preparations to slow these pirates down?
It’s unlikely you can beat a concerted attack on your products but you can isolate its availability and make sure only the best crackers can beat you not just any school kid.
The best protection is a compelling product and price point but it makes sense to any extra precautions you can to defend your revenues now otherwise you could suffer a DOUBLE downturn, less revenues and more piracy!
We advocate going on the attack and trying to win more customers from your potential based via better marketing automation using the licensing system – we have launched such an initiative called "TrialMaximizer", se it at www.trialmaximizer.com
See the full article here: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9122898
I just read about this excellent tool for helping with end user hassles with UAC.
If you deploy this toll (with permission) to your end users you could make life a lot easier for yourself, as installing security software needs to install in admin mode this utility could help save setting complex installer procedures, user could run this and it would stop the UAC hassles and get the job done…
If you like it check out their site but make sure you alert your end users to the risks of switching off UAC!
TweakUAC for Windows Vista.
TweakUAC™ is a free software tool that you can use to quickly turn UAC (User Account Control of Windows Vista) on or off, or to make UAC operate in the quiet mode. This software is FREE, no strings attached.
http://www.tweak-uac.com/home/
Saw an interesting article today by Peldi Guilizzoni and he mentions what many people think is true about the user and their propensity to use pirate software.
I don’t think it’s very scientific but it is a valuable argument, who will pay and who will not and why?
I also think the basic concept is sound – unfortunately people will avoid paying if a free/ripoff alternative is easily available.
The easy way to fix the conundrum in any event is to make your software easily available and to protect it will a user friendly but robust licensing solution and let the power of fully functional trials (rather then cracked software) do the viral marketing for you!
Here’s what Peldi says:
I don’t like generalizing, but here it goes. I believe there are 3 main categories of software users when it comes to purchasing software versus stealing it: “those who’ll buy”, “those who might buy” and “those who will never buy”.
I the pie chart below I refined it a bit to 5 categories, and since I don’t know how big they really are, I intentionally made all the pieces the same size, except for the yellow one, which I believe is the biggest one:
Let me describe each piece before discussing how I approach each one.
- At one end of the spectrum are those who will never spend money on your software. This category includes actual criminals who will steal your SW to repackage it and sell it, high school kids who like to show off their hacking skills, and also very legitimate and respectable entities like the Free Software Foundation.
- Then there’s a piece of the world population who simply cannot afford to spend money on your software, or at least not a lot. These people probably don’t feel great about using cracked versions of your software, but they do it because they need it and cannot afford what you are charging for it. In other words, they have bigger problems to deal with.
- I think the majority of people in the world fit in the yellow (gray?) area in the middle. They’ll use pirated software if it’s easy to get, but will pay for it otherwise. The more expensive the software, the more these people will shift towards the red pieces.
- Then there’s a piece that only pays for software because they fear getting caught stealing it. I think this pie includes a big chunk of businesses too.
- The last piece is the nice guys, the honest people who pay for what they use, pay all of their taxes, etc.
In the end its about getting the maximum amount of the "pie" for you for all your hard labor with the minimum hassle to both you and your customers…we think a hosted licensing solution is the answer!
A new study confirms software misuse costs vendors billions. Here are strategies for reducing revenue loss.
By Tom Lamoureux, KPMG
See this link for an interesting article on SandHill.com.
http://www.sandhill.com/opinion/editorial.php?id=170&page=1
U.S. President George W. Bush Monday signed into law a bill designed to increase protection of intellectual property (IP) such as software, films and music by raising penalties for infringement and creating a national "IP czar."
So reports the NY Times and about time if you ask me, we need greater protections and clearer messages to people that piracy is a crime and we shouldn’t do it…
There will be no convincing some people but the average "Joe" should be clear it’s not OK, especially with a recession coming we need all the value from our IP we can get.
The Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2007, or PRO-IP Act, creates a high-ranking IP protection overseer, appointed by the Senate and reporting directly to the president. The position’s first appointee will likely come from the next U.S. administration. The U.S. Department of Justice will also form a new division dedicated to enforcing intellectual property protection.
Now don’t get me wrong, I also agree with the new business models coming out that let you have less restrictive DRM on video and music but that’s more of a practical user friendly matter than the belief I should not pay. I admin when I was kid i copied my favorite songs onto compilation tapes but hey I did actually buy the original music to do that…to me this is fair and reasonable.
I don’t want this act to encourage the bad side of DRM and silly court dramas over single users and their iPods but I do think that people should be given a strong message particularly in critical areas for the economy and jobs like software protection.
Nowadays there are plenty of models where you can get software and services for free and that’s really great but where businesses need to or choose to charge for their efforts this needs to be protected in my view.
