What is the purpose of this information?

Sometimes changes in business require you merge two separate entities into a single account.

As with any new account, consolidating accounts represents an opportunity to adopt up-to-date, supported applications (older generation applications are not eligible for support), and change your licensing model for the better (the older SELECTserver based licensing [hosted or deployed] does not provide the same opportunities for license reporting and control that Bentley's current licensing model, Subscription Entitlement Service licensing does).

Consolidating accounts also may represent the challenge to migrate all the settings previously applied to each account individually, to the surviving account. There aren't any tools to assist with this, and at no time will an administrator have access to both existing accounts prior to consolidation to document what might have been set up previously.

The site administrators from each account we'll have to work together to ensure a smooth transition

 

Areas affected when consolidating accounts

Subscription Type

Each account prior to consolidation may have a different subscription type. If there is a change in subscription type, it may represent a significant change in mindset for those administrators being consolidated into the surviving account regarding managing entitlements and monitoring usage, particularly if moving from a non-consumption based subscription model to a consumption based subscription model.

Contract term

All assets will have a synchronized expiration/renewall date after consolidation  Please keep this in mind when budgeting.

Assets

When accounts are consolidated, the assets that reside at each account will be aggregated as well (and in some cases migrated to current offerings) but will retain their entitlement country. Subscription analytics can be used to determine what applications your user base is actually using (and what your peak use is for these applications). Note that if changing from a non-consumption based subscription model to a consumption based subscription model, that the entitlements  available will change to reflect what is "available for consumption" in addition to owned assets.

Entitlement Management

The default access for any account is that all users under that account have access to all licenses at that account. Any customizations that were in effect for the surviving account under entitlement management (to either enable or restrict access to application licensing) will still be in effect after account consolidation. Default access in effect at the header level, will also be inherited by any new entitlements resulting from the consolidation.

License alert thresholds are not dynamic, and are manually adjusted. If account consolidation will result in a change in the quantity of entitlements for a specific products, and you have a license alert threshold license alerts set for that product, you will have to manually adjust the threshold to accommodate the new quantity of licenses available.

User Base

Consolidating accounts also means consolidating your user base. Federated accounts should a submit service request for additional assistance from the IMS team regarding a merge. Although users will be consolidated with their profiles details intact, users moved to the consolidated account will not be a member of any previously defined allocation or entitlements groups under the surviving account, nor will they maintain any of their previous roles or fulfilment contact status. A spreadsheet will be provided containing the details of the consolidated users which can be used to update the users if desired via our Bulk Update feature. You may request the consolidating users to maintain their roles, but the request most come from a co-admin or account admin of the surviving account.

Typically the user base coming from the previous account to the surviving account will have a change of email address (either format or just domain). Typically an account will have a period of mail forwarding to allow temporary usage of the old email address for correspondence. With these details in mind, non-federated accounts may make updates to their users as needed via Bulk Update to align with your directory changes. However, federated accounts should coordinate a change with Bentley's IMS team before proceeding with any changes to their users. Changes without coordination may result in lost user access and duplicate user accounts present in your IMS directory.

IMS Roles/Fulfillment Contacts

As the consolidated users have lost their IMS roles and fulfillment contact status, please be sure to reinstate any desired access to users who should maintain this access.

Domain Ownership

Prior to consolidation, the account being consolidated should release any owned domains. If the surviving account will be using multiple domains, the additional domain(s) should be claimed after consolidation is complete. If your account is federated, the IMS team will manage the domain records for the merger/split.

Licensing

Checked out Licenses

Licenses reflected is being checked out under  entitlement management may have to be released, if the user of that license is not currently associated to the surviving account, There would not be a way to release their license checked out license via Entitlement management after account consolidation.

Offline Usage

Depending on the current settings under Entitlement Management, users consolidated into the surviving account may lose the ability to activate their software (for Subscription Entitlement Service licensing). Prior to the consolidation it may be prudent to release offline restrictions on licensing to allow user 7 days of offline usage, instead of the user not being able to work (note that users working offline still generates usage towards an account). SELECTserver licensing based applications will function for at least 7 days while offline.

Licensing - Subscription Entitlement Service licensing

For subscription entitlement service-based licensing, users not listed under your account will not have access to your account's licensing. Shortly after a user has moved to the surviving account, changes to the user's policy (which controls which licenses a user can access) will happen organically every 4 hours, and the user will have access to the surviving account's licensing.

