Bentley Map Mobile not free application?

Hello,
I am afraid that this was answered yet
communities.bentley.com/.../116816
Bentley passport connections for about 100 dollars per year.
Pavel

Hi Pavel,

I think it's not answered, because Bentley web tells clearly Bentley Map Mobile is free application:

As was discussed many times in different forums, to charge mobile viewing application today is nothing else than recommendation to use competitors' solution. But it's Bentley's decision. For me the bigger problem is that it's nearly impossible to find any clear information without marketing craps, incorrect, obsolete or fuzzy information how Bentley products are licensed, when registraction or login is required and what it means etc. Bentley spends a lot of time and lot of money to make their users' life harder and more complicated.

With regards,

  Jan

Hi Keith,

is your sentence "Bentley’s mobile applications are typically free to download and install" real? It made me laugh and crying at the same time. I hope from reactions you understand Bentley are doing something very wrong. For me it looks like a comptition how to make existing customers angry and make any valuable and relevant information hidden or fuzzy. To say about commercial application it's free is not misleading but lying, regardless how big amount of money is spent by marketing ... especially if in Apple Store and Google Store the applications are also promoted as free to use also without any notification paid CONNECTION Passport is required. Guys, this is not a failure but consistent misinformation.

It's a pity there are not bad (and in some cases great) technologies and products, but they are actively blocked from to be tried, tested and used by customers. I think I know Bentley web structure and BE Communities very well, but I was not able to put together clear information "What I need if I am interested in using geo mobile data?" An experience shared by my customers is rarely and with huge effort they are able to find, collect and put together information like:

• Clear and simple picture/diagram what is data flow and how workflow and "product chain" looks like.
• With what products Bentley Map Mobile Publisher can be used? One page tells nothing about it (so they can expect BM PowerView, which is very popular, can be used, which I think is not possible ... so confusion and disillusionment), another page tells BM Enterprise has to be used (disillusionment for Bentley Map users), and even BMM Publisher does not provide any relevant information, so the only way is to download it and try it ... wow, huge time investment is required.
• Is BMM paid or not ... discussed already, but all information on web and in stores, even in BMM help file tell it's free and no information about CONNECTION Passport is provided.
• And when somebody has luck and will find the information about CONNECTION Passport, he will not find any good description. With honest, the page you linked is marketing talk but not information for people that are not familiar with Bentley ecosystem and terminology ... but these people are candidates to use Bentley Map Mobile.

And I am not talking about next necessary step which is to calculate investment and TCO (or at least basic maintenance cost), because with such big lack of information it cannot be discussed at all. Not too many people will invest so much time and effort and will seek for alternative (competition solution, open source, local developers...) because it's faster and simpler process.

Because of this very unfriendly approach I am not surprised (but distressed) many geo users I know moved Bentley products from main technology to supplementary tool position used to arrange data for their main GIS systems. And ignoring things like INSPIRE (which spans over all Europe) makes Bentley solution even less attractive here. I see this progress also as developer, my projects (requested and driven by users) has shifted more to general drafting and modling tools and also civil (where Bentley products are great).

With regards,

 Jan

P.S. Sorry for long and pessimistic comment, but to see how you actively kill geo activities plus looking through a window to autumn foggy rainy morning does not make it better. Well ... time to work ... for today it's about a bit of cartography, PostgrSQL + PostGIS + Python and I guess also some testing visualization in QGIS.

Hi.
From a customer feedback point of view:
- A product like Map Mobile was needed and is a welcome addition to the product range. :-)
- From our point of view the product was required in a more mature form at least 12-18 months ago and many of our contractors are now using other products or methodologies.
- In-house, for some of the uses we had for Map Mobile such as Condition Audits etc. we've started using other products like Trimble TerraFlex/InSphere as the development timeframes for Map Mobile were (from our point of view) taking too long.
- We pay many thousands of dollars a year for products such as Microstation, Inroads, Map Enterprise, Geo Web Publisher etc. and have been a client for twenty odd years. Having to start mucking around with $100 purchases here and there and getting 'passports' IS a barrier to using these small add-ons to existing products. These $100 additions are on top of all the testing and feedback we've provided in helping develop the product. If you want to merge Map and Map Mobile and charge a bit more for Map SELECT each year then fine, but at the end of the day we need to spend most of our day getting engineering products out the door, not testing and processing invoices for software.
- Our current situation is we now probably won't be rushing into this product, won't be distributing it to Third Party contractor use and we'll see what happens in this space.
- Preferred situation would be to get this product developed much quicker and to definitely allow existing Bentley Sites with Map to distribute it without 'Passports'. By all means have some sort of on-line user 'registration' process to gather emails if you like so Bentley can market some of their other products to what may well be non-Bentley sites, but make this whole process easier, quicker and a value add-on for existing customers.........NOT an additional step and barrier.

Hello,
I agree with many things. In this payment model (Bentley Connection Passport) is for me BMM forbidden. In my company we are preparing the budget for the use of the products before. Postpay is unenforceable in my management. I'm sorry, because, for example some dollars increase in license BM would be by my opinion a reasonable solution (I remember that probably 3 years back for a license of Microstation there was free using of Bentley Navigator).

Another thing is that I miss the development of a free viewer DGN for mobile platforms (I prefer some free version of Bentley View in android, by my opinion BMM targets in different direction). Best regards!

