SMARTER STRATEGIES

Stealth 'Phone Home' Software Gets SaaS

R. Colin Johnson | Date: 07-01-10 | Comments

The software-as-a-service (SaaS) model enables even the smallest software vendor to not only identify and locate pirated copies of its applications, but also return business intelligence about popular features and facilitate transforming trial copies into licensed users.

Last year, V.i. Laboratories, of Waltham, Mass., introduced the world's first stealth "phone home" software module that independent software vendors (ISVs) can embed in their applications to locate pirates. Called CodeArmor Intelligence, the stealth module identifies unlicensed users running applications whose protection has been hacked, and then "phones home" to the vendor, reporting the identity and location of the pirate. The vendor can then offer the user a deal on buying a license for the software, and, if they fail to do so, cripple or disable the application.

New software from V.i. Labs allows companies to track how their programs are being used.

Now, V.i. Labs has extended its stealth module approach to legal uses of its software. The software tabulates for vendors which features are most used and assists in transforming users of trial copies into licensees. The new software-as-a-service (SaaS) model for CodeArmor Intelligence is also more affordable for smaller ISVs who do not want to maintain their own servers to receive and tabulate incoming calls from their software "phoning home."

"Until now, we had focused the company on the piracy problem�which is over a $50 billion problem worldwide�according to the International Data Group [IDG, Framingham, Mass.] and the Software and Information Industry Association �and we've had great success with really large software vendors who have taken our solution and embedded it into their applications," says Victor DeMarines, vice president of product development for V.i. Labs.

The new SaaS version, as with the original version of CodeArmor Intelligence, requires that the software vendor install V.i. Labs stealth code into its application, allowing it to "phone home." Now, however, instead of requiring the vendor to receive and tabulate that information with its own gateway server, V.i. Labs takes over that job under the SaaS model.

CodeArmor Intelligence provides detailed statistics about software usage to companies.

"Now we can provision and manage the code and infrastructure for the vendor, which gives us more flexibility to serve small businesses who only have a thousand or so customers, but who want to know about threats to their applications being misused, and who need assistance in deciding which features are most useful to their customers, as well as in converting trial users into licensees," DeMarines states.

The new SaaS model tracks both legal and illegal uses of a vendor's software, tabulates which features of its applications are most popular, and calculates whether trial copies are being used and under what circumstances.

"ISVs identify the features that have the most revenue potential, find out how much actual usage is during trial periods, and improve the rate at which trials lead to purchase," DeMarines concludes.