Software Monetization

Webinar: Post-Sale Services and Monetization in a Digital World

2018-11-28T12:02:56Z

Get it right, for your customers and for your business model

If you truly run a digital business model, you make at least 50% of your revenue with your customers after the first purchase of your solution or services. Of course, customer satisfaction needs to be high, so you can embark on this journey, but you also need to think differently about the ongoing value you provide.

Join R “Ray” Wang and Matthew Dunkley as they discuss key elements of post-sale services and monetization:

Understand your customers and their usage.
Do you know what ties your customer to your products, how they adopt them, and what features are being used the most? Do you know how to build digital feedback loops with your customers?
Treat updates as a value-driver, not a tech tool.
Software and device updates are strategic to continuously delivering new value. How good are you at it, and can you even do it for disconnected edge devices?
Rethink communications and self-services.
Little things can make a big difference. How do customers learn about product changes, new services they can use, or issues affecting them? Do they feel like you’re a partner in their success?

Make sure your company is prepared to deliver the high-value experience customers expect. Recognize the opportunities to build recurring revenue streams and strengthen customer relationships. Join the Flexera webinar to learn more.

Flexera’s First to Take Software Monetization Technology to the Edge

2018-09-25T15:12:32Z

FlexNet Edge Enables Software Updates and Insights for Edge Devices, Adding More Control and Security to the Software Supply Chain

Flexera announced today the launch of FlexNet Edge, a new component of our Software and IoT Monetization Platform. The smart edge server enables updates and gathers device data from partially connected or disconnected environments. It advances Flexera’s new Updates and Insights technology and provides full automation and control for the delivery and deployment of software and firmware updates.

Even as the number of connected devices continues to grow, there are key use cases where applications and devices remain intentionally disconnected from the Internet – including high security business applications, high-performance computing software, medical devices and industrial equipment. Suppliers need to keep these applications and devices up-to-date, send security updates and deliver the value available with new product versions.

Buyers benefit from staying current, gaining access to the latest features, reducing support costs and avoiding costly downtime. In addition, the insights gained from device status data allows suppliers to maintain an audit trail of software versions that have been deployed to specific devices. This data is valuable for making informed support and maintenance decisions, and in some cases is a regulatory requirement – see the FDA Medical Device Safety Action Plan.

“Suppliers today want to provide a seamless user experience with up-to-date and secure applications, no matter if those are Internet-connected or not,” said Matthew Dunkley, Flexera’s Senior Director of Strategy and Product Management. “FlexNet Edge extends our state-of-the-art solutions to the edge and into high security environments, including medical and industrial facilities. Our Software and IoT Monetization platform provides a centralized management solution for all applications and devices – whether they’re connected or disconnected.”

FlexNet Edge is part of Flexera’s Updates and Insights technology. The module delivers, deploys and tracks software and firmware updates based on entitlements. These tasks can be automated – leading to greater operational efficiency, or managed by a local administrator – providing a higher level of control. FlexNet Edge enables these functions for disconnected or partially connected software and devices.

New Speakers Announced for SoftSummit. Reserve Your Seat Today!

2018-09-07T18:49:09Z

We are getting ready for the leading pricing and monetization conference – SoftSummit – in Los Gatos, California and Boston-Waltham, Massachusetts. More great speakers have been added to the agenda and more industry experts have signed up to join us.

Don’t miss out on great presentations, networking time and discussions about software monetization, pricing, licensing and security.

Program Highlights

Smiths Detection: Monetizing the Digital Transformation of the Ports & Borders Industry
Summit Healthcare: Client First: Enabling Product Flexibility to Optimize Service and Support Processes
2020 Spaces: Flexible Monetization in an eCommerce World
Simon-Kucher & Partners: Maximizing Customer Lifetime Value in Subscription Businesses
IDC: The Monetization Ecosystem and Market Trends

Don’t Wait. Reserve Your Seat Today.

