Improving Business Value with DRM

A new lifecycle approach to digital rights management helps software vendors grow sales, maintain a competitive advantage and improve profitability

By Laila Arad-Allan, Aladdin Knowledge Systems, Ltd.

The market for software digital rights management (DRM) is almost as old as the software industry itself. But just as the software business has experienced a series of massive shifts over the past decade, the DRM marketplace has evolved as well.

The DRM product landscape has expanded far beyond anti-piracy tools. Software vendors can now take advantage of innovative solutions which align DRM capabilities with business needs across the software product lifecycle – and improve business value across the board.

Get the Context: Browse with RoamAbout

RoamAbout from Vysr is a free browser extension that puts contextual information, services and address books at your fingertips while browsing on the Web. The new business pack version of RoamAbout allows you to look up relevant current news or Wikipedia entries, share content with people in your address book, get stock quotes for any keyword or phrase you find on a Web page, and more. All the contextual information is delivered without having to leave the page you’re viewing. A 3-min screencast tour of RoamAbout can be seen here and the free browser extension can be added to your browser at the Vysr Web site, www.vysr.com.

Stay True or Get Sued

Enterprises are rapidly adopting virtualization but software licensing technology products have not yet caught up. Jeff Kelsey of Express Metrix cautions vendors that IT professionals must adapt their licensing management strategies to account for this virtual world. Read how in this post to the SandHill.com Blog on virtualization.

Warning: Don’t Adopt SaaS in Chunks

The success of SaaS has left some software vendors tempted to adopt the model incrementally. Rubicon Consulting principal Michael Mace explains why that’s a bad idea in this post to the SandHill.com blog on SaaS.

Publish Your Perspective!

SandHill.com wants your opinions. Send your thoughts on the enterprise software industry to SandHill.com editor, Maryann Jones Thompson (maryann@sandhill.com) and have your opinions published on our site.

DON'T MISS: Managing IT to Support Rapid Growth

An interview with NetApp CIO Marina Levinson reveals that keeping pace with a rapidly growing company means choosing priorities carefully. Read why in this article from The McKinsey Quarterly.

News Update: Gates’ Getaway

Gates and Ellison vie for headlines to the last; plus Salesforce.com and Google are best friends, the Symbian Foundation threatens Google and Microsoft, Dell may be planning to go SaaS and Red Hat reports Q1. Read these stories and more software news of the week in the latest SandHill.com Software News Summary.

Poll: Importance of DRM?

Next-generation DRM solutions promise better business value than traditional DRM solutions. How important is DRM to the industry today?
Take our Pulse Poll >>

Last week, readers told us whether it was too late for on-premise vendors to switch to a SaaS model.
Give us your opinion and see the results >>

More at SandHill.com:

Oracle damages in SAP case could top $1 billion.
Read the most important enterprise software industry news of the week >>

Lithium received $12 million.
Monitor the latest software venture capital deals >>

NEC paid $300 million for NetCracker Technology.
Size up last week's software M&A deals >>

David Downing named CMO of NetSuite.
See who's made it to the top in our list of recent software executive appointments.

Send us your feedback on this newsletter and the SandHill.com site.

Parting Thought

“In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy.”
— J. Paul Getty

Courtesy of Malcolm Kusher, The Kushner Group

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