Technology Companies

New products, applications and sales models are disrupting every sector of the technology industry from hardware to software. Hardware companies differentiate hardware offerings through software controls. Software companies find new revenue streams with subscription offerings, and technology consumers look for ways to manage infrastructure and maintenance costs by purchasing cloud offerings. Add to this the increasing use of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the entitlement management issues may seem insurmountable.

Through all of this upheaval one thing remains constant: Technology companies need to know who uses their products and ensure that only those who are “entitled” to use their products are allowed to do so. Legitimate customers must have access to the products and services they’ve purchased while preventing unauthorized users from accessing the products and preserving revenues.

Some of the Poetic entitlement management is being used in these tech industries to help companies tackle these difficult issues:

Hardware companies with product-controlling software

Companies that sell hardware with software controls have the ability to control the value of that hardware through the attendant software. Throughput can be limited, features controlled and capacities restricted through the use of feature-based license keys. These keys typically codify the features and capacities purchased by the customer and, when the keys are installed, unlock those features on the manufacturer’s hardware.

Because these keys are often tied to specific hardware or a specific hardware configuration, the manufacturers need a way to identify the hardware, combining it with the features purchased and generating an installation-specific key. As new features are purchased or hardware is replaced, new keys need to be generated and old keys retired.

An entitlement management application like Poetic makes this easy to do.

See how Poetic can be used to help you create and distribute your license keys.

Software companies seeking subscription revenues

 The software business model used to be represented by the “boom” and “bust” cycle associated with product releases and updates. More and more, that cycle is being replaced by the more steady, and lucrative, subscription model. Rather than charging large amounts up-front to purchase software and then go after that same business again with each upgrade, software companies are making their products available at lower, monthly rates that include all upgrades, so long as the customer continues to subscribe.

Although this model has upsides for both the software manufacturer and producer, it requires systems that understand who customers are, can manage customer payments and provide customers with the ability to stop, start and modify their subscription purchases all within the rules established by the software manufacturer. It requires a system of record that knows both products and customers. It requires a sophisticated entitlement management platform like Poetic.

See how Poetic can help you manage your customer subscriptions.

Software companies that license their products

 Many software companies rely on software keys, dongles and other locking technologies to secure their applications and ensure that customers do not overuse or abuse their licensed privileges. In some cases, software is built off of the locked software belonging to other, third parties that requires additional keys in order for customers to run the software.

In all these cases, the generation and distribution of the locking technology keys can be a difficult process to manage. Entitlements must be validated, hardware information collected, configuration information codified and multiple technologies integrated. This can lead to critical delays to customer efforts to implement software solutions.

Poetic provides an online, one-stop, technology-agnostic solution to the problem of distributing license keys. Poetic seamlessly combines your customer’s entitlement information with your proprietary and off-the-shelf locking solutions into one system where customers can go to get all of their keys at one time. Poetic stores your customer’s configurations and hardware information for future reference.

Your customers get the speedy access to license keys they need and you get the security of knowing that those keys are not being abused.

Learn more about how Poetic can speed up your activation process.