SOFTWARE LICENSING

2012 Software Licensing Key Trends Survey Now Live

By Rachel Ramsey, TMCnet Web Editor

Flexera Software is a provider of strategic solutions for Application Usage Management, helping application producers and their customers strategically manage application usage to achieve continuous compliance, optimized usage and maximized value. The company strives to stay on top of the software licensing industry and trends that affect everyone involved, including software vendors, intelligent device manufacturers and enterprise customers and professionals.

In its eighth year, the “2012 Key Trends in Software Licensing and Pricing Survey” from Flexera Software and IDC (News - Alert) is now live. The survey looks at software licensing, pricing and compliance enforcement trends and best practices. The survey is open to all software vendors, intelligent device manufacturers and enterprise customers who use and manage software and devices.

The 2011 Key Trends in Software Licensing and Pricing Survey found that software vendors and their enterprise customers, increasingly challenged by the economy, are looking for better strategies to derive more value for their organizations through software licensing and pricing. While, not surprisingly, some of those strategies diverge between producers and consumers, many are complementary and serve to strengthen the positions of both.

Key findings from the 2011 survey include revenue generation and customer satisfaction driving changes, software budgets starting to increase, moderated approach to adopting cloud licensing strategies and tracking customer usage remains blind spot for application producers.

Forty-two percent of application producers indicated that they changed their pricing and licensing policies over the past two years to make them more flexible. The top two reasons for this shift have been to improve customer relations (46 percent) and generate more revenue (40 percent). Accelerating the sales cycle (27 percent) was also cited as a key reason for broadening pricing and licensing policies.

Forty-three percent of enterprises report that, looking ahead two years, they expect their software budgets to increase–up from 33 percent in 2010. Twenty-eight percent expect their budgets to stay the same, and 22 percent expect them to decrease.

Application producers are taking a gradual view in anticipating licensing strategy changes to accommodate the cloud. Forty-six percent indicate the changes they‘ll need to make will be moderate over the next two years. Thirty-four percent anticipate no change, while 21 percent indicate changes will be significant or dramatic.

Of the application producers responding, the largest proportion, 47 percent, report that they do not monitor customer usage of their products. For those that do, 20 percent report doing so using internally developed tracking tools, and 16 percent, using manual audits. Only 10 percent use third party tracking tools.

Get the entire 2011 Key Trends in Software Licensing and Pricing Report.

Emerging trends such as the cloud and virtualization are changing the way software vendors and intelligent device manufacturers must monetize, license and entitle their products in order to meet changing customer needs. These trends also impact how enterprises pay for and use software and intelligent devices. Software vendors and intelligent device manufacturer professionals and enterprise professionals: take the 2012 survey and receive an executive summary of the results and be entered to win the new iPad.

The survey results will be presented by Amy Konary, research vice president, Software Licensing and Provisioning for IDC, at an upcoming webinar.

Be sure to weigh in on the 2012 survey so that your opinions are heard. All those who participate and provide contact information will receive an executive summary of the results and be entered into a drawing for an Apple (News - Alert) iPad 3.

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO Austin 2012, taking place Oct. 2-5, in Austin, TX.  Stay in touch with everything happening at ITEXPO (News - Alert). Follow us on Twitter.