Software as a service

Michael Kalinichenko, CEO of StarForce Technologies, speaks about importance of services in software industry.

“Nowadays, good product is nothing without excellent service. But it is always better when product is an outstanding service per se”
-Michael Kalinichenko

Today, especially taking into consideration quite a difficult economic situation, services become the most important factor of success in all industries. Consumer companies make a lot of marketing campaigns trying to gain more clients and to win in competitive war. B2B-companies take into operation different services so that the clients prefer them more than their competitors ones. And that is normal. Services in modern industry are at the first place. The same in the software market. Usually, software companies use in their work just a list of common services like technical support and may be some discounts. But now there are more opportunities for them. For example, one of the services can be distribution of software both via retail and digital channels.

Welcome to Digital Distribution Era!

While thinking about Intellectual Property protection software companies have to chose between hardware and software methods. Bind a product to e-token is the most common and the most expensive hardware protection way, but such technologies can seriously limit the distribution channels and greatly increase the overall product price. Software protection doesn't face any distribution limits, it is cheaper and could be implemented in any kind of software never mind of a platform, price and target audience. So the most important thing is to make a compromise between the level of security required and effectiveness of different ways of protected software distribution.

Usually consumer software is being sold in the street shops. In this case the main term for sales is the optical media existence. But we have to remember that the producing of each disc require the printing, packing, logistics process. Accordingly plants, logistics companies and retailers have quite a large part of income.

Internet shops represent quite a serious competition to retail shops in distribution of boxed software. In this case the consumer can order the product on CD or DVD via Internet with the delivery to his place. In this case the expenses can be smaller as the rent of storehouse for online shop is cheaper. But the price of the application stays the same as still processes of producing discs and logistics exist.

Nowadays, the most perspective way of software distribution is the digital distribution. Moreover, it is one of the most safe method. Digital distribution is distribution via Internet without using optical or any other physical media. Consumer just downloads purchased application. The advantage of this way is that consumer can find and buy the application very fast and easy. Rightowner do not need to produce disc and boxes, pay for transportation and remit anything to retailer. Finally, the physical media is very easy to emulate using powerful emulation tools exists on the market and there is no such threat while distribute online.

Protect your IP within new environment

In 2004 StarForce Technologies company invented the special product called "StarForce ProActive" which was designed for digital distribution business model. During last years more that 4000 programs have been protected and more than 10 million activations performed. Today StarForce ProActive is close to ideal and combines both reliable and convenient protection technologies with powerful DRM features. It allows to implement actual models of product licensing (trial, demo, buy only, subscription, rent) and ensures obligatory program activation by the end user.

If software company is interested in both digital and retail distribution StarForce ProActive may ne used with combination of optical media which calls "disc-to-activation" schema. In this case software is distributed on discs but for launch its need to be activated from consumer's computer. Here a discs aren't just the software storage but the distribution instrument - to launch software it is necessary to activate it via Internet. So, consumers can transfer disc with protected software to each other, but application will start to work only after buying license for it and its activation. Before full usage an application can be launched in trial or demo mode. Also, additional protection of software is available: a part of the software (for instance installation pack) will be bound to storage. Additional protection consists in that software from disc can be installed to computer only one time. This protects software from the further distribution.

Nut the most flexible schema is download-to-activation one. This variant is suitable for software distribution via Internet. Users get software by downloading it right to HDD. In this case StarForce ProActive provides obligatory software activation on consumer's computer. Besides, various license models are supported - trial, demo, buy only, subscription and rent.

It is need to say that StarForce ProActive is very consumer friendly: highly informative GUI messages, built-in help section, possibility to revoke activation to reinstall hardware components.

Protection of E-documents online as a service

Actually, many software protection vendors forget that Intellectual Property may be in a form of a text: novel, poem, marketing research, scientific research, etc. To be sure that as many as possible potential customers get access to fruit of the work the author should think over its safe digital distribution. Protection of e-documents is also important for enterprises, especially which have to operate in the markets where high competitions takes place. In a world changing fast client needs reliable and fast service that may be accessed from any place any time. All those words about cloud computing have good correlation with what we have to offer for e-documents protection.

Now protection of documents can be made from any place and at any time. Now a man can protect e-documents, create serial numbers and look through reports on earlier distributed documents online. We called it StarForce Content.

To access to the service a client needs to get connected to the Internet and obtain login data to the system. All operations are held in its own protected online web cabinet so the process is absolutely safe.

Today the web-service supports .pdf, .html and .ppt files protection. An enterprise's representative or even private user can choose the document from his computer and to protect it within a few seconds. As a result the client received the protected document in a new format. Pdf-versions of document require special viewer program that is available for download at the site of the service. After protection of the file the client can generate the required number of serial numbers.

Today there are several solutions that allow to protect e-books and documents at the modern information security market. Besides StarForce Content product is absolutely unique. It is the full complex that allows to protect documents of different types from illegal opening and distribution without restrictions of distribution ways of the files (e-mail, download, optical media), to control its distribution, limit periods of work with protected documents. The new service was created for convenience of the clients, now protection can be made any time, from any place and within a few minutes. Also, it is possible to have reports on sales, create new keys for new clients, to deny illegal use of documents, etc.

This is, to my mined, what they call software as a service. Fast, flexible, easy to access, and comfortable to use.