Monetization Trends

We’ll also discuss how smart processes and automation help delivering a fast, smooth and frictionless monetization process and an excellent customer experience. Join us for Flexera sessions and a great panel discussion:

Monetization Panel: Product and Monetization Experts from ADVA Optical, Empirix, Spirent, SKP and IDC Discuss Market Trends with Flexera’s Director of Monetization Strategy, Cris Wendt
Monetization in a Post-Sale, On-Demand World – Hybrid Business Models, SaaS Monetization and Customer Growth
Software and Device Updates and Insights for Connected and Disconnected Devices

Open Source Scanning and Security

Join Jeff Luszcz, Open Source expert and VP of Product Management at Flexera to take a deeper look into how software is developed today. Learn about the growing role of open source and get an overview on how the role of open source and the management of license compliance and vulnerabilities: Open Source is Everywhere – A Best Practice Guide for Suppliers

A lot to learn, a lot to talk about, and still enough time to meet with your peers, Flexera experts and industry analysts.

See you at SoftSummit!

SoftSummit 2018 – Registration is Open

2018-07-27T17:19:16Z

Register now for SoftSummit in Los Gatos, CA or Boston Waltham, MA

SoftSummit is the leading industry conference covering software pricing, monetization and management. Join us for the 2018 regional conferences at the hubs of the software world. We’ll discuss what’s driving the market and what’s driving you: Grow your digital leadership position, deliver an excellent customer experience and grow revenue from software and digital services.

Pricing and monetization strategies for SaaS and IoT: Learn how you find the right price for your digital offerings. Implement your business model and add automation – from provisioning to renewals.
Application security and updates: Keep software and devices safe and secure. Discuss what’s needed to ship a secure product, to keep it up to date and to deliver an excellent customer experience while protecting your IP.
Customer and product insights: It’s an on-demand post-sale world. Knowing how products are being used and how customers are doing is a top priority for every software supplier. Realize the value of data and use insights to increase the product/market fit and to grow recurring revenue from happy customers.

Join industry analysts, thought leaders and the Flexera team. Network with your peers at the leading software monetization conference.

See you at SoftSummit!

Webinar: Manage & Monetize Medical Devices

2018-07-25T15:08:36Z

Connected medical devices offer many exciting opportunities. Patients enjoy new freedom to have their care monitored at home. Hospital IT staffs can track the status and configuration of devices while doctors and nurses have improved access to patient data. And device manufacturers can drive new revenues from the software that controls these devices.

So how do you take advantage of new revenue opportunities? Flexera’s Software Monetization Platform can help you build a successful digital business

Know your code. Open source or off-the-shelf code may introduce vulnerabilities. Eliminate these vulnerabilities and create an FDA-required Bill of Materials.
Increase profits. By turning features on and off electronically you can reduce SKUs and their associated production costs and make it easier to sell new features.
Manage updates. Know which version of your software is running on each of your devices, even the disconnected ones. A software monetization platform will help you build a distribution mechanism, manage and track updates, and maintain an audit trail.

The transformation of healthcare being enabled by connected medical devices is still in the early stages. Software monetization should be a cornerstone of your strategy from the start. Plan your hardware SKUs and software packaging to maximize revenue and customer value. Gain the flexibility to implement new business models as new devices and use cases emerge. Stay ahead of your competition.

That’s how you build a healthy device business.

In this 30 minute webinar, Matthew Dunkley, Senior Director, Product Management at Flexera, will explain how a focused approach to software monetization can help increase your profits. He will also highlight how you can address key FDA requirements and deliver a secure product.

Join us:
Wednesday, August 8th at 10:00am CT, or
Thursday, August 9th at 10:00am BST (UK)

Join Flexera’s Keynote at IoT Slam Live 2018

2018-06-15T12:06:27Z

We are excited to be joining the IoT Slam Live Conference in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina next week.

KEYNOTE: Monetize What Matters – Flexera’s SVP of Products, Walker White, will present a keynote on June 21, talking about the revenue potential of the IoT. Walker will discuss how suppliers can drive success by monetizing the full IoT stack — from the edge to the cloud, move to recurring revenue and offer pricing that’s aligned with value. IoT players will receive guidance on how they can tackle this business transformation and manage and protect their solutions while continuously delivering value for customers.

KEYNOTE PANEL: Realizing the Multi-disciplinary Pathway to IoT Success – Cris Wendt, Flexera’s Director of Monetization Strategy, will join a multi-disciplinary panel of IoT practitioners from UBER, RIoT, ChenMed, Sigfox, and RigNet on June 22, to discuss the state of the IoT landscape, the challenges, and what’s needed to enable a meaningful return on investment through leveraging IoT.

