In today's economy, Software ISVs are suffering from variable demand, tighter operational controls and shrinking IT budgets and resources, prompting them to look for aggressive ways to cut costs and make their IT operations more efficient. This white paper aims to help readers evaluate the TCO of various options in choosing a software licensing vendor, including comparing the costs of in-house and other outsourced options vs. the hosted Nalpeiron Licensing Service.

1. Total Cost of Ownership and
Return on Investment model
for Software Licensing
A discussion document about the real costs,
risks and issues associated with Software
License Management solutions. Designed to
assist in business decisions about internal
development and 3rd party vendor selection.
Written by:
Jon Gillespie-Brown, CEO, Nalpeiron

2. Sources: IDC Research, Gartner Research, Software CEO and LinkedIn forums, Proformative, NetSuite, Sand Hill Group, Intacct
2
In today’s economy, Software ISVs
are suffering from variable demand,
tighter operational controls and
shirinking IT budgets and resources
Evaluate the TCO of the various
options in choosing a Software
Licensing Vendor including
comparing the costs of in-house and
outsourced options
A detailed review of the associated
and hidden costs of a Software
License Management System
3 4-6 7-10
A look at just some of the reasons
that customers have chosen
Nalpeiron over our competitors
The Nalpeiron Licensing Service™
has been built so you can deploy it
fast, with everything you need “out of
the box”
Remove the distractions of trying to
beat casual software theft and your
team can get on with making the best
software on the planet.
11 12 13
contents

3. ISVs today face profitability challenges from both internal
and external sources.
Factors such as variable market demand, rampant
piracy, new business models and increased competitive
pressures cause huge stresses on your business and cost
the industry billions of dollars each year.
At the same time, your customers are demanding new
ways of managing, understanding reporting on software
licensing usage. This in turn pressurizes ISVs to offer new
flexible business models such as usage, subscription and
software as a service to meet customer needs.
Software ISVs that embed software in the products using
hard-coded licensing terms and inflexible pricing models
have are having real difficulty responding to these
changing market demands.
One implication of shrinking resources is that it has never
been more timely or critical to understand the Total Cost
of Ownership (“TCO”) of software purchases. A TCO
analysis helps an organization understand and manage
the many inter-related direct and indirect costs involved
in managing and licensing a ISVs Software Assets.
A thorough analysis considers not only direct costs,
such as software licenses, maintenance, and required
hardware, but also indirect costs, such as software asset
management, desktop administration and end-user
support.
In addition, there are many “soft” costs that need to be
factored in when considering the licensing landscape
such as revenue recovery from piracy or overuse,
competitive issues and speed to market along with simple
opportunity costs from developing in-house licensing vs.
outsourcing.
In today’s economy, Software ISVs are suffering from variable demand,
tighter operational controls and shrinking IT budgets and resources,
prompting them to look for aggressive ways to cut costs and make their
IT operations more efficient.
3
The shifting
economic climate

4. A TCO Comparison
4
The purpose of this paper is to help readers evaluate the TCO of the various
options in choosing a Software Licensing Vendor including comparing the
costs of in-house and other outsourced options vs. the hosted Nalpeiron
Software Licensing Service™.
TCO Expense Areas
Capital Expenses
One important point is that
when considering the
investment required for
building a platform internally,
publishers often
underestimate the cost
unless they have already
tried this approach.
Source: IDC
Software Licenses
Direct costs for software license purchases, per user and/or per workstation, CPU, server, etc.
Software maintenance
Traditional annual maintenance costs for acquired software. Software maintenance costs are estimated at 25% of the
original purchase price per year for a three-year period.
New Hardware
Purchase costs for new hardware.
Hardware maintenance
All costs associated with acquiring and maintaining hardware servers and other infrastructure components necessary to
deploy, maintain, and manage the software. Hardware maintenance costs are estimated at 25% of the original purchase
price per year for a three-year period.
IT software
Includes all the software needed to run and maintain the IT systems.
To compare the TCO of the traditional Software License Management vendor and In-house development
with Nalpeiron Licensing Service ™, there are three main expense areas and additional strategic costs to be
considered:
• Capital Expenses
• Operating Expenses
• End-User Expenses
• Other “soft” costs
The following are the qualitative descriptions for each of these three areas.
It will provide readers with a guideline for developing a TCO comparison that will help them
determine which model is the best financial and strategic value for their application licensing
needs both near-term and longer-term.