I also think that this act should be used against the big web sites and auctions that proliferate counterfeit software and get away with it for a start along with many of the other key distribution points that are obvious for anyone to find.
Clearly piracy is going to tough to beat in any meaningful way but small businesses and consumers should be made aware that their actions do affect their Country and the software business as a whole when they are tempted to cut corners and copy software.
Also, the onus should be on the software publisher to take action too and provide user friendly copy protection models and ways to buy their products.
This is another illustration that the world’s leading suppliers of
software licensing and DRM are in flux.
First it was problems at SafeNet with their ex CFO being embroiled in an illegal options scandal; then Macrovision sold off its licensing unit to private equity for a song, then SafeNet thought that Aladdin was doing a poor job for shareholders and launched a hostile takeover bid and now Microsoft appears to be throwing in the towel.
It appears that the Microsoft SLPS service has been terminated, their site is no longer taking orders and its staff are not responding to enquiries about the service. What does this mean for all the users who were promised a free copy with MSDN? What about the future of those now using it to license their products? Having spent all the time and cost to implement a Microsoft solution, they will now have to find another long-term partner. What now?
ZDNet’s Mary-Jo Foley contacted Microsoft to see what gives. She received the following statement from Thomas Lindeman, Director of Marketing for SLP Services:
“SLP Services as a business does not structurally fit within its business unit where it currently resides. We are actively looking for a home for SLP Services and will post that information once it becomes available. In any scenario, we will continue to support SLP Services for the duration of customer contracts. We will not be taking on any new customers at this time.”
Mary-Jo Foley, All About Microsoft : Microsoft quietly halts sales of third-party activation offering
This is a very disconcerting time for software vendors. With a major recession on the way, they need all the help they can get to fight piracy and offer flexible revenue-generation options for their customers to stand a chance of survival – the last thing the industry needs is instability and problems.
To be clear, if the licensing vendor has a problem, so does the software ISV – if a vendor’s software is deployed and then they lose their licensing system, what do they do? All the IP is protected by their licensing vendor; it’s a major issue in every area of the ISV business from sales, to marketing, to operations and finance. The failure of the licensing vendor could be catastrophic for the ISV using that technology.
While all this is going on, Nalpeiron, a major independent player in this market, is winning more and more customers to its modern and innovative hosted licensing platform. Why? It’s lower cost, faster to implement, easier to operate and involves a lot less risk than an expensive internal build or one of the above vendors who offer older charging models and a difficult technology roadmap.
Nalpeiron has the benefit of a totally modern, web services driven solution that’s easy in and easy out – vendors can try it for free and if it does what they need, they pay as they go for their licensing. In addition, the technology offers a great deal more functionality than the competition in the form of “active marketing” options to drive revenues.
Outsourcing to a hosted supplier has many benefits, and developers should choose a licensing partner with care, especially given the uncertainty in today’s market. With Nalpeiron, developers can even start with a hosted solution and then take the server in-house, should they wish to, avoiding any external supplier risks.
With the Nalpeiron Licensing Service, software developers get the best of all worlds, while avoiding the risks of the others. Developers interested in Nalpeiron’s licensing service can check out a free trial at www.nalpeiron.com/freetrial/ to see for themselves what Nalpeiron can do for them.
Jon Gillespie-Brown, CEO, Nalpeiron
Latest from TechCrunch: Microsoft Quietly Closes Software Licensing and Protection Service
UPDATE – Final word from Microsoft on TechCrunch:
As of September 23, Microsoft has stopped selling SLP Services. Many ISVs still use home grown software protection solutions, and the return on investment in this area is less than we hoped for. We will continue to create and improve our own internal licensing and protection technologies, but we will no longer be selling any such solutions externally.
Technorati Tags: software licesning, application licensing, microsoft slps, Microsoft Software Licensing and Protection (SLP) Services, software activation service, safeguard your application and licensing information, MSDN, Microsoft SLP Services, hosted software licensing, Nalpeiron, Aladdin, Safenet, Acresso, Macrovision
How much is bad PR damaging your company due to poor DRM or licensing technology?
I hate to think how bad "222 customer reviews, with 194 of them giving the game one star" is affecting sales?
Why is this? Well EA use SecureROM a very restrictive DRM system that only allows 3 activations and crazily enough no way to de-activate so install 3 times and then you have to call EA.
NOW THATS TOTALLY NUTS!
IMHO this has already lead to millions in lost $$s and also massive expenses in a call center to handle the calls for more activation rights when people have PC issues or want to change their machine.
I just don’t understand this type of policy – it’s ridiculous and totally uncalled for.
It does not improve the piracy rate. Easy and fast de-activation should be part of every system as should a simple and easy way to move your license around as you wish – anywhere and anytime you want, no questions.
