These days more and more consumers expect things for free. Free e-mail, free credit reports, free software.

But what if you or your company slaved away on a great application only to have prospective customers steal it? And what would that mean for the development of more software? The incentive, the reward, has entirely vanished.

It doesn’t have to be this way. With the help of SafeNet (News - Alert) you can safeguard the software you worked so hard to build.

On Tuesday, September 17^th I’ll be moderating a Webinar diving into these issues of protecting intellectual property, “How the Software Industry is Evolving to Meet Customer Usage Expectations.”

SafeNet will be joined by noted IDC (News - Alert) analyst Amy Konary who “will discuss how to leverage pricing, packaging, licensing, and usage collection tools and techniques to deliver a truly next-generation software consumption experience without having to re-invent your offering as a service.”

Software licensing has changed greatly over the years. Many programs are still sold on a packaged basis. But more and more we are buying software on either a subscription or usage basis. Fortunately SafeNet can support all these approaches.

But let’s face it. These days more and more end users expect to get software for free, and there are many ways for them to do so. You need to protect your investment so all that programming is worthwhile and you have a clear and profitable path for your future projects.

To keep your software business viable, you must find the right way to protect your software and at the same time make its usage easy for legitimate users. And these days, one of the best approaches is usage-based pricing, which SafeNet can help you implement.

This Webinar and the SafeNet technology are perfect for anyone selling software, and who cares about:

• “Product Management
• Licensing and Pricing
• Engineering and Development
• Customer Support and Satisfaction
• Sales
• Operations and Manufacturing”

SafeNet has been in the business of protecting software for more than a quarter century, and services a myriad of software vendors and Fortune 500 enterprises.

In fact, the company has more than 25,000 customers.

Besides protecting software, SafeNet offers other software monetization tools. With SafeNet you can insure your company’s transactions are secure. You can also make sure the identities of your users and the software they use stays private. And, when your data gets moved around, SafeNet offers top-notch encryption.

SafeNet takes encryption seriously. The company today employs some 550 engineers specializing in cryptology.

These customers include Banamex, Bank of America, Cisco, Citigroup, Dell, Gap, Hewlett-Packard (News - Alert), Johnson and Johnson, Kaiser Permanente, Netflix, and Starbucks.