Licenses With Daily Time Fencing

Despite useful features offered by software, sometimes software pricing and packaging repel consumers and demotivate them to even take the first step of evaluation. Rarely, we have seen software/hardware used for the full 24 hours of a day but still, as a consumer, I am paying for the 24 hours of the day. At the same time, as a cloud software vendor, I know my customer is not using cloud applications for 24 hours but still, I am paying the infrastructure provider for 24 hours.

On the 23rd of July, 2024, we brainstormed about the problem and identified a solution. License with daily time fencing can help consumers by offering them a cheaper license and can also help ISV in infrastructure demand forecasting and implementing eco-design.

Introduction

There are many scenarios where a license with daily time fencing can help.

Scenario 1: Industries to Implement Eco-Design

Our societies are evolving with more awareness of the impact of climate change and countries across the globe are looking for a carbon-neutral economy. This results in the demand for carbon credit-linked machine usage. To support this, machine vendors need a mechanism that allows industries to use the machine for a specified duration of a day. The machine vendor will issue a license having daily time limits to the industry. It will be computed based on how much GHG (Green House Gas) the machine produces per hour and how much carbon credit the industry has.

Over time, it can be made dynamic by industry feeding carbon-credit information to machine vendors. This enables machine vendors to automatically issue a new license that enables industries to use the machine for more hours in a day.

Scenario 2: BPO Working in Multiple Shifts

BPOs across the globe provide 24-hour support to business users. But all centers don’t have the same number of employees. Suppose there are three centers, and each is working for 8 hours slot. 

In the above scenario, traditionally BPO purchases a 200-seat license with 24 hours daily consumption. But with daily time-fenced licenses, ISV can offer three different licenses.

1. L1 (India) – 100 seats with daily time limits (00:00 to 08:00)
2. L2 (Philippines) – 200 seats with daily time limits (08:00 to 16:00)
3. L3 (Brazil) – 50 seats with daily time limits (16:00 to 00:00)

Let’s compute the cost assuming the 8-hour license per seat cost is $5.

• Traditional license cost: (24 / 8) * (200 x 5) = $3,000
• New license cost: (100 + 200 + 50) x 5 = $1,750

In addition to this cost saving for a consumer, ISV will get better transparency with 350 distinct users instead of 200 users.

Scenario 3: Maintenance/Support License 

Software consumers can purchase 24-hour support or business-hour support (9 AM to 5 PM). 24-hour support is more expensive than 8 business hours. 

ISV can implement a support module in their application based on the license.

Scenario 4: Work-Life Balance License

Work-life balance is an inescapable goal of an organization and with 24-hour available cloud software, it is getting difficult for organizations to enforce it. This is a sheer waste of resources as infrastructure is live at 100% capacity.

Daily time-fenced licenses can help organizations strike a work-life balance for employees and at the same time optimize the use of office resources.

Solution in Nutshell

 Three new fields can be introduced in a license that supports daily time fencing. 

• DailyStartTime
• DailyEndTime
• DailyTimeConsumptionLimit

• Case 1 license with fixed time in a day with no limit on daily consumption:

•  Case 2 license with no fixed time in a day but a limit on daily consumption:

•  Case 3 license with fixed time in a day and limit on consumption as well:

Note: In all examples above, the license is valid for a full year (e.g., LicenseStartDate: 01-Jan-2024, LicenseEndDate: 31-Dec-2024, and above new properties are just influencing daily consumption).

Flow Chart

Conclusion

Licensing strategies enable ISVs to expand their customer base by offering cost-effective solutions to customers in a cost-effective manner. Daily time-fenced licenses helped consumers in selecting a license that truly represent their usage (less than 24 hours). It helps ISVs in forecasting their infrastructure needs.