Glossary
Useful topics, words, acronyms, and jargon, for software monetization teams
C
Concurrent licenses are a type of software license that revolve around the maximum number of users who will use the software at the same time. For instance, if the organization purchases five concurrent licenses, five of their users can access the same software at any given time.
E
Elastic licensing allows flexible access to software, enabling customers to expand capacity on a pay-per-use basis so supply always meets demand.
Entitlement management can be defined as how access to software, devices, systems and content is administered. Entitlement management systems give software producers, channel partners and end customers control over who has access (or use rights) to specific resources, with the power to grant, issue, enforce and revoke access to users.
F
A floating license (also known as a concurrent license) grants an organization a set number of 'seats', meaning a certain number of devices or users can access the software application and data at any given time.
L
A license dongle (also known as a hardware license key or software dongle USB) is a piece of electronic hardware that can unlock a software license, provide copy protection for software, or decipher encrypted licensing content.
Licensing as a Service (LaaS) enables on-demand access to software, allowing customers to instantly scale capacity with a pay-as-you-go agreement.
P
Pay-per-use is a monetization model that can be applied to software where value can be effectively parceled into saleable units. Pay-per-use can loosely be defined as metered use of a product or service, where users are charged for the access.
A perpetual license works by offering unlimited, all-time access for a single new upfront cost. By charging a one-time fee for your software, customers are essentially buying the software rights in perpetuity (perpetual software access) as opposed to renting it.
Q
Quote-to-cash (Q2C) is defined as the entire process of generating customer quotes through to receiving payment, delivering goods, and managing renewals.
S
Cloud computing has revolutionized the software market in a number of ways, but it has also transformed how software developers can enable on-demand resources, unlocking lower costs, lower risk of downtime, and increased scalability, efficiency, performance, and security. Within both traditional on-premises and cloud software deployment models, there are a number of options available.
Software licensing is the underlying technology and process that enables software suppliers and device manufacturers to monetize and protect their products and services. Publishers either develop and maintain their own in-house system or utilize purpose-built software licensing solutions that interact with their product lines.
Software piracy can be defined as the use of software that is not properly licensed. That might include copying, modifying, distributing or selling the software in ways that contravene copyright laws or license terms.
A subscription software license grants the customer access to software they may previously have not been able to afford upfront, as well as supporting the ongoing development to build a longer term revenue model within your software monetization strategy and management.