5. 5
Operating Expenses
Tier 1-3 support
IT and Help Desk Operations associated with Tier 1-3 support.
Security
Costs associated with keeping the applications and data secure.
Desktop management
Costs to manage the desktop operations, including:
License Allocation/Provisioning – administrative costs associated with allocating, de-allocating, and re-allocating licenses
as project and staffing needs evolve.
Compliance – administrative costs related to license compliance: inventory, internal & external communication, true-ups,
etc.
Administration
FTEs and hours dedicated to deploying and administering the system, including the cost of packaging and deploying
the software, and keeping it current with the latest updates. Also include costs for unscheduled maintenance and outage
recovery of systems.
Management
FTE costs to evaluate and acquire new software as well as managing upgrades and vendors. This includes:
Evaluation – cost of searching for the right software, conducting the requisite due diligence on vendors and products and
comparing candidate solutions, vetting vendors and products with corporate architecture standards, etc.
Procurement – costs of processing an order, including negotiating a contract (legal), budgeting, order processing,
accounting, etc.
Vendor Management – costs related to the initiation and ongoing cultivation of a vendor relationship, including
administrative, legal, and operational: managing contracts, maintaining approved vendor lists, adapting to each vendor’s
support procedures, etc.
Budgeting
Costs to optimize allocation of new licenses and licenses under maintenance to projects, departments, and business
units. Also includes the cost of making special purchases outside of standard budgetary cycles.
User & IT Training
Costs of ensuring that the personnel responsible for managing the software are equipped with the right knowledge.
This primarily includes the groups responsible for first-tier support within the organization (Help Desk) and those groups
responsible for deploying the software.
Disposal
Costs to dispose of systems.
/Continued on the next page.
Benefits of using SAAS software survey
The savvy CxO will want
to bridge the future rather
than jump in and take the
massive risks associated
with changing business
models.
This means mixing old and new licensing
systems, and the need for a careful research
project on what works for existing and new
customers as well as the organization as a
whole.
As a first step to the future, one option is
to switch your licensing to a SaaS provider
so that you can start to see the benefits of
Saas yourselves! This may seem obvious but
many CxO’s don’t even know that they can
stop using outdated, inflexible and extremely
costly in-house or legacy software licensing
technologies as these have become so
embedded in their older processes.

6. 6
End User (Internal) Expenses
End-user training
Cost of user training. (Noting that a proper training plan will ensure that the various benefits – primarily productivity – that result from
training substantially outweigh the direct and indirect costs of training.)
Fixing
Costs associated with support, trouble-shooting, and fixing applications. This relates primarily to custom applications, where the
company is responsible for maintaining its own software. This area is where the productivity benefits of software tooling are counted,
together with the time spent troubleshooting software configuration issues in the tools themselves, which tends to increase with the
number of tools and vendors.
Downtime
Cost of downtime, including considerations for:
Time – costs of lost productivity while software evaluation, license allocation, and other parts of the process are taking place.
Other Inefficiencies – companies often pay a great deal for each tool, but are not able to maximize its use for a variety of reasons,
including sub-optimal or infrequent use.
Summary other forms of Costs
Opportunity costs
These can be very large indeed, but very hard to easily calculate. Indeed, these are really about strategic thinking
behind focusing on core competency and growing that way rather being a “jack of all trades”. There are some easy to
show hard costs like engineers dedicated to the licensing but this category should also include how well you could do
if you avoided non-core activity.
Speed to market costs
This breaks into several areas; one is the time it takes for your own team or an outsourced one to respond to your
initial requirements and then any changes in market needs. When considering outsourcing you need to consider the
on-premise vs. hosted models as relates to speed along with the initial setup times – these vary wildly and increase PS
costs significantly. For your internal development there is not only the fact you are likely to have limited resources to
make changes, they can also slow down the business as you wait for licensing work to complete – a big downside to
competitiveness.
Piracy and security costs
These relate to your markets and customers and could be very high if you are working with the consumer/international
or very low if you are mainly US enterprise focused. A look at the audience will help judge this but in general
outsourced vendors have far better technology for protection and show anywhere up to 10% revenue gains if piracy is
an issue.
Build versus buy decisions often
come down to cost. Either
approach is going to require an
investment.
Oftentimes, the decision comes
down to whether it makes more
sense to continue spending
money on maintaining a
homegrown system or outdated
product that isn't meeting the
need, or if investing in a third-
party solution that meets current
and future needs is a better
approach
Source: IDC

