Licensed to Thrive: A Due Diligence Roadmap for Would-Be Software Licensors

There is no shortage of companies seeking to license software to third parties. Exhibit A: the explosive growth and popularity of software as a service (SaaS) solutions. According to a recent report by Synergy Research Group, the enterprise SaaS market now generates quarterly revenues for software vendors in the neighborhood of $20 billion, with that figure on pace to expand annually by 32%. An optimistic outlook, to be sure, and one shared by the research and advisory firm Gartner, which estimates that SaaS companies will grow to $99.7 billion by 2020.