V.i. Labs Pioneers New Solution for Software Vendors to Combat Growing Piracy Problems
and Recover Lost Revenue
CodeArmor Intelligence quantifies the scope of piracy problems and gives forensic
evidence for lead generation and license revenue recovery
Waltham, Mass. — August 20, 2008 - V.i. Laboratories, Inc. (“V.i. Labs”),
a provider of software protection solutions for securing high-value and mission-critical
applications, announced a new anti-piracy strategy that gives software makers multiple
options to track, reduce and recover lost revenue due to piracy. CodeArmor®
Intelligence, built upon V.i. Labs’ software protection technology, enables independent
software vendors (ISVs) to identify which companies are illegally using their products
and gather hard, indisputable evidence necessary to recover that revenue.
ISVs are struggling to quantify the actual scope of their piracy problem. While
they may know which of their products have been cracked and made available in piracy
distribution channels, they rarely know how widely (or where) their applications
are actually being used by businesses.
“The EDA software industry in particular has been challenged to measure the true
piracy loss for its software. Piracy effects more than license revenue. It can have
significant ripple effects because the use of pirated software greatly reduces the
cost of created electronic devices,” said Scott Baeder, Anti-Piracy Committee Chairman,
Electronic Design Automation Consortium.
“The CodeArmor Intelligence solution is very important since it can give software
vendors a way to generate concrete evidence of unauthorized use and reduce the revenue
loss attributed to piracy.”
Software protection is one form of defense for ISVs. But the lack of data, complexity
in their customer base, product maturity, and market dynamics may require a detection,
reporting and lead generation strategy to recover license revenue. CodeArmor Intelligence
now provides a product approach that can be easily integrated into applications
to detect piracy threats and centrally gather forensic data and create piracy leads
to support sales and legal efforts to recover revenue.
“Our ISV customers have validated that a data gathering and lead generation product
can better meet their needs for applications that are well-established and widely
deployed,” said Victor DeMarines, vice president of Products for V.i. Labs. “By
adding Intelligence capabilities to CodeArmor, we enable ISVs not only to quantify
their specific piracy risk, but to target the actual users of pirated software to
convert them into paying customers.”
CodeArmor Intelligence is the first turnkey piracy detection and reporting system
that integrates with existing applications and
Salesforce.com, offering a dynamic method to collect, filter
and report on the use of pirated applications and create leads for sales, compliance
or legal teams. Currently, ISVs rely on licensing, activation or home-grown approaches
to gather data, which are easily detected, bypassed or disabled by piracy groups.
These home grown systems also lack filters and reporting schemes for the data collected
and are unable to organize and report the information in a way that can be used
to develop a piracy lead.
“Our research indicates that the average infringing organization has greater than
$17 million in revenue and more than 150 employees – clearly they are using pirated
software to generate their own revenue,” said Keith Kupferschmid, SVP, Intellectual
Property Policy & Enforcement,
Software
& Information Industry Association (SIIA). “Many of the leads we act on
come from insider or other sources. With V.i. Labs’ new technology, organizations
can potentially generate high-quality leads to accelerate efforts to recover revenue
from businesses using pirated software.”
How CodeArmor Intelligence Works
CodeArmor Intelligence adds piracy threat detection and reporting to ISVs’ applications
through a simple configuration program. If piracy or tampering is detected, CodeArmor
Intelligence communicates the infringement through stealth reporting technology
to multiple Web gateway servers within the ISV facility. Legal use of the software
does not trigger this functionality and does not impact the licensed customer base.
Infringement data is then integrated into the ISV’s instance of Salesforce.com,
enabling legal, product management, or other users to view a piracy lead dashboard,
report on non-compliant organizations and export infringement data. The Web gateway
component also allows vendors to integrate infringement data into their internal
CRM system. Organizations can either act on the data directly to recover revenue,
or enlist channel partners or legal services from the
SIIA or
Business Software
Alliance (BSA) to act on the leads.
Click here to view larger image
About the CodeArmor Platform
The CodeArmor platform provides a comprehensive solution that enables software providers
to ensure the integrity of their valuable or mission-critical applications using
software protection, threat detection, and reporting solutions.
- CodeArmor Software Protection for native Windows and Microsoft .NET applications
automatically secures software from piracy, code theft and malicious tampering threats
without requiring source code modifications and software development process changes.
It utilizes V.i. Labs’ patented technology to layer code encryption, anti-debug, anti-tampering,
and runtime execution monitoring to protect software wherever its deployed.
- CodeArmor Intelligence is a turnkey threat detection and reporting solution that
allows software providers to monitor, report and act on threats to their deployed
applications.
Availability/Pricing
CodeArmor Intelligence is available immediately. Pricing is based on an annual subscription
price starting at $50,000.
About V.i. Laboratories (V.i. Labs)
V.i. Labs provides software protection solutions that prevent the misappropriation
and theft of intellectual property resident in software applications. Through V.i.
Labs’ patented technology, software vendors, embedded system providers, enterprise
organizations and government agencies are able to easily detect, gather intelligence,
and protect against the threat of piracy, tampering and theft, independent of where
the applications are distributed. V.i. Labs is privately held and is headquartered
in Waltham, MA. For more information please visit
www.vilabs.com.
©2008 V.i. Laboratories, Inc. All rights reserved. V.i. Labs, the V.i. Labs logo,
and CodeArmor are trademarks or registered trademarks of V.i. Laboratories, Inc.
All other product and brand names herein are trademarks or registered trademarks
of their respective owners.
Contacts:
Michael Goff
V.i. Laboratories, Inc.
781.398.3451
mgoff@vilabs.com
Gene Carozza
PAN Communications
978.474.1900
vilaboratories@pancomm.com