7. 7
Detailed review of the associated
costs for a Software License
Management system
Software License solution cost
Using the Nalpeiron Licensing Service switches the high
perpetual % revenue based costs of others to a lower annual
operational cost. Those costs are also fixed and transparent
vs. the constantly increasing % costs of the competition.
Capital Expenses
Software Maintenance & Updates
All the costs for maintenance and updates are included in
the annual fee structure of a hosted service saving a large %
cost of the license fee. On-premise solutions require ongoing
maintenance and those costs are usually over 18% of the
initial system cost.
New Hardware
No need for a capital expense for new hardware (servers,
switches, firewalls, load balancers etc.), all of which you will
need with competing on premise solutions. These costs can
easily run $100K per year. This also removes this cost from
your users and the overhead on your own sale costs making
you more competitive.
Database licenses
Licensing servers run on databases such as SQL server
and Oracle, you will need to provide for these license costs
unless you use a hosted service where this cost is included.
Again saving $10Ks per year.
Installation & Training
In the first instance your engineers will need training and
installation professional services to take delivery of the
licensing system if it’s an on premise based solution.
Nalpeiron’s solution is easy to use and cloud based so very
little training is required. There is no associated training fee.
Project Consulting Expenses
Most on premise solutions require some 3 months of
planning, consulting and related professional service costs,
often adding 30%+ to the base costs of the licensing
solution, often over $100K.
Development costs
If you choose to build your own solution, you will need the
above costs plus the time and cost of internal development.
This is usually in the region of $250-500,000 for the initial
cost for an enterprise solution.

8. 8
IT and Help Desk operations
support costs
Supporting your own or a 3rd party licensing solution has
ongoing costs. The great benefit of a hosted, easy to use
system like Nalpeiron is this cost is reduced significantly due
to lack of hardware or software required – it’s all in the cloud
and available 24x7x365.
Operating Expenses
Desktop Management and
Administration
Costs associated with deploying, provisioning, re-
provisioning, inventory tracking and license
compliance efforts can be surprisingly high. Once again the
basic concept of a hosted service is that is removes this
complexity and has the added benefit of being always up to
date (with no need for staff to install updates and patches)
and its scalable on demand.
Software License Management
This can be a complex and demanding task to manage the
licensing of your own and then your end users licenses.
Nalpeiron removes this headache by providing instant
analytics and reporting for both you and your users licensing
and time you need it with a simple button click.
Internal User and IT Training
Nalpeiron uses a simple and standard API across platforms
and technologies making the internal user training overhead
as low as possible and far easier than competitor’s solutions.
The same goes for your end users, our “one click” processes
make end users lives easy and the UX is in 8 languages.
Data center costs (Bandwidth,
backup, etc)
If you choose to host your own or a competitive solution
you need to consider the costs associated with a data center
as well as your own staff. These can easily run $100K per
year per server install. All included in the Nalpeiron hosted
service.
User Management Expenses
End-user Training & Support
Nalpeiron uses a simple and standard API across platforms
and technologies making user training overhead as low as
possible and far easier than competitor’s solutions. The
Nalpeiron “one click” processes make end users lives easy
and the UX is in 8 languages. Additionally, your end users
get access to a variety of self-service materials helping to
reduce costs associated with end-user training.
Downtime
Cloud software architectures are designed from the ground
up for maximum network performance, so they frequently
deliver better application-level availability than conventional,
on-premise solutions.
End user license support
The Nalpeiron hosted service has been designed to be the
most user-friendly solution today offering two offline and
self-service methods for licensing radically reducing user
license costs that are generally far higher than the solution
cost itself. Additionally, Nalpeiron provides you with a call
center UX so you do not need to develop an internal system
for your own staff to manage your users.
Fixing
Nalpeiron relieves internal staff with the constant need for
fixing your internal licensing solution; we do that for you,
freeing your staff to focus on your core products. This is
especially important with licensing as the environment is
hostile and crackers are a constant drain on resources to
counter their activity.

