This study covers the size, trends, competitive landscape, and growth strategies for the global software license management (SLM) market.

Software licensing enables software monetization strategies and requires license enforcement, entitlement management, and software protection. Companies traditionally sold SLM systems as anti-piracy solutions, but today they are monetization solutions for business models and the user experience. This market is highly saturated, with its top 3 vendors cornering more than 80% of the market share.

The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed how businesses operate, such as enabling remote/hybrid work environments as well as using more intelligent devices to build greater resilience into operations as they deal with crippling workforce shortages. These factors, along with the continued popularity of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)-based solutions and proliferation of intelligent devices, have created more awareness among software publishers and their customers about using entitlement management and license enforcement as businesses scurry to ensure that employees and processes have access to the software tools they need. Publishers are now leveraging insights from the data collected by SLM solutions to help with contract renewal negotiations and to uncover upsell opportunities.

Frost & Sullivan expects this market to experience healthy growth during the forecast period (2022–2028) as publishers continue to transition away from homegrown and custom-built SLM solutions and increasingly deploy anti-piracy and counterfeiting initiatives.

Author: Mukul Krishna