Electronic Software Delivery (ESD)

Top 5 Benefits

Products that help you "Keep it Digital!"

Ask any ten people what ESD is and you will get ten different answers, but at the core of it Electronic Software Delivery or Electronic Software Distribution is the term that is used to describe the ability for files or binaries to be downloaded from a central location. This is a very broad definition and one that includes very simple models such as a web page or FTP site. Most of the systems which are marketed as Electronic Software Delivery applications provide many more features, functions and integration. Indeed, high-end ESD systems are designed as much around business processes, integration and productivity as they are around delivery and customer satisfaction. In fact, these systems can also deliver marketing intelligence, early revenue recognition, support for regulatory and compliance issues and cost savings. It is therefore important to have a vision of what you are trying to achieve in order to sort through the business issues that you want solve with an ESD system.

The Ultimate Business Solution for Electronic Software Delivery

While it is not always beneficial to artificially segment products it is important to differentiate the class of products in order to ensure you target the right solution to fit your needs. OMS believes that ESD products and services can be easily classified into three groups based upon their functionality as follows:

• Class A – Basic ESD supports the fundamental goal of binary delivery,
• Class B – Intermediate ESD supports the enhanced delivery and can offer some security options,
• Class C – Advanced ESD supports only known or authenticated users. It also supports integration with current business processes and infrastructure and offers automation and customer-self service benefits.

It is also important to understand this is a hierarchy and therefore complexity and investment rise while total cost of ownership (TCO) decreases (when viewed within the larger business process) while return on investment (ROI) usually increases. TCO decreases as automation and integration rise and productivity gains increase since manual intervention is decreased and customer self-service opportunities increase. As costs decrease, overall business savings increase both in the near term and the longer term.

The ROI is increased by many indirect benefits such as customer satisfaction (having access 7/24 on demand), transaction logging (including context) for regulatory and revenue reporting, control (licensing and delivery only to entitled customers) and finally overall customer data enhancement (depth and quality).

As more business requirements are addressed, the impact is generally higher on infrastructure and processes. Also the implementation time and total investment are higher but the overall return on investment is greatly enhanced by scalability, flexibility and systematic benefits.

EntitleNow! is a Class C4 ESD application suite, meaning its addresses not only ESD but also a number of ESD related areas and can be deployed as an integrated solution or as individual applications. To find out more simply click on the hotspots in the picture to the right or choose the appropriate link at the bottom of this page.

OMS has packaged its applications along with infrastructure hosting and services to create EntitleNow!^™ The Ultimate Business Solution.  You choose the products and services that are right for you at this time.

Digital Product Lifecycle Management (DPLM)

The DPLM model identifies the 8 key steps of managing a digital product and its digital assets. It starts with the elemental build step where finished goods related to a product are brought together. Electronic finished goods or digital assets include the documentation, program executables and install files, release notes, CD and DVD Images and other final deliverables. In the configure step products are defined through software bills of materials (BOMs) to link structure, metadata (data about the digital assets) and content (actual files) together. Products are released and the deliverables must be made available to your customers.

The entitle step links product, order and customer data together for not only base products but updates and upgrades as well. The deliver step allows your customer to download deliverables on a self-serve basis. The install and control steps are focused on the initial licensing and any subsequent configuration changes that happen.

The present step is the eCommerce catalog presentation allowing your customers to see products and options. The transact step involves the actual sale and revenue collection processes. All these steps have processes, business rules and business systems which need to be considered when implementing Electronic Software Distribution (ESD) and eCommerce systems.

Click here to read more about our Digital Product Lifecycle Management (DPLM) model.