Traditionally the LMR industry has been hesitant to embrace new innovations. As a significantly smaller market dominated by risk adverse government users, we haven’t seen as many new technologies emerge compared to larger commercial markets, such as cellular.
Given this landscape, the LMR manufacturers have had tremendous power over the market and have consistently promoted a purchasing model that benefits themselves, not the government agencies. Over the years, the industry has transitioned from a hardware-based to software-based pricing model. However, when this change was implemented 20 years ago, agencies had five software options available. Today, there are over 20 available software options to choose from.
Agencies are still paying for features today that they’ve paid for two decades ago – why? The answer is simple - because the LMR manufacturers can keep charging you - and they do. This buying model is outdated and we think it’s time the LMR market catches up with the rest of the consumer market.
Before today, every time you purchased a P25 portable or mobile radio you paid for the hardware plus all the software options. In some cases, the software options alone exceed 70% of the radio price. KENWOOD Viking® has transformed the way you purchase your radios with the perpetual software licensing program. This program adds greater value by extending the life of your software purchase into your next hardware platform - you own the software option forever.
Perpetual licenses are easily managed with Vault™, our free cloud-based tool. Vault is a complete radio and software license asset management platform that enables you to view and manage all of the radios in your fleet.
For each radio, you can view the radio type, assigned licenses, and their value. You can also create tags for a specific department or agency and assign those tags to different radios in order to filter by custom groupings. You can locate which radios are currently equipped with the selected license for both perpetual and standard licenses. The reporting function shows a record of all of your transfers including radio type, current and previous status, and the transfer date of each of your license transfers. Vault admins can even manage multiple agencies and customer accounts within Vault. When you retire or dispose of a radio, you can transfer your perpetual software licenses from the radio to your Vault account for future use. This way you are preserving up to $2,400 of the software licenses per radios to be re-used in your replacement radio.
Licenses in your Vault account can be transferred to a new radio through Armada® fleet management software. Any license that you own, but is not currently enabled on one of your radios resides in Vault.
We firmly believe that purchasing new hardware shouldn’t mean purchasing new software. Vault provides the lowest total cost of ownership and unsurpassed value for KENWOOD Viking P25 radios. Request additional information and free demo today to learn how your agency can benefit from perpetual software licensing.
