Bentley Map Mobile not free application?

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

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.

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

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.
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.