IoT Slam Live 2018 features the most significant and important advances of all aspects of IoT. It is a must-attend event for anyone globally seeking to learn more about IoT, best practices, business models, applications and more. Learn more about the event at iotslam.com. We look forward to meeting you there.

Flexera Powers Monetization of PTC’s ThingWorx IoT Platform

2018-06-04T17:22:39Z

ThingWorx—PTC’s market-leading Industrial Innovation platform—delivers tools and technologies that empower businesses to rapidly develop and deploy powerful Internet of Things (IoT) applications and augmented reality (AR) experiences. It makes solution development simple, time-to-market fast and solutions built on the platform more compelling.

ThingWorx has been growing fast as PTC continuously adds more partners who choose this innovative platform to develop and connect their IoT solutions. In preparation for this growth, PTC needed a robust, flexible and scalable solution for monetization and compliance management and chose Flexera.

Monetization Requirements in an IoT World

ThingWorx is used by PTC partners to develop their IoT offerings as well as manufacturers who run their IoT processes based on the platform. With the IoT evolving and growing at a staggering pace, PTC needed to leverage a monetization platform that could:

Manage, track and securely automate subscriptions and other monetization models
Measure and manage devices, users, API calls and other metrics as a basis for monetization
Provide robust and flexible support for PTC’s exponentially growing partner and customer ecosystem

Also, scalability in a very dynamic environment was a key requirement. The ThingWorx platform manages workloads between multiple servers that can be added as needed. They needed to provision licenses in a flexible and secure manner between multiple servers.

“When choosing our monetization platform, we were looking for more than just a licensing tool. We wanted better insight into our customer base, offer flexible and scalable monetization models and add the automation needed to run our growing software business. Flexera is the strong partner we need to deliver on these strategic goals.”
Mike Tresh, Product Management Director, Platform

Building on a Strong Monetization Standard

Besides PTC’s main goal to monetize and protect ThingWorx, the company also wanted to standardize on a strong monetization platform that could be used for other PTC offerings such as its Windchill product lifecycle management (PLM) system. PTC wanted a central monetization platform that could provide a complete view of their customer base and monetization models and ease processes related to entitlement management, subscription management and compliance control—for on-premises and SaaS offerings.

Business Goals

As an industry leading software supplier, PTC had set clear, strategic goals. After meeting with the Flexera team, PTC discovered that the Flexera Monetization Platform was perfectly positioned to deliver on these goals:

Flexible monetization and compliance models—A platform able to support both perpetual and subscription models and work with different metrics as a basis for monetization.
Scalable support for future SaaS products—A solution that can handle user and use right provisioning for SaaS applications while feeding back usage and entitlement information to the central monetization platform.
Better insight into customer base—In-depth customer information across different product lines for consistent and automated software monetization processes.
Automated subscriptions and renewals—The ability to manage and automate subscriptions and renewals.
A frictionless user experience—Automated and easily managed monetization and software delivery processes, based on customer entitlements. Easy to handle for internal operations teams, but also for partners and customers using a self-service portal.

Solution

PTC implemented Flexera’s Software Monetization platform, using FlexNet Operations as a central entitlement management back office and FlexNet Embedded as the flexible licensing technology integrated in ThingWorx. The Flexera Integration Framework was used to create seamless integration with PTC’s existing back-office workflows to manage customer entitlements. Flexera’s Monetization Platform supported all of PTC’s outlined needs right out of the box in a standard setup. And throughout the entire process—from strategic planning, to design and implementation and training—Flexera Global Consulting Services fully supported and aligned with the PTC team. The result this collaboration was a first-pass success with zero business downtime.

Business Outlook

Today, ThingWorx seamlessly leverages Flexera’s software monetization technology. In its on-going effort to provide an improved customer experience and to reduce the home-grown solutions still used in their other products, PTC will continue to move existing products onto the Flexera platform. That will give the company the comprehensive view on all its customers on all its products and the usage insights needed to successfully grow its business.

