Bentley Map CONNECT Edition Technology Preview?

Is there a schedule now?

Thank you for asking. We are currently in the process of finalizing our plans for 2017. Please stay tuned...

Hello Oto,

First, let me apologize for being a little too brief in replying to your previous question. I hope I improved on that with my reply to Jan's message earlier in this thread. As I stated in the message to Jan, we are close to announcing our post-V8i plans, but allow me to comment briefly:

"(...) It will be just a port to Microstation CE with migrated old and introduced new bugs or major update?"

By definition, any post-V8i development is a major update. It will mean shifting from 32-bit to 64-bit, adopting a new UI paradigm and embracing/integrating new features available in the new platform, etc. Inherently, an important part of this will be to migrate the existing code to the new platform, but be assured that the Map development team will not treat this as "just a port".

"(...) If Bentley Map CONNECT will have the same old and ugly "Bentley Geospatial Administrator" then I better wait.

It is too early to tell what will happen to individual tools, but the nature of Map is that is will always require an object editor of some kind to allow the user to define the object model(s) it wishes to work with. That said, I have confidence that the "pull" factor of any post-V8i development should convince you not to wait but to upgrade.

"(...) At least some insights what we could expect from Bentley Map CONNECT.

At this point in time, I can only repeat what I wrote to Jan in an earlier message: once our plans are in place - which I expect to be (very) soon - I will inform you and the community.

Best regards,


Gijsbert

Hello Oto,

With regards to your next message that discusses critical bugs/missing features.

I am very sorry to hear that you are not happy with the way things are developing for Bentley. Again, allow me to comment on some of your remarks:

"(...) If Bentley is really geo focused the development for Map should be more rapid and release priority patches and not just "will be fixed in next version" when actually it just don't happen."

#development for Map should be more rapid:

This year we have released two update releases for V8i SELECTseries 4 - in April and July - and we are finalizing a third update release that should be available before the end of the year. Possibly what you are referring to with "rapid" is the lack of speed in moving to post-V8i development, but I still wanting to point out that we did make an effort to regularly update and refine our existing V8i offering.

#and release priority patches

Besides the mentioned update releases we have released (and do release) priority builds to users with production preventing issues. We have an escalation procedure in place that in my experience works well and delivers priority builds when they are needed. Reading your remarks -- e.g. stating "makes BM not usable for production." -- I am wondering what happened in your case, and whether escalations where used to get you the right Map versions when needed.

#"will be fixed in next version" when actually it just don't happen

My experience is that we do not make these kind of statements unless a problem is actually going to be fixed. As part of an escalation procedure I can see those statements being made, or in communications about service tickets once it is confirmed that something is actually resolved. So again, I am wondering what happened in your case.

I will forward this tread to our support team and ask them to look into the examples you gave to give you a status update.

Best regards,


Gijsbert

Hi Gijsbert,

thanks for your anwer, just one comment:

Unknown said:

I was under the impression that we were clear enough that our focus in 2016 was always going to be on fine-tuning our product offering on the V8i platform

I am not quite sure if there was clearly explained in the past. Or maybe it was lost between other posts, which can happen easily. It's what I commented several times in the past: There is no easy-to-be-monitored channel with announcements and news related to specific product or area (common Bentley problem, not specific to geo). Compare it with both global and local blogs and twitter channels from companies like Microsoft (not not flexible mastodont anymore), local subsidiaries or partner of ESRI, Autodesk and also growing communities of open-source solutions (QGIS, OpenStreetMaps...), publishing news or even only ideas only to get quick feedback. So they keep they users interested in because of continuous flow of information about development and progress.

And the problem is multiplied because of local perspective: I don't know about other countries, but localy Bentley presence in magazines, news and web annoucement is zero. So what local users can know and remember today? Big CONNECT Edition announcement in 2015 and the conference (we will release "CONNECT Edition everything" soon), but I don't believe they track all discussions at BE Communities and I don't think there is any other source of up-to-date information.

With regards,

  Jan

Hello Jan,

Thank you for your suggestion about opening up our communication about development. It is definitely worth looking into improving the way we inform and engage with you and all other users.

Best regards,


Gijsbert

Thanks Gijsbert

Thanks Gijsbert