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HELP! – Bentley‘s software licensing policies?

HELP!

Is your company a victim of Bentley‘s software licensing policies?

We used to be happy with the SELECT subscription‘s Trust
Licensing program until about two and a half years ago when we learned about the
„bucket method“ of license usage (see attached file „What is usage and how is it calculated.pdf“ in zip) and what it
meant for us.

At this time, two and a half years ago and ever since,
Bentley has repeatedly demanded that we buy more licenses since our „buckets“ have
overflowed.  Since we felt that we were
not using the software that much,  we examined
the records stored on the SELECTserver user login to see what the actual usage
was.  We looked at every new record for a
day, each of which meant that a license was being pulled out of the pool, and
its Stop Time to see how many licenses were being used at the same time.  We found out that we were only using the
licenses we had bought and paid SELECT subscription fees for.  Attached is a study for one day  („Efla - Application Usage By Hour -
27-05-2013.xlsx“ in zip), one of many we have reviewed.

We own 10 PowerDraft licenses (also 10 MicroStation, 2
InRoads, 1 Geopack and 1 Bentley Building Mechanical Systems license) and for
this particular day we only used a maximum of 10 licenses simultaneously.

Alas,  Bentley does
not allow us to use our licenses in this way! 
Instead, they count the licenses being used „within the hour“ so they
count 16 licenses being used on this particular day instead of 10.  So if someone uses a license in such a way
that use starts one minute before the hour or ends one minute after the hour,
12-14% of the license working day is lost. 
If someone uses a license for 10 minutes and use happens to straddle the
hour, 21-24% of the license working day is lost.  And this might happen more than once per day.

For this Bentley is asking for 17% of the cost of a license
as a SELECT subscription fee, which is more than most other vendors ask for
(10-15%) for similar or better services. 

Why are we not allowed to use every license we have
purchased every second?  In our case
Bentley wants us to own MORE than 10
licenses so we can use 10 licenses without overfilling the „buckets“.  That is a hefty overhead they want us to pay.  Bentley‘s Trust Licensing has gotten a whole
new sinister meaning.

Is it only us?  Have
you looked at your true usage for your overflowing „buckets“ (or your peaks)?  Have you had to pay for more licenses in
order to keep the „buckets“ from overflowing even though your true usage has
been much less?  Please share your
experiences.  What is your „bucket“ usage
vs. the true usage?  Our max is 16 vs. 10.  For this Bentley wants us to suffer, i.e. for
the way we use our licenses.

We don‘t think it‘s fair that you can‘t use your
licenses every second of the working day in any way you like without paying a premium
for extra licenses that you don‘t use. 
Every other vendor we know of allows you to use your licenses every
second of the day.

Is your company a victim of Bentleys software licensing policies.zip
  • We have had issued with Bentley when they wanted to charge us for 5 years worth of SELECT on a program we didn't have access to. They wouldn't admit is was their fault and we had to come to some agreement, which we thought was not fair!! Big company mentality!! Is this something else our account manager has not told us about?

  • We all became  "victims" when we were force into maintance contracts.  I much preferred the old way.  If an upgrade was worth paying for you bought it.  Gave them some incentive to produce a worth while upgrade.

    Bentley forces me to pay 6% state (product) sale tax on my select, which is really a service and is not supposed to be taxed.

  • Every software vendor who offers network or pooled licensing must choose an interval of time. Some software vendors define “concurrency” on shorter intervals, like minutes or even seconds or longer intervals, like a calendar day. Bentley chose hourly and our software and SELECT program are priced accordingly. And with this hourly definition, Bentley has measured software usage by our users on SELECT versus those who are not and have found that hourly pooling equates to 50% more users with the same number of licenses. This is a tremendous value and speaks for itself.

    Bentley’s SELECTserver provides subscribers with the ability to analyze and manage organization-wide software usage, including what, when, where, and by whom licenses are being used. This provides the power to control usage and make informed decisions about organizational license needs.  Interestingly, few actually take advantage of the extensive administrative control and reporting that SELECTserver offers.

  • I also looked into this issue by writing a little basic program to examine the license data.  My analysis confirms Ragnar's description of Bentley's method of usage determination.  I took data from the App UsageByHour report as a starting point.  By varying the time interval (Bentley uses one hour, as you noted), you can get various license usage numbers for any given hour.  We also have users pop in/out of apps just to do a quick calculation or check.  If several users do that within the same hour, each instance is counted as a license usage, even if their times do NOT overlap.  That is a problem.  We have 4 AECOsim, 19 microstation and 6 powerdraft licenses.  I've allocated the AECOsims and powerdrafts to users who use the software close to 100% of the time, leaving the larger microstation pool for other power users and those who dip in/out of the app.  I feel that the one-hour "bucket" system for license count determination is a bit too coarse, although, as Tom states, it is a problem where to draw that line - thank goodness Bentley doesn't count every license taken out during the course of 24 hours - that would result in a very large number of licenses (possibly equal to the total number of Microstation installs!).  But should that interval be 10 minutes, or 6 minutes?  The smaller the interval, the more precise the license count, but the more computation required to determine that number.  I guess I fundamentally agree w/ Tom - but being that there is some argument for valid overuse (based on the 1-hour bucket vs a smaller time increment) I hope Bentley takes that into consideration when evaluating which SS subscribers might actually be in violation of license count above & beyond what "Trusted Licensing" permits.

  • Is anyone else bother by the fact that some "software vendors" have no problem redefining the meaning of a word that has been in existence for hundreds of years solely to benefit their own interests? concurrent |kənˈkərənt, -ˈkə-rənt| adjective existing, happening, or done at the same time: there are three concurrent art fairs around the city. It says AT the same time, not ABOUT the same time.