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Changes to the Licensing Increment?

caddcop
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I am assisting another firm with their licensing setup. They are telling me that the licensing increment of 1 hour is being revised to 10 minutes.Can I get a definitive statement on this from Bentley.

Is the one hour increment still in effect or has the policy been changed?

TIA

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  • 0 Offline
    Hi CADDCOP, we are indeed in the process of revising the hourly increment to a 10 minute interval. The changes are expected to go into effect for invoices for this quarter (which are billed in the first week of July). Official announcements are in process and should be released shortly.

  • 0 Offline in reply to Elisabeth Jaouad

    Wow, I just heard of the changes Bentley made. This is good news.

    Many of us thought the pooled licenses under the select program would act as concurrent licenses. They were not. Now they almost are. Common sense can be used now to forecast the license usage :) The new "10 minute intervals" help a lot, and there's more behind it.

    Before: The usage was binned into calender hours

    A User on PC A opens a session 10:02 and ends 10:08

    A User on PC B 10:18 - 10:42

    A User on PC C 10:35 - 10:40

    A User on PC D 10:52 - 11:10

    Common sense would make you believe that the peak usage was 2 licenses: PC B and C between 10:35 -10:40 overlapped with usage. But Bentley counted different. 4 different PC's within the same calender hour "10:00 - 11:00" =4 license usages! This was really hard to explain to user groups.

    From now on: The usage is now binned into 10 minute slices: Minute 1-10, 11-20, and so on. Only usages filling such a bin completley will start the count! What happens to the usage:

    A User on PC A opens a session 10:02 and ends 10:08 - does not count, because less than 10 minutes use. no license usage.

    A User on PC B 10:18 - 10:42 - counts as usage in slices 10:21-10:30, 10:31-10:40. the first 2 minutes are ignored

    A User on PC C 10:35 - 10:40 - does not count, because less than 10 minutes.

    A User on PC D 10:52 - 11:10 - counts as usage in slice 11:01-11:10. the other minutes are ignored

    Result: one license used!!

    More surprising: Changed after DanielB corrected another time:

    PC E: Usage from 7:15 - 08:10 , fills 5 slices between 7:21-08:10

    PC F: Usage from 7:22 - 7:39, fills no slice completely - no usage counted more than 10 minutes usage, will be counted in the 7:30 - 7:40 slice

    Result: one license used!! Two licenses used

    This is a dramatic change. Bravo! Even if users don't get the idea - what Bentley counts is less than common sense would tell. (note: AFAIK ELS subscription does not change the mechanism - usage blocks a license until midnight)

    Bigean

    Added after input Daniel B.:

    PC E: Usage from 7:15 - 08:10 , fills 5 slices between 7:21-08:10

    PC G: Usage from 7:22 - 7:41, fills 2 slices 7:31-7:40 and 7:41-7:50

    2 licenses used

    Still fair comparing it to "real concurrent count"

  • 0 Offline in reply to Bigean
    That's not entirely accurate. Any usage at the beginning of the session that doesn't fill up its 10-minute window will indeed not count towards the peak usage. Counting will start with the first full bucket. However, any usage after that first full bucket will count towards the peak in each 10-minute window. In other words, we drop partially filled windows at the beginning of a session, but not at the end of the session.

    Still, the number of resulting licenses counted in your examples seem to be correct. You're right in saying that it's a dramatic change and it is a tremendous benefit for Term License subscribers.

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  • 0 Offline in reply to Bigean
    That's not entirely accurate. Any usage at the beginning of the session that doesn't fill up its 10-minute window will indeed not count towards the peak usage. Counting will start with the first full bucket. However, any usage after that first full bucket will count towards the peak in each 10-minute window. In other words, we drop partially filled windows at the beginning of a session, but not at the end of the session.

    Still, the number of resulting licenses counted in your examples seem to be correct. You're right in saying that it's a dramatic change and it is a tremendous benefit for Term License subscribers.

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  • 0 Offline in reply to DanielB

    Unknown said:
    That's not entirely accurate. ... In other words, we drop partially filled windows at the beginning of a session, but not at the end of the session.
     

    Thank you! I changed my post to reflect that.

    Now, let's dig deeper. Using products released before August 2015, and licensing via deployed SELECTServer do not fully "benefit" from this, although the 10 minute slices also work for their usage. What does that mean in detail? What are the missing benefits?

  • 0 Offline in reply to Bigean

    As described in the Term License Fact Sheet, the change to the interval only applies to usage sent to the Bentley-hosted SELECTserver.  Accounts using a locally deployed SELECTserver will continue to count peak usage based the calendar-hour interval.  That's true regardless of when the product was released.

  • 0 Offline in reply to DanielB

    Unknown said:

    As described in the Term License Fact Sheet, the change to the interval only applies to usage sent to the Bentley-hosted SELECTserver.  Accounts using a locally deployed SELECTserver will continue to count peak usage based the calendar-hour interval.  That's true regardless of when the product was released.

    Hi Daniel,

    but here I get a slightly different impression:

    Do I have to be using a CONNECT Edition version for usage to be calculated using the 10 minute intervals?

    All invoices for all products will use the 10 minute interval counting and peak usage calculation rules.

    Users using deployed SELECTserver will still be subject to these policies, however, may not gain the full advantage because the SELECTserver instance they are using will be unable to benefit from the changes. Therefore, it is recommended that all users migrate to Hosted SELECTserver to avail of these benefits.

    Users with versions of products released prior to August 2015 (or using versions of the License Management Tool prior to version 9.2.0.25) will still have their usage calculated using the 10 minute policies but in some instances may not get the full advantage of the peak application usage calculations. It is recommended to upgrade to CONENCT Edition or product versions containing License Management Tool version 9.2.0.25 or later.

    (from communities.bentley.com/.../29816.term-licensing-and-application-usage-faqs)

    So maybe the analysis reports from deployed Selectservers will show the old counting results to us, but after nightly upload to Bentley your calculations (and invoices) will be based on the 10 minute intervals?

  • 0 Offline in reply to Bigean

    So as an intermediate summary:

    With the change, when users on machines don't overlap for at least a minute, Bentley never counts it as concurrent use. Using a product less than 10 minutes doesn't count as use at all.

    If machines overlap up to 18/19 (correction) 9 minutes, there's a chance that this is not counted as concurrent use.

    Only if machines overlap clearly, it will be 100% treated as concurrent use. This policy is fair and satisfies our expectation of concurrent licenses.

    So *one* of many downsides of Bentley licence strategy is resolved, that made me loosing confidence into Bentley. But issues like post-charge, no limit to owned licenses, sublicenses in products surprising users with post-invoices, charging a quarter fee or month fee for some hours of overuse, no real time usage status, ..., remain to bother us. They should be discussed in other threads.

    End of intermediate summary.

    Now what's this with old products and old deployed selectserver?

  • 0 Offline in reply to Bigean
    Some of customers which recently joined SELECT have received false invoices for QTL2 even they have just signed SELECT and any excess usage was impossible as before non-SELECT licenses were used. They are billed for retroactive usage. This issue is not resolved for more than year and leaves bad impression. Sending automatic invoices without manual reviewing for new SELECT accounts when the system apparently is not mature enough is risky. Of course they are later cancelled but still it is hassle and not welcoming at all.
    Also as the activation key remains the same licenses still remain checked-out and are not reset to pooled usage which again triggers false QTLs.
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