Webinar

For software producers and hardware manufacturers alike, software-defined value is changing what a product can deliver long after the initial sale. 

In this webinar, discover how Teradyne is evolving from using software primarily as a hardware enabler to treating it as a strategic differentiator and platform for growth. You’ll hear how software can unlock new capabilities on existing hardware, help customers adapt as their requirements change, and create opportunities to deliver continuous value throughout the product lifecycle. 

The conversation explores the shift from one-time hardware transactions toward recurring software value, along with what that shift means for product, engineering, and operations teams. Learn why entitlements, usage insights, scalability, and customer experience become increasingly important as software takes on a larger role. You’ll also see how software-defined capabilities can improve time to value, increase utilization of existing hardware, and give customers greater flexibility without requiring disruptive hardware changes. Just as importantly, the discussion reveals why building a coherent software platform can create greater long-term value than developing disconnected features.

Whether you’re already monetizing software or just beginning the transformation, you’ll come away with practical lessons for building software into your product strategy earlier and more intentionally. Watch the webinar to learn how a software-defined approach can turn products into adaptable platforms that keep creating value for customers and your business

Software is evolving from an enabler to a strategic differentiator

Teradyne’s experience illustrates a fundamental shift for hardware manufacturers: software is no longer simply there to make the hardware work. It is becoming a strategic platform for differentiation. As customers operate across more teams, regions, and production environments, software can provide the consistency and flexibility needed to scale while creating new ways for manufacturers to differentiate products that might otherwise be defined primarily by hardware capabilities.

Software-defined hardware creates more adaptable products

One of the most compelling advantages discussed was the ability to evolve hardware after it has already been deployed. Instead of requiring customers to anticipate every future capability at purchase, software can enable configuration changes, expanded capacity, performance enhancements, calibration changes, and emerging requirements over time. That transforms a fixed hardware purchase into a platform capable of developing alongside the customer's needs.

Software can extend the value of long-lived hardware

Hardware can remain in service for a long time, while customer requirements, regulations, technologies, and use cases continue to change. Software helps bridge that mismatch. New functionality can be introduced on existing equipment without forcing customers into disruptive hardware replacement cycles, increasing the value that can be realized from an existing investment throughout its lifecycle.

Uptime and operational confidence remain essential

Adding software does not diminish the traditional expectations placed on mission-critical hardware. It adds another dimension to them. In semiconductor production, avoiding production disruption is critical, so software must deliver adaptability without compromising resiliency or predictable performance. The interesting challenge is therefore not simply delivering more features, but giving customers confidence that those capabilities can move from development into production reliably.

Different users require different software experiences

The webinar highlighted an important distinction between engineering and production environments. Engineering teams may prioritize customization and flexibility as they develop new products and solve complex problems, while production teams value consistency, scalability, and performance. Software provides a way to serve both needs through differentiated capabilities rather than forcing every customer and user into the same product experience.

Customer value goes beyond additional functionality

Some of software’s most interesting value emerged beyond the original goal of improving performance and scale. It can make migration to new solutions easier, reduce barriers to adoption, and help customers apply existing solutions to new use cases. This broadens the definition of software value from "more features" to making it easier for customers to change, expand, and extract more from the products they already use.

Faster time to value becomes a competitive advantage

Software can reduce the ramp-up required to use sophisticated hardware by simplifying the learning curve and allowing customers to work within familiar ecosystems. The resulting value is not simply convenience. Customers can get into production faster, improve productivity, transfer knowledge more consistently across teams, and reproduce outcomes across sites and geographies.

Usage data creates a feedback loop for customers and product teams

Software also introduces visibility that traditional hardware products may not provide. Usage analytics can show customers how products are being used, help expose additional use cases, and provide greater insight into utilization. For product, marketing, and leadership teams, those same signals can help measure adoption and inform the next generation of software capabilities. The webinar also acknowledged the practical challenge of collecting this information from air-gapped production environments.

Success metrics shift from point-in-time delivery to ongoing outcomes

As software becomes a larger part of the offering, the definition of operational success evolves. Safety and quality remain foundational, but transparency, repeatability, scalability, utilization, security, and adoption become increasingly important. Rather than judging success primarily at delivery, software providers can increasingly evaluate how predictably customers achieve outcomes, expand their usage, and gain value over time.

Software requires closer alignment across the organization

A software-defined product strategy changes more than the product itself. Product, engineering, and operations need to become more closely connected from design through implementation and production. Shared software foundations and best practices can create a more consistent experience across product lines while also supporting stronger security practices and reducing fragmentation between divisions.

Product-market fit matters as much as engineering capability

Being able to build software is only part of the equation. The webinar emphasizes understanding which capabilities matter to which customers and enabling them for the appropriate users. Because engineering teams and production organizations place value on different outcomes, strong software product management requires connecting features to specific customer problems rather than assuming that every capability carries equal value for everyone.

Software-defined capabilities open the door to more flexible commercial models

As capabilities can be enabled at different times for different customers and use cases, manufacturers gain more flexibility in how functionality is packaged and delivered. The discussion also touches on the challenge of aligning pricing with outcomes when customers derive different kinds of value. This makes customer segmentation, entitlement management, and understanding willingness to pay increasingly important to the broader software monetization strategy.

Individual features eventually need to become a coherent platform

One of the strongest lessons from the journey was that developing isolated software features may work in the short term, but it becomes limiting as the portfolio grows. The longer-term opportunity is a common platform where capabilities can be added and enabled as customers' needs evolve. That creates a more coherent portfolio for the provider and gives customers greater flexibility to adopt additional capabilities later.

The software foundation needs to be designed early

For hardware manufacturers earlier in their transformation, the clearest advice was to invest in the software foundation alongside hardware development rather than attempting to retrofit it once the product is mature. Architecture, flexibility, testing, and customer involvement all become harder to change after significant adoption. Treating software as part of the original product design creates more room to evolve both the product and its business model later.

Customers increasingly judge the complete hardware-software experience

The overarching takeaway is that software-defined value makes hardware easier to adopt, scale, and evolve, while helping create the confidence customers need to deploy solutions in demanding production environments. Hardware safety and reliability remain essential, but software quality and experience are becoming equally non-negotiable. Customers ultimately experience the combination as one solution, making end-to-end quality the standard hardware manufacturers increasingly have to meet.