Quotes from an interesting post (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080908-gamers-fight-back-against-lackluster-spore-gameplay-bad-drm.html) by Ben Kuchera show an amazing backlash and I totally understand why! A gamer’s blunt commnet says it all:
"The DRM on this thing is less friendly than my recent colonoscopy—you get three installs. That’s it. No install returned for uninstallation, or anything else. You install it three times, then you’re out $50," he wrote. "I won’t rent my video games, EA."
You know you have screwed up big time when you hear this type of comment and also people are making their bad feelings known on Amazon.
"Review-bombing Amazon is a particularly nasty way of getting the point across as well; casual gamers who aren’t aware of this campaign may not bother to read the content of the reviews and only assume the game isn’t very good.
For developers, the primary goal of DRM is stopping piracy. The problem is that it does that job poorly, and, as always, it’s the legitimate customers who get stuck dealing with the insanity of having to call EA to ask for more installations after their three are used up. And while they’re on hold with EA support, the pirates are enjoying copies of a game that works, every time they want to play it, no matter what they do to their computer."
My advice to EA and everyone else is stop fighting your legitimate customers, think of them first, build something they can and will use without hindering their use of your product – this can have DRM built-in that’s friendly and useful.
If you don’t you will pay a very high price indeed – Bad PR, increased costs, lost customers and even more lost sales than the pirated copies you are trying to prevent. In many ways this type of DRM product/policy simply drives users into the hands of the pirates where they can get DRM free versions of your product out of desperation and annoyance.
THAT’S A DOUBLE WHAMMY – LOST ILLEGAL SALES ASA WELL AS LOST LEGAL ONES!
Don’t do it folks it’s madness and even EA will not get away with if for long.
Survey suggests current climate may prompt more UK businesses to try and cut costs by not being appropriately licensed
Written by Doug Woodburn
The channel may face a tougher job fighting piracy as the economic downturn begins to bite, new research has suggested.
Nearly four out of five (79 per cent) UK company directors surveyed at a recent trade event said they felt businesses would be more likely to try and cut costs in the current climate by not being appropriately licensed.
The survey, carried out by The Federation Against Software Theft (The Federation), follows damning research from IDC and Microsoft detailing the economic impact of piracy on the channel. The duo found that for every dollar lost by Microsoft through piracy, partners lose as much as $5.50 in missed revenue opportunities.
John Lovelock, chief executive of The Federation, stated: “When times are hard economically the automatic response is to look at ways to reduce cost. Our survey has highlighted a worrying trend that indicates that more and more companies are willing to risk the law in the name of cost cutting.”
Four out five respondents in The Federation’s survey felt that obtaining illegal software was ‘very easy’. Almost a third (32 per cent) cited the internet as the easiest way to obtain illegal software, with 23 per cent citing peer-to-peer file sharing. Some 12 per cent cited online auction sites while 14 per cent listed car boot sales.
“What this survey demonstrates is that the current economic climate could in fact have a detrimental impact on the current low levels of software piracy,” continued Lovelock.
“This emphasises the need to drive home the benefits and cost savings that can be achieved through effective management of software licenses; and the necessity to continue to promote the impact that corrupt software can have on an organisation’s IT estate, not forgetting the risks of being non-compliant.”
Nalpeiron and Tall Applications have entered into a marketing relationship to offer a special "licensing and protection" bundle to the ISV community.
From August 2008, all Nalpeiron sales (product IDs) will include a one year free subscription to DeepSea Obfuscator, a $299 value, as a special offer.
This limited offer is only available to Nalpeiron Customers and enables them to protect their .NET assemblies simply and easily.
As we all know reverse engineering .NET assemblies is simple and for those with concerns over piracy of their products obfuscation is an important method to help prevent software piracy.
Feature highlights:
Out of the box protection – Just run DeepSea Obfuscator and your .NET assemblies are protected.
Declarative obfuscation – Integrate your obfuscation settings where they are most appropriate: in your source code.
Up to date – DeepSea Obfuscator supports all current .NET versions (1.1, 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, Silverlight, Compact) including generics.
Assembly linking – Use separate assemblies internally for testing and architecture purposes but deploy to your customers as a single assembly for minimal footprint.
Fast – DeepSea Obfuscator will get the most out of your multi-core CPU for optimal performance.
Build tooling friendly – DeepSea Obfuscator comes with VisualStudio, MSBuild, NAnt and command line integrations.
Developer oriented license model – One developer can install DeepSea Obfuscator on any machine under the same user account. (This includes the workstation on your desk, the build server and your laptop at home.)
To take advantage of this limited offer make sure you buy a Nalpeiron product before the offer ends.
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