Executive Summary
The global software market is growing exponentially. While the market was probably not at all noteworthy a decade back, it has now grown remarkably big and competitive. Last year, the global software market size reached $997 million. This year (2022), the market size is expected to grow by around $1,723 million.
The global software market had total revenues of $597.3bn in 2019, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.1% between 2015 and 2019.
The total market revenue, which was around $417.63 billion in 2016, jumped to $487.04 billion in 2018. In 2020, the total revenue went up by $524.75 billion. This year (in 2022), total revenue is expected to reach $593.33 billion and around $812.97 billion in revenue in 2027.
However, if looked closely, organizations are also ending up losing a huge chunk of their annual IT budget while deciding on their software requirement. As Gartner reports, organizations lose around 30% of their annual IT budget on software licensing and management.
Defining Software License Management
Every organization requires a specific set of software. While some of these software comes as an individual, others come in bundles. Also, there is free as well as paid software available. The paid software always requires software license managers to use and operate.
The process of managing all these permissions and restrictions from a single console is termed ‘Software License Management (SLM)’.
In technical terms, software license management can be defined as the legal process that controls or regulates:
- How to use the software?
- Who can use the software?
- When to use the software?
- Where to use the software?
Why Have a Software License Management Tool?
Back in the 1980s, software providers started offering ‘floating licenses’ that offered a limited number of licenses among the users. The software license managers had a central license server that allowed licenses to one user at a time upon requests. Meaning, that the second user gets to use the software only after the first user is done using the license.
The concept of floating licenses started becoming inefficient with the development of IT infrastructure since time and resource consumption was more.
Organizations now required tools that would allow multiple users to use software licenses simultaneously. This is where and how the need for centralized licensing management software started growing.
In addition to the organizations, software vendors also felt this necessity. However, they largely required a central system to monitor and track the usage of their software license managers.
Bad software license management can lead to numerous consequences. Any organization may have to face similar situations if they don’t have any licensing management software. Your organization could be the next if you too are missing this. However, here are two of the most crucial consequences due to bad license management:
Dip in ROI
Organizations usually lose hefty amounts annually due to surplus software licenses. They are either unaware of these purchases or they simply fail to manage their licenses. This can slow down or cease their ROI and incur huge losses; maybe in millions, every year.
Non-compliant Issues
As mentioned above, every license comes with some legal terms, conditions, and guidelines. Purchasing a license does not permit anything with the license. At times, organizations fail to comply with these terms and conditions and tend to overpass them. This can create non-compliant issues that could also result in huge monetary obligations.
Key Points to Note:
- Floating Licenses did not allow multiple users to use licenses at once.
- The Floating License concept was time-consuming and inefficient.
- Organizations lose 30% of their annual IT budget.
- ROI gets highly affected due to poor software license management
- Being non-compliant with license permissions, organizations could face serious legal consequences.
- License management allowed users to stretch their licenses.
Benefits or Features of Software License Management
Software publishers release pre-defined documents during the release of their software. This document contains all the legal procedures to use the software. This document largely explains the terms and conditions, limitations (if any), types of usage, and how to distribute the software. This document is known as a ‘software license’.
A software license management tool enables an organization to understand the ins and outs of a software license. A license management software can be an enabler for any organization. It can direct an organization on how to utilize the maximum out of all the software licenses it has purchased. The software manager also suggests which license to purchase, when to purchase, and how many numbers to purchase.
The software licensing management tool also suggests ways to stretch software licenses so that the organization can use the purchased licenses aptly. In OpenLM, we help our clients with deep software license management insights. We enable them to stretch their licenses and utilize the maximum out of them.
Besides this, there are several other reasons for an organization to opt for OpenLM’s professional license management software. Listed below are some of these reasons:
Reduce costs, Increase Profits
The license manager software can easily analyze the overall license consumption and figure out if any additional licenses are required. A software license management tool can also track unused licenses and cut down the cost further.
Credible Compliance and Audit Protection
Using any unauthorized licenses is a critical issue. Organizations must always keep track of their license usage and compliance issues. A software licensing management tool can help organizations gain a credible compliance score and audit protection.