9. 9
Opportunity costs
ISVs grow revenue and stay competitive by delivering
new features and functionality to meet customer
demands.
When ISVs dedicate technical staff resources to
development of an in-house licensing system, they
can drain their core development efforts and delay
time to market for new products.
Most likely, any money perceived as saved by building
a software licensing solution internally will be more
than offset by the diversion of key resources away
from the core business.
The best way to optimize productivity is to keep
development resources focused right where
they should be: on differentiating products in the
marketplace.
These lost opportunity costs are the highest of all,
often running into $M’s. In addition, Competitive
Differentiation Costs relative to a home grown
solution can be hard to measure but also critical to
the business.
With a home grown solution you will likely be losing
the flexibility to respond on a dime to market/customer
demands to be able to flexibly price & package your
products the way the end users want to buy them
and this means losing the leverage to beat out the
competition.
Using outsourced licensing gives you the ability
compete more effectively and removes the lost
opportunity cost.
Other forms of Costs
Speed to market costs
In today’s highly competitive market speed is of
paramount importance, delays to projects mean
delays in revenues. Worse, they drive up costs and
open the market to competitors – you need to get
your best products in the customer’s hands as fast as
possible.
Many things cause delays - don’t let one of those is
the non-core activity of licensing that is often left to
the end of the project and has inherent risks of internal
staff failing to deliver or leaving with their expertise
and holding the rest of the development team up.
Also, the difference between a premise-based license
solution and a hosted one is usually more than 3
months of additional time lag and extra professional
services cost.
Piracy and security costs
Rampant piracy and unlicensed use cost the industry
billions of dollars every year, making this one of the
top challenges that technology companies face.
The Business Software Alliance estimates that
worldwide $30 billion worth of software is pirated
annually, with rates in the U.S. and Western Europe
estimated at 23 percent and 36 percent, respectively.
Piracy tactics are constantly becoming more and more
advanced, requiring vendors to stay continuously on
top of their anti-piracy measures.
Remaining abreast of current piracy methods,
protecting against them, keeping in-house licensing
systems updated and legally enforcing compliance
can add considerably to the piracy-related expenses,
which can be a significant hit to the bottom line.
Nalpeiron customers who have switched from home-
grown licensing have reported gains of 10% of
revenues or more.
Source: IDC
A software publisher's understanding of its core competencies with
regards to building and maintaining a licensing technology platform
is often a key driver in the build versus buy decision. Some
publishers may believe that since the company's core business is
developing software, this capability can and should be extended to
software-based licensing technologies. Executives at other publishers
may come to the conclusion that although developing software is a
core competency, developing and maintaining a platform of licensing
technologies is not.

