Hi there, I've been active in my own thread asking a couple questions relating to a consumer device that I wish to pursue. It's one of several things I've worked on, so I'd like to use this opportunity to toss out a question of sorts:

For one project, an influence has been the Bloomberg Terminal. The concept relates to aggregating large amounts of publicly accessible data, using a proprietary system of sorting and arranging, and then present the customer with a batch (folder?) of useful information relating to their business pursuits. It's kind of like a business intelligence / lead generation platform, but that's simplistic and misses the value of the concept.

Now, how this relates to hardware! As a musician I'm very familiar with the iLok USB-key concept used for certain software suites (some of which have gone cloud-based). This also gets back to the Bloomberg Terminal. Would pursuing a "Subscription Service Requiring Desktop Box/Key" type design be an initial Negative or Positive?

I do feel like this isn't exactly a hardware question, but with the amount of data and investment that would be involved to build the system in mind, having a physical, subscription component seems practical. I suppose that's about the extent I can describe at this point without getting explicit about how it works, what it works with, and who the target audience is/will be. My apology if it came out as a bunch of jibberish. Please feel free to ask for clarification or point out examples similar or drastically different. Thank you for your time!