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Macrovision's FLEXnet Publisher 11 Provides Software Vendors With Automated Licensing Solution to Maximize Revenues and Better Satisfy Customer Demands

Posted on: Monday, 10 October 2005, 09:00 CDT

Industry Standard Licensing Platform Adds Major Features to Help Software Vendors Enhance the End User Experience, Increase Operational Efficiencies and Prevent Piracy

Macrovision Corporation (NASDAQ:MVSN), today announced the release of FLEXnet Publisher 11, a new version of the company's market leading and flagship software licensing solution relied on by thousands of software and hardware vendors and their customers. FLEXnet Publisher (FNP) 11 marks more than 18 months of market research, development and customer feedback focused on delivering major enhancements in licensing automation, piracy prevention and end-user experience. FLEXnet Publisher 11 enables software companies to more flexibly price, package, protect and manage their entire licensing lifecycle.

"We've distilled decades worth of experience into dramatic improvements in digital licensing enabling software vendors to automate all dimensions of the license lifecycle," said Macrovision CEO Fred Amoroso. "As the de facto standard in Software Value Management, the FLEXnet platform provides software and hardware vendors and their customers to get the most out of their software investments."

The software and hardware industries are experiencing rapid and dramatic change as new pricing and licensing models gain market acceptance, customers demand greater flexibility and manufacturers face increased pressure to maximize revenue opportunities. To survive and thrive during this evolution, software and hardware vendors need to effectively adapt their business models and fundamental processes to grow revenue and improve relationships with customers.

At the same time, vendors continue to face the persistent piracy and unlicensed software problem, which today results in billions of dollars of lost revenue annually according to the Business Software Alliance. In addition, according to the just-released industry report, "Key Trends in Software Pricing and Licensing," more than 70% of enterprises today either manually track software compliance or do not track compliance at all. (Editor's note: please see today's press release, "Second Annual Software Licensing Study Shows Compliance a Major Challenge for Enterprises.")

"Macrovision's Software Value Management solutions and best practices are designed to help vendors price, package and protect their software in a variety of flexible ways," said Amy Konary, Program Director, Software Pricing, Licensing, and Delivery, IDC. "With FLEXnet Publisher 11, Macrovision is responding to the needs of both technology companies and their enterprise customers for licensing automation, piracy prevention and streamlined software delivery."

"We're really happy with what we have seen and used with FLEXnet Publisher. The UI is really slick and the workflow is very intuitive. Moreover, the Operations Module's web services are going to help streamline its integration between our Oracle Financials and Siebel CRM applications. This will help us serving our customers by enabling them to manage their software assets through the FLEXnet portal, reduce our cost and increase revenue," said Svend Lysemose, Project Manager for Bruel & Kjaer.

FLEXnet Publisher gives software companies and hardware manufacturers who develop and integrate software into their products the ability to easily automate, customize and manage pricing, licensing, packaging and protection. Key benefits include the following:

Software and Hardware Vendor Benefits

-- Transferable licenses, enabling vendors to command a higher price per license

-- Enforceable volume licensing, enabling revenue recuperation from unlicensed use

-- Cripple pirated products, thwarting unlicensed use and casual copying

-- Pre-built license models, reducing time to release products

-- Self-service customer portal, lowering support costs

-- Automated licensing back-office with license generation, fulfillment and tracking fully integrated into all major ERP and CRM systems, reducing operational costs

Enterprise Customer Benefits

-- Self-service customer portal, providing IT organizations with visibility into their license inventory

-- Silent activations and on-the-fly activations, ensuring an exceptional end user experience with secure, hands-free license installation

-- Transferable licenses, enabling organizations to manage licenses like liquid assets that can be moved anywhere

-- Automatic compliance for volume licenses, enabling enterprises to be in compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley

-- Integration with the FLEXnet Manager solution to deliver reports on license usage and align with enterprise customers' license management, tracking and processes.

FLEXnet Publisher is a core component of Macrovision's FLEXnet(TM) line of Software Value Management solutions, which include software installation, updating, packaging, licensing, entitlement management, end user management, and usage optimization.

About Macrovision

Macrovision Corporation is the market leader in electronic licensing, installation, and digital rights management (DRM) technologies. Over 50,000 software vendors, publishers and virtually all of the Fortune 1000 companies use Macrovision's technologies to maximize the value of their software. Software Value Management solutions bridge the gap between pricing and packaging software on the developer side, and purchasing and managing that software on the enterprise side. Macrovision markets the FLEXnet Software Value Management platform which includes FLEXnet Publisher, the InstallShield(R) suite of software installation tools, and the AdminStudio application packaging and update solutions, which are deployed on more than 500 million desktops worldwide. Macrovision holds more than 910 software licensing, DRM and content protection patents worldwide. Macrovision is headquartered in Santa Clara, California and has offices worldwide. More information about Macrovision and Software Value Management solutions can be found at www.macrovision.com.

This press release may contain "forward-looking" statements as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. A number of factors could cause Macrovision's actual results to differ from anticipated results expressed in such forward-looking statements. Such factors are addressed in Macrovision's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2004 and its latest Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the period ended June 30, 2005, which are on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission (available at www.sec.gov). Macrovision assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.

Source: Business Wire

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