   Pavel

Ps. Excuse my English.

Hi Pavel,

Unknown said:

Postpay is unenforceable in my management.

The postpay in not acceptable in nearly any company if talking about software usage. And SW services providers (but not Bentley) are well prepared for it. A good example is Microsoft Azure, which is far bigger and more complex than whatever Bentley offers, and in Azure you can define a spenditure caps (limits) so you can easily turn it into defined and fixed paymants.

Unknown said:

for example some dollars increase in license BM would be by my opinion a reasonable solution

I agree it would work for BM owners, but not a right way generally. The problem is in license scope / type: Bentley Map is licensed per current use, but (re)viewing mobile applications are licensed per named user (specific person identified by login). And important part of this discussion is that if (re)viewing applications are licensed under paid conditions, it blocks to spread Bentley technology and data to other users completely. Maybe Bentley are happy enough with existing user base and are not interested in new users?

Unknown said:

for a license of Microstation there was free using of Bentley Navigator

It was that for every MicroStation license covered by SELECT there was one ProjectWise Passport (or how it was named, Bentley likes a lot to change names randomly), so it was about one free named user.

Unknown said:

Another thing is that I miss the development of a free viewer DGN for mobile platforms

Bentley don't care about any vieweing (in terms of simple spreading and sharing data with everyone). They stopped Bentley View but there is no equivalent available (Navigator CONNECT Edition is NOT the same) and there is no mobile viewing tool (Navigator Mobile is NOT viewing application).

It seems there is a dedicated group of people that make everything complex, hard to understand and at the end, unfriendly to users. I don't believe any average CAD admin or manager is able to undertand licensing and assign it to products (CONNECTION Passport vs Visa provided through Cloud Services Subscription...) and understand the differences (like why Navigator CONNECT Edition is licensed in completely different way than mobile Navigator?).

I also know users similar to you that skip from any Bentley-based data sharing, because it was easier (which means cheaper) to find, understand, install and test alternative solutions and use it in a predictable way.

Unknown said:

I prefer some free version of Bentley View in android, by my opinion BMM targets in different direction

Bentley are not interested in Bentley View anymore and anything what is free :-(

You are right, Bentley Map Mobile targets different type of data and different workflows, but right now it's the only mobile application from Bentley that spans everything from Windows (tablets) over Android to iPad. I guess there is no Navigator Mobile for Windows, so if you will have mixed environment, you will have to use different licensing for iPad and Android users and differetn for Windows tablets users ... nightmare.

With regards,

  Jan

Jan, Pavel and others,
Thanks very much for your responses and inputs on this thread. With respect to the cost of Bentley Map Mobile, we can see how the materials are currently confusing, and we’ll take steps to clarify that.

Beyond that, we certainly appreciate your comments regarding licensing and how are products are promoted on the web site. Generally we try to give users an idea of the capabilities of a product so they can decide if that product might be suitable for their application. The implementation details are typically left to support forums or the Bentley Institute as a place for learning. However with Bentley Map Mobile it seems a discussion of the publishing process might be a good idea to give users an idea of the workflow involved. We will try to make the process more clear on the main Bentley Map Mobile page.

Again, we appreciate the input and feedback and will direct the comments to the appropriate product managers.

Jan, Pavel and others,
Thanks very much for your responses and inputs on this thread. With respect to the cost of Bentley Map Mobile, we can see how the materials are currently confusing, and we’ll take steps to clarify that.

Beyond that, we certainly appreciate your comments regarding licensing and how are products are promoted on the web site. Generally we try to give users an idea of the capabilities of a product so they can decide if that product might be suitable for their application. The implementation details are typically left to support forums or the Bentley Institute as a place for learning. However with Bentley Map Mobile it seems a discussion of the publishing process might be a good idea to give users an idea of the workflow involved. We will try to make the process more clear on the main Bentley Map Mobile page.

Again, we appreciate the input and feedback and will direct the comments to the appropriate product managers.

Hello,
I would like to ask Bentley for more information to this page:
www.bentley.com/.../select-connect
.
Am I right, when our company have Select Subscription, than how many products we have in Select, for example, so much Bentley Map Mobile's application can we use without Bentley Connections Passport?
Thank you for explaining or giving more information!
Pavel

One of the benefits of the SELECT CONNECT Edition is unlimited access to the apps described on the page referenced above. You do require a CONNECT login but not a passport. Essentially the use of those apps has become a benefit of SELECT.

Thank you for quick response!
I'm looking forward "I'll be back" as BMM user.
Pavel

Hi Keith,

Unknown said:

One of the benefits of the SELECT CONNECT Edition is unlimited access to the apps described on the page referenced above.

That's great news (I learned it a few weeks ago) and I agree with Pavel it can be a reason to "be back" for plenty of users. Unfortunately there is "close to zero" marketing coverage currently (especially from local non English native users' perspective), so in my opinion the most of people don't know about recent changes in SELECT advantages.

Unknown said:

You do require a CONNECT login but not a passport.

The informations are not consistent and as such are cofusing: On this page, directly linked as a source of more detail informations, is stated: Bentley Map Mobile is free to download but requires a Bentley CONNECT login and Bentley CONNECTIONS Passport for use.

With regards,

  Jan

Thanks for pointing that out. I will get it updated as soon as possible!