Download the full story here

How are you monetizing your strategic software products? Do you have the right technology in place to monetize effectively and measure success?

Flexera Provides Seamless Monetization Support for Arm Ecosystem

2018-05-07T13:11:15Z

Software Suppliers and Appliance Manufacturers Building on Arm Technology Can Now Develop Solutions Faster, Protect IP, and Prevent Hacking & Overuse

Flexera announced today its market-leading Software Monetization platform now offers even more comprehensive support for software and appliances built on technology from Arm, whose advanced processor designs enable the intelligence in more than 125 billion silicon chips.

Flexera partnered with industry leaders Arm, Cadence^®, Cavium™ and Qualcomm Datacenter Technologies to provide seamless software monetization support for software and appliances running on the Arm^®v8-A architecture for Arm-based servers. Flexera’s FlexNet Publisher empowers the entire software supplier ecosystem to build applications that run on high-performance servers. Software suppliers building on Arm can now more easily use Flexera’s licensing and flexible monetization processes for their applications – helping them develop solutions faster, protect their intellectual property (IP), and prevent hacking & overuse.

“We support multiple platforms, and our state-of-the art licensing and IP protection, combined with solid relationships with our customers have made us the de facto standard for monetization,” said Matthew Dunkley, Senior Director of Strategy and Product Management at Flexera. “By partnering with Arm, one of the key players in the industry, we’re offering the broadest support possible for suppliers to monetize their software and devices more effectively.”

“From HPC and cloud applications to edge computing, Arm-based servers and network infrastructure are increasingly selected to enable the data processing and deployment of billions of connected devices,” said Casey Axe, Senior Director, Infrastructure Line of Business, Arm. “The release of the Flexera Software Monetization Platform for the Arm architecture brings new opportunities to Flexera customers while at the same time giving existing providers in these markets a new way to both monetize and securely deliver their software products.”

High-Performance Computing Pivotal for Cloud and Edge

High-performance computing (HPC) is central to the success of cloud-based and edge applications. Flexible and fast technology is required for modern applications in many industries including telecommunications, networking and manufacturing. With the fast growth of HPC in these industries, more device manufacturers and software suppliers are building Arm-based solutions, leveraging high-performance processor technology like Cavium’s ThunderX®, ThunderX2® and OCTEON TX® product lines or the Qualcomm Centriq™ 2400 processor family. As they define their business models, Software Monetization, licensing and IP protection are key to business success.

Software Monetization is an enabler for the whole ecosystem of products built on Arm technology. “As our software partners accelerate their development and deployment on Cavium’s Arm-based products it is crucial to have the complete platform for monetizing their software investment,” said Larry Wikelius, Vice President Software Ecosystem and Solutions Group at Cavium, Inc. “With Flexera’s Software Monetization Platform, our software partners can now utilize the critical libraries, tools and infrastructure that FlexNet Publisher delivers – proven across industry. Our partnership with Flexera is another key milestone in accelerating the overall Arm ecosystem.”

Software Suppliers Benefit from Broad Platform Support

The main objective for the collaboration between Flexera, Arm, Cadence, Cavium and Qualcomm is to enable software loads which can take advantage of massively parallel Arm-based servers.

“Cadence is proud to lead the way for Arm server-ready technology as part of our System Design Enablement (SDE) strategy. Our Xcelium™ Parallel Logic Simulator was the first Electronic Design Automation product announced for Arm-based servers. Simulation loads can now run seamlessly on Arm-based servers by leveraging the Flexera Software Monetization platform,” adds Michal Siwinski, Vice President, Product Engineering and Management in the System & Verification Group at Cadence.

Making the Shift to IoT Monetization: What’s Top of Mind for Device Manufacturers

2018-05-04T16:33:34Z

In our recent webinar, Monetize the IoT – From the Edge to the Cloud, Ray Wang examined several emerging IoT business models and explained why they’re successful. We learned that future-proof business models are built using advanced analytical insight to make the right business decisions. In the new post-sale, on-demand economy, he stressed the critical importance of keeping customers front and center, giving them what they need when they need it. This is the true path to driving revenue growth.

