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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
  • My current experience to the above is that there is NO LENIENCY BASED ON OVERAGE TIME!!!!  We have 3 licenses and use the program at high times 8 hours in a day total across 3 licenses and are being forced into purchasing another due to the fact of people opening the program printing and then exiting.

    We have taken the steps and have assigned only certain computers and people to do any of the work in the program.

    I have been told from my account manager that Bentley has now issued the policies that force them to take the heavy handed approach!!

  • Unknown said:

    Bentley has chosen to ensure end users are productive and not deny the ability to work which hinges on an external variable of a network connection.

    "]

    The system is designed to report usage, first and foremost, and with this bias ensures you will always be able to run the product when you need it, whether or not a connection is possible.

    We had the option to run the product disconnected in the previous SS model by "checking out" a license, or we we would enter a 30 trial mode. It sounds like the focus of the current SS model is to favor the disconnect license at the expense of the connected.

    I think that the current trust licensing model would work as long as Bentley takes a fair approach to it. If Bentley provides no way of real time license monitoring, they have to expect that overages will happen occasionally.

    As far as I know there is no strict policy on overage usage, I mean, how many overages does it take to trigger a new license? Is there leniency based on overage time? Is there leniency based on how often the programs are used? Is the decision to push a new license entirely subjective and decided by the account manager?

  • Steve,

    Thanks for refreshing my (failing) memory about those old SS days.  I appreciate your views and perspective on the problem.  As I've stated, I like the current model better than the old (for the reasons you've given - fault tolerance, hosted server).  I would not go back.  I accept without hesitation the transmission of our usage logs ;) - I know Bentley has approached this problem in an even handed way and have looked at more aspects of it than I'm aware of!  There might be other aspects to consider; for example, in a very large office, usage will average out more easily than in a smaller office.  In a larger office, many jobs in different phases will generate different computing needs.  In a small offivce, one large job might require all of the installed instances of a Bentley product to be used more frequently than normal.  This suggests that it could be that some parameters in a licensing model just might be a function of firm size!  Hey, just thinking out loud.

  • Unknown said:

    Tom,

    I agree with your view of the current situation.  However, you will recall the old days in which our SS licensing WAS, in fact, real-time.  We had our own SS app, and I don't even recall if it was web-based or not (I think it was, but it was so long ago).  I also recall the kicking and screaming of several posters regarding the Bentley mandated "log transmission".  And there was also a general lament at the loss of the real-time license reporting, which was countered by the trust-licensing mechanism, since in the real-time system, if you had to free up a license you had to kick someone off.  But let's not pretend that real-time licensing is not possible :),

    the current implementation is just one way to accomplish a licensing system which is fair to both vendor and customer.  There might even be ways to improve it!

    The “old” SELECTserver was a simple server application that worked on the network it was installed on.  I hesitate to call it a web app, simply because it initiated a 2 minute heartbeat with the machine using an application.  If that were ever scaled up to the web, I am not sure how reliable the heartbeat would be; thus it was never designed to operate over the web.

    If we were to jump back in time about 10 years when the old SELECTserver was in play, our most frequent complaint across all products was filed against SELECTserver’s heartbeat model.  It had a single point of failure; the network connection to the server.  Our users asked for a more fault tolerant system, thus the birth of the contemporary version of SELECTserver we have today.

    One thing we have learned along the way is there does not exist a middle ground between a “capped” system and a fault tolerant system.  There exists either a live connection to the server among all machines in use, or there doesn’t.  The fault tolerant model ensures the end user is able to open their software and accomplish their work.  You are correct that it is possible to re-create the old model, however Bentley has chosen to ensure end users are productive and not deny the ability to work which hinges on an external variable of a network connection.

    Another benefit of the fault tolerant model is hosted licensing.  Without a fault tolerant model, SELECTserver ONLINE, our hosted licensing option, would not be possible.  The vast majority of Bentley accounts have moved from a deployed server to the hosted option; thus removing both the overhead and burden of maintaining their own SELECTserver.

    -Steve


    This is a test

  • Tom,

    I agree with your view of the current situation.  However, you will recall the old days in which our SS licensing WAS, in fact, real-time.  We had our own SS app, and I don't even recall if it was web-based or not (I think it was, but it was so long ago).  I also recall the kicking and screaming of several posters regarding the Bentley mandated "log transmission".  And there was also a general lament at the loss of the real-time license reporting, which was countered by the trust-licensing mechanism, since in the real-time system, if you had to free up a license you had to kick someone off.  But let's not pretend that real-time licensing is not possible :),

    the current implementation is just one way to accomplish a licensing system which is fair to both vendor and customer.  There might even be ways to improve it!