Software License Compliance Reports
Having a professional license management software like the one by OpenLM makes an organization compliant with all the rules and guidelines. This helps organizations to be compliant with all legal terms.
Enhanced Productivity
Software license management tools help organizations to automate their license usage. This helps them save time and enhance the productivity cycle.
Better Cyber Security
Almost all software licenses come with strict data security measures and firewalls. Having them rightly installed in the systems offer better security. Cyber security remains intact with effective software license management tools.
More Business Agility
Software license management tools enable organizations to decide which software to retain or which one to let go of. Thus, with a software license management tool, organizations can gain more agility when it comes to making decisions.
Software License Management Benefits in a Glance:
Cost reduction – increase in business revenue
Feasible compliance and better audit protection
Stay compliant with software licenses to avoid legal issues
Increase in productivity by saving time
Enhanced security from data phishing and cyber attacks
Grow more agile and take better business decisions
Best Practices for Better Software License Management
Purchase Only What You Need
Purchasing licenses that are seldom put to use is a big waste of money and resources. Organizations should decide what they want or what they need to purchase.
Purchase Only When You Need
Today’s software could become obsolete tomorrow. Organizations should avoid buying licenses based on predictions to save time and money.
Use What You Have Paid For
Being compliant with a license’s terms and conditions is a must practice. This will help companies to avoid legal issues and monetary threats from software publishers.
Hire OpenLM Services
OpenLM ensures better performance and productivity. It makes you scalable while helping your organization to reduce your annual IT spending by at least 15%.
OpenLM Software Management Tool
Know What You Have
Our software licensing management tool reports on actual usage and helps you identify unused or rarely used software. Our new customers find lots of savings right away, at least 15%.
Know What’s Happening Right Now
We have made it a mission to report as timeously as possible. Depending on the software license manager being monitored, feedback is either on a per-second or per-minute basis.
Do the Best for Your Users
Harvest idle licenses automatically in alignment with your internal software policy.
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
We produce reports in different formats depending on the content. We offer alternatives to traditional list reports. This includes heat maps and pie charts, which provide a more concise overview for management.
Take the Heat off
OpenLM gives you the data necessary to produce internal billing for end users.
License Management for the Cloud
Costs for cloud software are much higher than expected and seem difficult to control. Our licensing software manager can help you monitor Adobe, Autodesk, ESRI, and Office 365 cloud products.
What Makes OpenLM’s Product Stand Out Above the Competition?
Specialized
OpenLM’s software is designed specifically for engineering and scientific licenses.
Multiple Vendors
We can help you monitor the products you rely on, from hundreds of vendors including Ansys, Autodesk, Dassault, PTC, and Siemens.
Over 50 LMs
Our customers are extensive users of CAD/CAM and CAE tools and we support over 50 license managers in this space.
Customer Focused
Whether you are in construction, pharmaceuticals, aerospace, automotive, oil, and gas, or EDA, we help customers in these industries manage their software.
Fortune 500
Our customer base includes Fortune and Global 500 companies across the globe, as well as some top universities and government and municipal bodies (OpenLM is on the GSA Schedule 70 and has U.S. Federal customers).
OpenLM Cloud
OpenLM for Cloud is the latest innovation in our product suite. It wins space from the traditional on-premise version because its hassle-free features, scalability, and resilience, require minimum infrastructure and hardware.
Summing Up:
OpenLM is among the most trusted global vendors of engineering and specialty software license management solutions (source: Gartner). Founded in 2007, today OpenLM has more than 1000 global customers; 10% of these customers belong to the ‘Fortune 1000’ club. 400 of OpenLM’s customers are from the US.
With OpenLM, organizations can easily optimize and streamline their annual software expenses. OpenLM provides all the essential engineering software license monitoring, tracking capabilities, reports, and more. It further helps organizations to optimize their software inventory and helps them to stretch their expensive software licenses to the maximum limit.
OpenLM handles all license models including network (floating), node-locked, GPU (Nvidia), cloud and token (including Autodesk token-flex), and hybrid variations. It enables organizations to monitor and generate reports of all the major hardware and software licenses such as Sentinel, Flexera, Wibu DSLS, Reprise, Autocad, Bentley, PLM, CAE, and more.