10. 10
Capital Expenses
Internal Costs 3rd party vendor
Software License Solution Internal development
costs and support
1-2% revenues
Software Maintenance &
updates
Internal development
costs and support
% of license fee
New hardware $100K+? $100K?
Database licenses $10-100K? 1-2% revenues
Installation & Training N/A % of license fee
Project Consulting Expenses N/A % of license fee
Development Costs $250-500K+? N/A
Operating Expenses
Internal Costs 3rd party vendor
IT and Help Desk operations
support costs
Higher, not cloud based
Desktop Management and
Administration
Higher, not cloud based
Software License Management Higher, not cloud based
Internal User and IT Training Higher, not cloud based
Data center costs (Bandwidth,
backup, etc)
$100K+? p/year N/A
User Management Expenses
Internal Costs 3rd party vendor
End-user Training & Support Higher, not cloud based Higher, not cloud based,
poor offline support and
user technology
Downtime Higher, not cloud based Higher, not cloud based
End user License Support Higher, not cloud based Higher, not cloud based
Fixing $100K+? p/year N/A
Other forms of costs
Internal Costs 3rd party vendor
Opportunity costs Very high No costs
Speed to market costs Very high Higher, not cloud based,
old technology
Piracy and security costs Variable, 10-40% loss >10% revenue
Nalpeiron
Nalpeiron
Nalpeiron
Nalpeiron
Fixed based on
product subscriptions
Included
No costs
No costs
Not required
Not required
No costs for licensing
Very low
Very low
Very low
Very low
Not required
Very low, easy to use,
lots of offline and cloud
based options
99.999% uptime
Very low
N/A
No costs
No costs
>10% revenue
Higher, not cloud based
Higher, not cloud based
Higher, not cloud based
Higher, not cloud based
TCO worksheet to compare costs of various options Conclusion
While it’s hard to quantify every cost in this simple
analysis this documents purpose is to highlight the
very many often overlooked costs associated with
selecting the most cost effective path.
It’s often tempting as a Software ISV to consider
building the non-core licensing functionality yourself
when looking to control your Software assets. In many
ways it appears to make sense, you are an expert in
Software development and this is an important part of
your product requirements. However, often many of
the issues of building in-house are overlooked.
In particular the costs and business risks are under
estimated according to Gartner. In our estimation
any internal development project will cost $250-
500,000 per year if you include all the engineering,
support, licensing, server and related support costs
vs. outsourcing usually at a fraction of this cost.
If you discount an internal build and look to find
a vendor then these considerations may help you
choose between the options.
Since adding the Nalpeiron
protection we have
experienced a 15% growth
in international markets, 8-
10% of which we attribute
to having the Nalpeiron
protection in place.
Thomson
Reuters

11. 11
Just some of the reasons that
customers have chosen Nalpeiron
over our competitors...
Technically superior
In many cases our Customers simply find our platform offers a far superior
technical solution to their needs. NLS covers all major platforms, 8 languages,
an extensive API to connect everything and totally flexible way to sell and
manage your software.
Nalpeiron offers a faster ROI
Saving engineering, operational and capital costs over an in-house or
competitive solution usually shows ROI in months not years. Our hosted
solution also offers a transparent and cost effective pricing plan.
Nalpeiron drives revenue
As well as offering the obvious means to control licenses and boost revenue
that way, Nalpeiron also offers a complete range of marketing tools that
focus sales on hot leads, offer product marketing useful reporting and allows
marketing to create new sales from automated systems to tap revenue
leakage and more.
Modern way to license your software
Nalpeiron offers you the choice to outsource all of the difficult and expensive
infrastructure associated with licensing; this is the modern way to run a
Software ISV, allowing you to focus on your core business while Nalpeiron
hosts the licensing.

12. 12
Our 20 year Software
Licensing Industry pedigree
Nalpeiron was the first to offer a cross platform, cloud-based, licensing service that allowed our Customers
to remove the need for all the costs, time and hassles of setting up their own licensing infrastructure. Today
we have expanded our offering to encompass not only basic licensing but also extensive marketing and
reporting functions that add even more value to our Customer’s business - driving new revenues from
Software Copy Protection, trial optimization, piracy revenue recovery and sales tools.
About Nalpeiron
...it is no coincidence that the Nalpeiron Licensing Service™ is the choice of
100s software developers worldwide including Reuters, Unisys, Symantec,
Zebra and Texas Instruments.
Nalpeiron was the first to offer a cross platform, cloud-based,
licensing service that allowed our Customers to remove the
need for all the costs, time and hassles of setting up their own
licensing infrastructure.
At the time outsourcing to hosted services like ours was in its
infancy and we lead the charge to lowering costs and speeding
time to market for Software ISVs.
Nalpeiron today leads the way not only advanced cloud based
licensing but also in extensive marketing and reporting features
that drive revenue growth for our customers like nothing else
available.
Nalpeiron has also spent years with millions of end users
perfecting the most robust but user friendly activation process
available today – it offers users ease of use and access to their
records, while offering you the ISV the lowest operational
costs.
With 100’s of Software ISVs, large and small, across the world
we are the partner of choice for anyone looking for modern
licensing solutions in the cloud.
Nalpeiron is a privately held corporation based in the US and
the UK.
To be clear, the Nalpeiron Software Licensing Service is a ‘pure’ cloud-based solution. This means first of all
your customers software activations are taking place and being kept securely in the cloud, freeing you from the
cost and hassle of server deployment and its associated on-going maintenance overheads to your business.
Not only this but all your access and control is done anytime, anywhere, by your staff via an intuitive web-based
user interface. The same goes for your reseller channel and end user support, no need for you to setup or
maintain any of these important services.
Nalpeiron was responsive,
professional and fully understood
business and enterprise software
requirements. What would have
taken three weeks for our previous
licensing provider to achieve is taking
Nalpeiron one day.
John Safa
Development Director. SDL PLC
12

