I recently read an article where Symantec claims that Virtualization could end long term software licensing in favor of a pay per use model – which could even be paid per day, hour or even second.
Because usage can be monitored for each instance the software is used you only pay for actual usage. I tend to think that vendors will have a hard time agreeing to this type of licensing agreement as they stand to lose – long-term – in this scenario.
Software licensing models certainly don’t change overnight, look at how long vendors are taking to even minimally adjustments to virtualization – this type of pay per use model is (at the very least) not ready for prime time anytime in the near future.