Over the years I have had the opportunity to work with many device manufacturers across many prominent industry sectors. And today, more than ever, the commoditization of hardware and ever increasing competition (in a truly globalized world) continue to be key challenges faced by many device manufactures.
There is a close correlation between these trends and the types of questions I am asked by such device manufacturers:
- "How can I increase market penetration?"
- "How can I drive new revenue streams and support new commercial models?"
- "How do I stay competitive?"
- "How do I protect what I have now?"
Typically I reply by asking questions about the company's products and business models, before explaining how embedded software licensing and entitlement management may be able to solve some of the challenges, including:
- Reducing manufacturing complexity and costs by producing one model of a device and using licensing to turn on/off device capabilities, capacity and software; and then selling it in many ways
- Supporting and introducing new licensing and pricing models and metrics like pay-as-you-grow to address the needs of diverse customers
This often leads to many more questions, including "How does that work?"
To help explain and demonstrate, I have created this video to help show how embedded software licensing and entitlement management can manage device capability and capacity. In this simplistic case, by provisioning licenses for additional axis of movement on a robot arm, controlled by an intelligent device. The controller has many similarities to industrial controllers (32 bit processor, feature rich peripherals, Linux operating system).
Watch the video: Monetize and Enable Device Capabilities with Embedded Software Licensing: A Demonstration
How are you using embedded software licensing and entitlement management to fight commoditization and competition?
