V.i. Labs Doubles Customers in 2011; CodeArmor Intelligence Delivers More Than $100 Million in Revenue for ISV Customers

WALTHAM, Mass. -- (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Fueled by Independent Software Vendors (ISV) leaning heavily on software intelligence data for revenue recovery across compliance, sales and marketing teams, V.i. Laboratories, Inc. (“V.i. Labs”), today announced record growth in 2011, furthering its leadership in helping companies combat license overuse and software piracy. While doubling its customer base from 2010 to 2011, the Company’s CodeArmor Intelligence® also reached a major milestone by delivering more than $100 million in license revenue for customers.

“While the litigious approach to combating software piracy still exists, major ISVs have embraced the CodeArmor Intelligence strategy of approaching non-compliant users as potential new customers instead of adversaries. By employing this practice, and offering smart solutions for unlicensed use, our customers are seeing 80% conversion rates turning infringing organizations into compliant customers,” said Joseph Noonan, president and CEO of V.i. Labs. “Software business intelligence has become a necessary tool in dealing with the issues of software piracy and non-compliance, and its influence will continue to expand for software companies in 2012.”

The economy continues to find its footing in these unstable financial times. In particular, 2011 has continued to be a struggle for many companies looking to identify new business opportunities and new potential revenue streams. From a software sales standpoint, CodeArmor Intelligence helps take the guesswork out of identifying those prospects and provides ISVs with a means to approach these prospective new customers with business solutions, not legal threats. Using technology and strategy, CodeArmor Intelligence customers added more than $100 Million to their top lines in 2011.

2011 Highlights and Milestones

As the rate of software piracy continues to grow, V.i. Labs saw opportunities to improve its own products to meet customer demand and to open up new lines of dialogue with other industry sources. The highlights for 2011 include:

• In May, V.i. Labs’ Piracy Revenue Pipeline (a perpetually increasing number that represents real data aggregated from a sample of CodeArmor Intelligence customers on the potential actionable revenue from unlicensed use of their products) reached the $1 billion milestone mark. By December, these CodeArmor Intelligence customers had uncovered more than $2 billion in potential revenue.
• V.i. Labs teamed with Software Compliance Group to help CodeArmor Intelligence customers with their worldwide license revenue recovery efforts. By the end of 2011, Software Compliance Group’s partner network had recovered more than $70 million in license revenue for software vendors globally.
• In October, V.i. Labs hosted its Third Annual License Compliance Luncheon with over 30 software companies attending from the San Francisco area. The luncheon’s theme was best practices for creating a license compliance program to recover revenue from existing customers and new prospects. Featured presenters included executives from Synopsys, Deloitte & Touche LLP, AWR, and Software Compliance Group. A recording of the luncheon is available to software vendors: http://info.vilabs.com/license-compliance
• CodeArmor Intelligence 3.3 was released in October. This latest version of CodeArmor Intelligence was developed specifically for the Mac operating system, bringing V.i. Labs’ strong business software intelligence solutions to the fastest growing client operating system (OS).
• V.i. Labs launched its automated software compliance program to enable ISVs with millions of users to identify and communicate with illegal users in an effort to bolster new customer leads. The program is tied to a new CodeArmor Intelligence feature that alerts end users when they use pirated software and automates the process to become compliant customers.
• The Software Piracy Initiatives Forum sponsored by V.i. Labs on LinkedIn continued to grow and now has close to 300 members sharing and discussing the latest news and trends in responding to software piracy.
• Throughout the year, a series of webinars detailed marketing opportunities resulting from software piracy happening both domestically and internationally, educating attendees about how pirates are potential sales leads and discussing license overuse and settlement issues. All webinars can be viewed by visiting: http://www.vilabs.com/news-events/events-and-webinars/

“Our ISV customers have proven that the use of software business intelligence to uncover revenue opportunities and build long term customer relationships can happen without litigation,” said Victor DeMarines, vice president of Products, V.i. Labs. “With CodeArmor Intelligence now available for the Mac OS, ISVs now have another tool to identifying business prospects on this operating platform that is the fastest growing client OS.”

The Increasing Rates of Software Piracy

According to the latest Business Software Alliance/IDC Global Software Study, software theft exceeded $59 billion in commercial value in 2010. Based on aggregate customer data, V.i. Labs has found that the BSA/IDC piracy rate may in fact be too conservative and underestimating the true number of losses due to piracy. Data from sample CodeArmor Intelligence deployments also reveals:

• The CodeArmor software piracy pipeline is expect to grow to $4 billion within the next two years.
• While software piracy is a global and enduring problem, it is also an opportunity for vendors to convert some of their pirating customers into paying customers if they can identify the right prospects.
• Data continues to show that roughly half of the estimated revenue loss is actually a result of license overuse by active customers – additional copies of software they simply haven’t paid for. The other half is overt piracy coming from what can be labeled “prospective” customers.
• Besides the well-publicized piracy rates in China, Russia and Taiwan, the U.S. and Turkey make up the top five geographies. The top 10 (including Ukraine, Germany, Portugal, Canada and Australia) are listed on V.i. Labs’ Stat Watch page.
• Companies that launch internal compliance programs can easily make up between 10-25 percent of revenue that was otherwise considered lost.

About V.i. Laboratories (V.i. Labs)

V.i. Labs offers software providers solutions to identify, track, and create actionable intelligence on the use and misuse of their software to increase revenue. Its CodeArmor® platform is used by leading software providers to recover revenue lost to unlicensed software use, gain compliant customers and globally reduce the pirated use of their software applications. Customers have identified more than $2 billion in revenue recovery opportunities and are adding an average of 10 to 25 percent additional revenue to their bottom lines. V.i. Labs is privately held and headquartered in Waltham, Mass. For more information, please visit www.vilabs.com, follow us on Twitter (@vilabs), or read our blog, Code Confidential.

V.i. Labs also sponsors the Software Piracy Initiatives Forum on LinkedIn. The forum was created to give software vendors a venue for discussing these issues and to share their experiences to minimize piracy's impact on the industry.

©2012 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.