13. 13
Why use a Cloud-based
Licensing Solution?
Rapid time to value: The Nalpeiron Licensing Service
lets you get up and running quickly. The suite provides
multiple editions, pre-packaged reports and dashboards,
free source code, and a out-of-the-box solution based on
20 years of industry experience. No need to setup, deploy,
manage or maintain licensing servers. You can be up and
running within days not months.
Bullet-proof security: The Nalpeiron Licensing Service
Cloud provides an industry leading security infrastructure
for ensuring physical security, data encryption, and
application security.
Subscription-based pricing: Pay as you go, on an annual
basis, unlike conventional systems where you have to
make a major up-front investment in licenses, hardware
and software. You benefit from better cash flow and far
greater IT flexibility.
Focus on your competency: No need to keep up with the
crackers and hackers, or the constant technology changes -
let Nalpeiron take the burden of software licensing, freeing
you to focus on your business instead.
Lower risk: Licensing is integral to the success of your
Software business and therefore getting the right supplier
to support your long term objectives is critical to reducing
risk to your business. Nalpeiron reduces the risks of
licensing staff leaving and lack of in-house licensing agility.
Low cost and time overhead: Lower capital costs and
switching CAPEX to OPEX to smooth the cash flow
requirements. No need to keep expensive resources in
house for non-core functions. Upgrades, maintenance
and system administration take place in the cloud and are
managed by Nalpeiron, so you don’t have to spend nights
or weekends supervising a new version upgrade or a failed
server.
High availability: Cloud software architectures are designed
from the ground up for maximum network performance, so
they frequently deliver better application-level availability
than conventional, on-premise solutions.
High performance: Supporting millions of users and 100’s
world class clients Nalpeiron’s cloud licensing architecture
delivers virtually unlimited performance scalability. There
are practically no limits to how many users you can have or
the number of licenses that can be activated.
Ease of access at anytime, and from anywhere: Cloud
computing is “always on,” making it easy to grow your
business and support remote workers and locations, or
support a highly mobile sales or service team, because
people can access the cloud any time, day or night,
from any browser, desktop or mobile device. You, your
distribution channel and your end users can all access the
service 24x7x365, anywhere in the world.
Measure and report license activation and usage: Get a
clear picture of the products and features actually being
activated and used. Use the extensive business intelligence
tools to get an edge over the competition, analyze metrics
and performance.
Nalpeiron Software Licensing™has been built so you can deploy it fast, with everything you need “out of the box”, so you can
transition as painlessly as possible and start reaping the benefits right away. As it’s a hosted license management service, you don’t
have to worry about the time, cost and hassle of server deployment nor the complexity of connecting the client/server architecture.
With outsourcing your non-core activities like Software Licensing come many benefits. Now you can remove the distractions of trying
to beat casual software theft and your team can get on with making the best software on the planet. Focus your R&D resources on
what they do best, leave targeted marketing of trial users, licensing, activation and license management to Nalpeiron.
All the benefits of a hosted cloud-based solution:

14. Want to know more?
Don’t hesitate. Get in touch...
Toll free:+1-888-800-8818 (US only)
www.nalpeiron.com
+1-650-799-3479 (Canada/World)
+44-207-788-7843 (EMEA)
+1-650-352-9046 (Fax)
The Nalpeiron Licensing Service™ is a comprehensive platform that enables software publishers to create a range of flexible ways to sell and
market their software, with coverage for all the major platforms and the ability to choose whether to deploy software licensing infrastructure in
the cloud or on-premise. Nalpeiron is one of the strongest and most robust complete solutions on the market that supports millions of end users
with strong but friendly ways to monetize your software.
What is the Nalpeiron Software Licensing Service?
Nalpeiron Inc
2225 E. Bayshore Road
Suite 200
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USA
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