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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
  • At the bottom of Strategies for limiting usage  a few are listed. 

    Regards,

     
    Tamicca Sellars
    Product Manager I



  • Sassafras K2. The price is reasonable and the software fairly easy to setup and use. We completely stopped our overages. However, with some products, they include the ability to activate other products and since these don't have EXE files we don't thing we can meter them.

    Charles (Chuck) Rheault
    CADD Manager

    MDOT State Highway Administration

    • MicroStation user since IGDS, InRoads user since TDP.
    • AutoCAD, Land Desktop and Civil 3D, off and on since 1996
  • What license metering software do you recommend? I admit that I don't know much about such things, but a quick Google search didn't point me to anything that jumped out at me. I always trust you folks for recommendations.

    We are adding another CAD tech, which adds just another person to our "might be using MicroStation" pool. So far the best thing we have come up with to monitor license usage in "real time" is a magnetic board with everyone's name on it. If you're going to be in MicroStation, slide your magnet over to the MSTN column. This is NOT a very efficient way to manage software, and it doesn't even begin to address one person using it from 1:00 to 1:23 and someone else getting in it at 1:39. There has GOT TO BE a better way than this!

    MaryB

    Power GeoPak 08.11.09.918
    Power InRoads 08.11.09.918
    OpenRoads Designer 2021 R2

        

  • The DOT's local to us are heavily tied to Bentley and we also get work not directly for the DOT, but for firms delivering to the DOT so we a tied to Bentley and Bentley Civil platforms and file formats. So migrating to 100% Civil 3D is not feasible and while some Civil 3D features are superior to Bentley's, others are not.
    So we are probably getting one of the license metering software packages to tie things down.
    When I look at the insidious usage charts, these is not enough information to justify a specific number of seats. And so far, every time we added seats, we seem to get as many if not more overages. Has our workload increased, some, but it has not doubled - but my licensing fees have!

    Charles (Chuck) Rheault
    CADD Manager

    MDOT State Highway Administration

    • MicroStation user since IGDS, InRoads user since TDP.
    • AutoCAD, Land Desktop and Civil 3D, off and on since 1996
  • Unknown said:

    And if I look at the days where we are under our license counts, we clearly, on average, use less than our licence allotments. And I hear anecdotal evidence that the claim that usages of less than 10 minutes are ignored are not true, not that I believe is spreading rumors and innuendos.

    That's the it I don't get. They are quite happy to take our money for over usage (in some cases small over usage) but totally ignore the under usage which, in our case would have meant no quarterly bill. This is the reason why we have installed licence monitoring software so that we don't get any more bills from Bentley.

    Unknown said:

    I just don't believe this is any way to treat your customers, and many of us have been long time advocates for Bentley. These policies have me questioning that brand loyalty.

    Agree totally. One reason why we have begun to move to Revit