 If a user's email address has been updated in IMS, user should be informed of this change as Non-federated user will have to manually change their CONNECTION Client login to align with their new email address to allow proper access to their intended entitlements.

Licensing - SELECTserver based

While Entitlement management based licensing doesn’t maintain the concept of "Site" (for subscription entitlement service-based licensing, licenses from all sites are aggregated under Entitlement Management under an "umbrella account" referred to as Ultimate), in Bentley's contract database individual sites are still maintained. Barring configuration of the activation key, the only consequence is that an account with multiple sites under contract will have multiple SELECTserver activation keys. The keys, although different, will still activate all aggregated applications from all sites by default (the applications each key will activate can be customized as well).

Site activation keys follow the site; If a site will be moved to the surviving account, the corresponding site activation key will be moved to the surviving account as well (this will not happen by default however, only by request). If a site is redeployed to a new account's contract, the new account will also have that site's activation key. If the surviving account does not have any sites redeployed from the consolidated account, the users consolidated to the surviving account will have to use a new or pre-existing new site activation key from the surviving account (instead of the activation key they were using prior).

Prior to the consolidation, site activation keys assigned to your account should be reviewed to determine if it is still prudent or necessary to have multiple sites (and therefore multiple site activation keys) for your account, or if users from the consolidated account can easily switch to a different activation key. It is not uncommon for an account not to realize that they have multiple sites / multiple site activation keys. If it is determined that a site should be migrated to during the consolidation to the surviving account, site consolidation (and the resulting elimination of redundant site activation keys) prior to an account migration may be helpful (and easier to manage).

Account still using SELECTserver-based licensing will have to be mindful that after a consolidation, a concerted effort to use the desired site activation key is made. Enterprise management tools may make the distribution of an activation key easier. Anyone having access to your site activation key also has access to your licensing. Plans should be in place to distribute the new site activation key to your users.  The surviving account may wish to create custom activation keys instead of distributing their standard activation key, to allow more flexibility in managing their activation keys.

Before requesting an account consolidation

Double check your user base and domain ownership:

• Users no longer with either the surviving or consolidated accounts have been removed from user management.
• Unfederated accounts should ensure their domains are unclaimed

Not merging all of your users into the new account?

• Provide Bentley an export of the users that will be moved to the consolidated account.

Want to keep your IMS roles and Fulfillment Contact status for your consolidated users?

• Ensure that you've got approval which can be shared with Bentley from the surviving account admins
• Double check that your IMS role (Account Admins, Co-Admins, etc.) and Fulfillment Contact assignments are correct

Have a game plan for how licenses are going to be managed under the consolidated account -

• Note any sites that should be consolidated or redeployed to the surviving account
• Note any allocation or entitlement groups that need to be created under User Management.
• Note any restrictions that need to be made or recreated under Entitlement Management.
• Note any changes from default settings for a select server activation keys and their associated entitlement groups.

Schedule a time for the consolidation to become official, and notify your users of the change.

• Try to pick a time during which usage is minimal to minimize impact on your users

Inform the user base of the consolidated account who their point of contact will be.

• In order not to lose any productivity it is important that users know what to expect during the account's transition.

 

After account consolidation is complete

Under User Management

• Verify that users have been consolidated as expected
• Verify / assign Administrator and co-Administrator roles
• Verify / assign Fulfillment Contact roles
• Verify / claim domain ownership as required
• Create/recreate Allocation and Entitlement groups

Under Entitlement Management

• Verify entitlement quantities have correctly aggregated
• Verify entitlement countries  / setup for  countries without entitlements
• Verify / adjust default access at header of entitlement management is correct
• Verify / adjust default access per product if necessary
• Verify / adjust entitlement groups (Allowed Applications, Activation key mapping) as necessary
• Recreate / distribute checked out licenses as necessary

On user's Workstations

• Have users log out of, and back into CONNECTION Client (possibly using a new email address) and refresh their policy so they have access to the desired entitlements and usage is now directed to the appropriate account.
• Import newly checked out licenses as necessary

On user's Workstations (SELECTserver based applications)

• If sites were consolidated or redeployed, distribute the existing site activation key to users, eliminating any activation keys from sites that may have been eliminated
• If no sites were redeployed, the surviving account's activation key (or a newly created activation key under the surviving account) will need to be distributed to users
• Import newly checked out licenses as necessary