INDUSTRY VIEWPOINT - Remember you're a dongle
Today's software market is a global one - wherever you sell your software, it is vulnerable to piracy, copyright infringement and licence abuse via disk, CD-Rom or the internet. Software markets are opening across the globe, and distribution methods in existing markets are raising developer profit potential to an all-time high.
However, the same global distribution channels that are now working for your business are also working for the less scrupulous. How can you securely distribute the licensing of your software products worldwide?
Dongles - external hardware devices that usually attach to a PC's printer port - have long represented the most secure and commonly used method of protecting software from piracy. For developers, dongles are the best way for stopping copyright abuse and maintaining sales.
Dongles offer simple administration - just drop them into the software pack - and are as transportable as the software and hardware itself. More than 50,000 developers worldwide use dongles with their single-user and network applications. Like a sophisticated security system, the dongle provides protection - but most developers just don't want to publicise it.
Although their popularity continues to grow among the world's leading developers, dongle manufacturers are realising that more options must be made available for the global software market. The rapidly changing software business dictates that developers must have low-cost options for software-based protection, internet-based activation and electronic software distribution.
Software-only protection has existed for years. What has stopped it from entering the mainstream?
Traditionally, software-only protection has suffered from numerous problems, including cross-platform support issues, as well as a certain amount of inflexibility due to portability limitations. All of this adds up to a high cost of product activation and a low level of security.
Software-only protection also requires the fingerprint of the target PC. Fingerprinting is the technology used to identify unique components of a PC. This information must be securely encrypted in a controlled environment to create a protected software licence. It involves an exchange of data or a transaction between the developer and user sites.
Before the internet, the standard way to perform such a transaction was over the phone. Industry analysts estimate the average cost of phone call activation at #10 - a recurring administration cost every time another licence or facility is needed.
Enter the internet. Product activation - even product delivery - can occur via the Web at low cost. The internet makes software-only licensing economically feasible. Additionally, bandwidth problems that limit internet distribution will subside with the emergence of cable modems, faster speeds and compression technology.
The PC industry is seeing the emergence of a variety of software-only licence managers. These offer a wide range of licensing options and flexibility in their implementation, giving developers more ways for their customers to try, buy and use software.
Reliable fingerprinting of a standalone PC has proved to be a stumbling block to software-only control, particularly when a licence needs to be transferred. But the latest generation of licence management systems come with sophisticated utilities which enable the secure transfer of licences from PC to PC. Licence managers for PCs have countered by creating hidden data files on the hard disk to identify a PC reliably. This works well in low-risk markets such as the UK, but cannot securely provide licence enforcement for many foreign markets.
Today's developers enjoy a rapidly expanding market. Each international market represents a different risk and a different level of internet availability.
A worldwide licence manager solution must provide a mixture of software and hardware options. Only then will a developer have a complete solution for the global market.
Gary Clark is sales and marketing director of Rainbow Technologies.