It’s clear the gap between knowing the right steps to take and being ready to get started can be huge. John O’Donnell, Senior Solution Engineer with Flexera’s Software Monetization team, works with software suppliers and device manufacturers and helps them implement solutions for better management and monetization. Based on his firsthand experience with device manufactures, John shared some insights from the field.

Q: With the shift to IoT connected devices, what’s top of mind for companies who are changing their monetization models?

A: I work with organizations of all sizes and industries that are facing accelerated market demands for services via mobile and cloud connectivity. They are trying to maintain their current customer revenues while adding more predictable, innovative, subscription based services for a sprawling IoT portfolio.

For example, large equipment manufacturers have traditionally provisioned their products with static software that would remain on that product for its lifetime. Purchasing additional features required customers to acquire new costly hardware. In today’s IoT world, manufacturers can better address the customer’s needs by making dynamic software that’s capable of remote activation of new features on their existing appliance. Suppliers are now building on-demand metering of those features for, monthly subscriptions. Doing so provides huge value to customers and generates new revenue streams.

Manufacturers are eager to learn how Flexera’s solutions provide automated and on-demand control that allows incremental intelligence to be added to standard hardware platforms or applications. We’re able to show them how Flexera supports and manages the IoT monetization lifecycle from trial to end of life.

Q: From your field perspective, can you talk about the importance of customer and product insights to monetize what matters in IoT?

A: The value of data and usage insights from IoT devices and applications is vast and growing. We encounter many use cases like the ability to understand what data is being consumed by one device or even a fleet of devices that are located all over the world.

IoT device manufactures are using insights provided by the Flexera IoT Monetization Platform for remotely tracking utility consumption (electric, water, etc.) or detecting consumption trends of power, water, cooling changes in commercial HVAC systems. Others need the ability to add more capacity – such as enabling more data storage or end point connections in an enterprise. Capturing and analyzing a variety of data insights enables device manufacturers to apply predictive maintenance, helping them to respond more proactively to customers.

It’s all about being flexible and agile. IoT manufacturers must manage applications, devices, features and updates electronically and know which customer is using what. With the Flexera IoT Monetization platform, we bring the processes and tools to help them achieve these goals.

Questions about moving your IoT Monetization toward success? Contact us!

Medical Manufacturers Adopting Digital Transformation Show Strong Vital Signs

2018-04-18T12:35:42Z

In today’s fast paced and value-based healthcare environment, medical device manufacturers and software suppliers must grow top line revenue, improve operational efficiencies, and increase customer satisfaction. These are the key drivers causing many to shift to digital business models.

“We see it all the time, those who embrace digital transformation to support new offerings successfully stay ahead of the competition,” says Willie Hernandez, Senior Solutions Engineer within Flexera’s Software Monetization team.

We asked Willie a few questions about the business growth that he and his team see every day in medical technology.

Q: While healthcare software and technology providers vary in their product offerings, do you see similarities in how they leverage their digital business models to grow revenue?

A: Generally speaking, yes. When healthcare software is offered as-a-service via the Cloud, these companies begin to innovate and design new ways to price and package their offerings and monetize premium features. These innovations lead to higher-margin recurring revenue and up-ticks in renewals.

Q: While improving operational efficiencies is a business driver, for the device manufacturer more rooted in hardware solutions, this means an entire business shift. What suggestions can you share?

A: The way a company initially chooses to package and price software-enabled features will need to change and probably sooner than expected. It’s critical to have a software monetization platform in place that is flexible enough to handle frequent changes. Analysts say that if you don’t, you’re risking 30% potential loss in revenue within the next few years. Also, don’t underestimate the importance of dedicating resources to managing renewals, monitoring the end customer’s health and satisfaction. A successful subscription business depends on high adoption and renewal rates.

Q: Digital business models can improve the customer experience with self-service and improved support. Can you speak to an example of this you’ve helped support?

A: Again, my team’s goal is to help our clients improve their customers’ satisfaction level. So here’s a recent example. One of the world’s largest medical device manufacturers adopted software monetization as a central component of their digital transformation.

This manufacturer now has the ability to quickly change their healthcare offering to meet the customers’ needs by repackaging/reconfiguring the functionality with a pay-per use model. With new and flexible solutions, they have significantly increased their customers’ satisfaction because now customers can monitor device usage and see the value in what they are paying.