What is the prognosis for getting the ability to cap licenses within Select? At the very least, we need the ability to see real-time the number of licenses that are in use. Why is it necessary to go to a third party vender to monitor Bentley license usage, when the information is available and was formerly provided from the Bentley license management tool?
The stock response of "it's for the benefit of the end-user" is really tired. End users don't want to generate surprise invoices for the company to have to pay! If I ask an end-user if they have a need for gINT Pro Plus, or STAAD.Pro Advanced Analysis, because they logged usage last week (and so we might get a "convenient" invoice next month), the response in invariably a confused apology and an explanation that they don't need the "plus" anyway - somehow it got innocently turned on.
I could go on and on about the one-hour bucket and unintentional, short-term usages, etc., etc.
But how about responding to customers who WANT to cap licenses?
OpenAccess is great for crunches, that's about the only good news of OpenAccess. The downside to temporarily leasing a MicroStation is that you will be billed for the HIGHEST peak. So you own 10 licenses, and suppose you want to "lease" one for a quarter. So you use 11 licenses, let's say 20 days in a quarter, less the other days, but then you use 13 one "day" (oops, didn't mean to double-click that one, sorry, closing right away...). Tough, counted as 10 minutes and in the bucket. The cost of leasing that additional license has just doubled from 14% MSRP to 28% MSRP with a single double-click and then tripled with another. How about that to really ruin your day? If you had stuck to using just 10 that small oops would have been forgiven (up to 3 per quarter), not so if you're really "taking advantage of OpenAccess". It would be a lot more sensible if Bentley only billed for the 4th highest peak and offer the leasing customers the same leniency as other customers. E.g. daily peaks for the quarter, sorted high to low, owning 10 licenses. Not leasing: 12, 11, 10, 10, 10, ... => no structural overage, forth highest is 10 and they own 10, so no QTL. Leasing one for a crunch: 13, 12, 11, 11, 11, ... => seriously 3 times 14%? Why not just one time 14%? Please be reasonable! Why does Bentley treat customers that take advantage of OpenAccess like that?