Wibu-Systems at Hannover Messe 2022: Back to the industrial future

After a two-year hiatus, Wibu-Systems, the IT security, protection, and licensing specialists from Karlsruhe, are returning in person to Hannover Messe from 30 May to 2 June for a busy and exciting four days of networking, discovery of new technologies, and introduction of Wibu-Systems’ own innovations to an enthusiastic audience. Coinciding perfectly with the Hannover Messe’s thematic focus of industrial transformation, the company’s expo team (at hall 5, booth B43) is looking forward to talking about the potential of subscription-based business models, versatile online and offline licensing options, and the importance of certificates for secure identities in the digital realm.

Wibu-Systems is coming to Hannover Messe 2022 with a strong portfolio of hardware, software, and cloud products and services built around its flagship CodeMeter technology. Wibu-Systems’ representatives are particularly excited about the chance to speak about the more intangible qualities of their solutions: The ability to enable new business models with smart licensing schemes and help the evolution of a new industrial landscape centered around trustworthy, integer, and secure identities.

Secure licenses have been the key to Wibu-Systems’ success for the last three decades, and they remain the go-to method for securing invaluable IP. From its roots in software licensing, the CodeMeter technology has made the leap to the industrial world with industry-grade protection hardware for embedded devices and machine controllers. As the vision of Industry 4.0 is becoming a reality, manufacturers and their clients are looking for ways to secure and monetize their digital assets on their journey from design to the factory and ultimately to the retailer chain. The flexible licensing models provided by CodeMeter are the perfect solution, enabling a myriad of possibilities: Temporary or pay-per-use licenses, single-feature and feature-upgrade licenses, single-user or network licenses, and many other models, that can also work in offline scenarios, which are not uncommon in a manufacturing world in transition.

Subscription licenses are increasingly recognized as far more than a means to protect IP, but as genuine business enablers. As another technology that has emerged from the software world, where subscriptions are already the norm for many mass-market applications or software suites, subscription licenses are an excellent way to get complex and often expensive hardware into more widespread use, as the often prohibitive investments needed to buy such devices outright are removed and offset by the option of essentially renting them for a more manageable annual or monthly fee, or pay-per-use scheme. CodeMeter’s licensing options give manufacturers free rein to find the package that suits them best, from straightforward lease subscriptions to more carefully modelled offerings. This could include the option to buy or subscribe to a basic feature set and then activate additional features on the fly and in response to actual needs.

Licenses are only one side of the equation for a secure and trustworthy digital industrial future. Digital certificates also feature prominently in Wibu-Systems’ plans for Hannover Messe 2022, as they are the perfect means to securely identify devices, users, and everything else needed to make the digital economy work. Their usefulness has never been doubted, but the effort to create, distribute, and manage certificates has always been just complex enough to become too high a threshold for many users. And in the smart factories, this complexity only increases, as every actor, device, and object in the process chain must have a secure and authenticable identity, issued by a trusted certification authority, protected from tampering, and easily accessed for authentication in the field. CodeMeter Certificate Vault is Wibu-Systems’ solution to this conundrum, bringing the ease and comfort of Wibu-Systems’ flagship licensing technology to the world of certificates to streamline the management and distribution of licenses.

On this topic, Stefan Bamberg, Senior Key Account & Partner Manager at Wibu-Systems, will address the crowd in his talk "Can you identify yourself? Secure identities in practice". The lecture will take place on May 31 at 11:15 a.m. on the Tech Transfer Conference Stage in Hall 2 at Booth A60.

“While we have our spiritual and physical home in the great IT security and innovation community of Karlsruhe, Hannover Messe is something of a home away from home for us,” Oliver Winzenried, CEO of Wibu-Systems, noted. “With the help of CodeMeter, we believe that all manufacturers, of any size, economy, and industry, that are embracing digital transformation, can find their way forward, with a servitization approach that meets their clients’ demand and with their IP fully protected across the complete product lifecycle.”