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Our specific use of Bentley products

We are a small company. We own 1 license of the following products: WaterCAD, Flowmaster, Descartes, StormCAD, SewerCAD, Map, CivilStorm. There are only 4 of us in the office that use these products, and they are rarely used. In response to the 4 ways "How to Reduce Usage": 1) All 4 of us need the software on our machines. 2) The products listed above are not interchangeable.  3) We close the programs after we are done using them 4) We are aware that we only have 1 license for each of the above programs, and that going over the 1 license results in an overage.

The "Trust Licensing" policy has really been a problem for us. Since the SelectServer is unable to tell us if a license has been used or not, we never know if we will be opening a second instance of the program. We are not blocked or warned before opening the second instance. In order to avoid overages, every time we want to open one of the programs, we email all of the users in the office and ask them if we can reserve the program for a specified hour. It's a hindrance to our productivity.

We want the ability to only use only the licenses that we have purchased. When I open a dgn that is already in use, I am not able to work in that dgn. When that happens, we wait for the coworker to finish in the dgn. If I open our networked licensed AutoTurn, and the license is already used, I am not able to use the program. When that happens we wait for the license to free up. When I open a second instance of WaterCAD, I see no warning, then I get a phone call from our account manager telling me we need to purchase a second license. The result: The "Trust Licensing" policy will eventually force us to purchase software that we do not need.

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  • The SELECTserver system is not a real time licensing system, there is indeed no mechanism build in it that allow you to know what has been happenning with your licenses over the last hour or so.

    1 license for 4 user might be enough regarding your use of the product but need a really good organisation,

    You need to use other tools to be sure the license is available on the hours you use it,

    If the different colleagues are not in the same location, that is not seen by each others, you might want to use instant messaging.

    And remember that you need to need to wait the next hour if a colleague just closed the product.

  • Unknown said:
    You need to use other tools to be sure the license is available on the hours you use it,

    bostr - as you mentioned, you close each app upon completing the necessary work,  However, as Claude states, that may not be good enough for the Bentley licensing model to keep you in compliance - even if only one user is in the software app at one time!  If two users access the same app in the same "clock" hour (e.g. 10am-11am, etc), two license usages will be reported - even if their use does not overlap (e.g. 10:05am-10:20am and 10:30am-10:50am).  Here's where Bentley might better use their initial usage reporting to identify "potential" license abuse (strictly internally), and then use finer tools to assess whether or not actual abuse occurs.  If they see the case as I've outlined, they should back off.  If they see cases where the overage is due to slight overlaps, they should back off.  If they see two users in the same app all day on a regular basis - you should expect a call :) - that's how I'd define "Trust" licensing.  Is the line drawn somewhat arbitrary; yes.  Is Bentley's definition more coarse than needed to reign in license abuse - I believe so.

  • Our licensing issues w/ Bentley have been minimal - we usually have plenty of licenses in our office of 40 people.  However, that does not mean we're 100% comfortable with the manner in which overages are calculated and how Bentley chooses to deal with what might be, in point of fact, minor infractions.

    If Bentley is going to draw the line on license over-use, perhaps it is time that they "credit" their customers for all the under-use!

  • Under-use is definitely something that should be monitored and discussed between the account and the sales/account manager! In fact, if you are under using a product, there is a way to recoup that under usage.

    SELECT accounts have the ability to portfolio balance products every year in order to align product usage with your suite of products.

    For instance, if you see you are under using MicroStation but have an over usage of GEOPAK, there is the ability to "trade" one product for another. I am simplifying the process of course, but that is the idea behind monitoring usage regularly.

  • Thanks for your input Elisabeth.

    In my first post, I mentioned that we rarely use the listed programs. The programs are under-used for the majority of the year. Is there a way that we can receive a calendar hour credit for each time we under-use them in the same way that we receive a calendar hour overage each time we over-use them? I think that is what moharr is suggesting.

    We go through portfolio balancing almost every year.

  • Unknown said:

    For instance, if you see you are under using MicroStation but have an over usage of GEOPAK, there is the ability to "trade" one product for another. I am simplifying the process of course, but that is the idea behind monitoring usage regularly.

    What happens if you only have MicroStation and you are under using the program? How do we get credits or even money back?

  • The portfolio balancing option is great. But, we just were informed that we need to add licenses due to overages. While I have no problem with that, my problem is with the timing.

    They came to us about a month after our renewal. And when we asked about portfolio balancing to bring us back into compliance, we learned that portfolio balancing is only allowed at the time of renewal. And since we are already past our renewal, our only option is additional seats of one product while we are clearly under utilizing other products.


    Charles (Chuck) Rheault
    CADD Manager

    MDOT State Highway Administration

    • MicroStation user since IGDS, InRoads user since TDP.
    • AutoCAD, Land Desktop and Civil 3D, off and on since 1996
Reply
  • The portfolio balancing option is great. But, we just were informed that we need to add licenses due to overages. While I have no problem with that, my problem is with the timing.

    They came to us about a month after our renewal. And when we asked about portfolio balancing to bring us back into compliance, we learned that portfolio balancing is only allowed at the time of renewal. And since we are already past our renewal, our only option is additional seats of one product while we are clearly under utilizing other products.


    Charles (Chuck) Rheault
    CADD Manager

    MDOT State Highway Administration

    • MicroStation user since IGDS, InRoads user since TDP.
    • AutoCAD, Land Desktop and Civil 3D, off and on since 1996
Children
  • There are certainly issues with the Trust licensing.  This is our current scenario:

    We have 3 licenses and seldom average a total of 8 hours of use for the program across all 3 of the licenses, however because of the 1 hour time interval we were running into overusage.

    Our scenario is that a lot of PMs will open the program print something and/or make a quick change and then close out of the program.  With the 1 hour interval it will it's easy to get overuseage.  Since it has come to my attention of late I have removed the program from the PMs computers and now there are dedicated people to make the changes and prints.  The weekly reports I now receive show that it is working (average 1 or 2 licenses concurrently a day).  However, my account manager is saying that Bentley has a policy, that now there is no more mitigating usage only forcing people to purchase extra licenses for past overusage.

    I would also like to add that the program was purchased by Bentley about 3 years ago and they have driven the cost of the program up by at least 5 times what it used to be.  We were also told when we were requested to return the hardware keys that the selectServer will be beneficial because it allows for occasional overusage and Bentley is understanding.  However, I have taken steps to ensure compliance but am being forced to purchase additional licenses or they will restrict our licensing to check outs only.

  • Best customer scenario: that the integral of the usage graph (divided by the length of the time interval being studied)  is under the number of licenses.

    Worst customer scenario: that the number of licenses is hard-capped (no overages allowed, ever).

    Optimal customer scenario: somewhere in between - hopefully close to the first than the second!

  • Our "best customer scenario" would be to opt out of trust licensing. I realize that some companies are seeing a benefit from trust licensing, but we are not. We see it as an obstacle.

  • bostr -

    very interesting!!  I was just given that option by our account rep.  Specifically:

    "If this overusage has not been addressed by October 28, 2013, your account will need to be turned over to Bentley’s Financial Operations team which will result in action being taken to restrict pooled license access to Bentley licenses."

    That, in effect, removes trust licensing and hard caps the number of licenses.  I'm attempting to escalate this issue as I very much doubt that this implementation of the trust licensing model is what the Bentley's had in mind.  I prefer to believe that this is a case of middle managers gone wild.

    To further illustrate this issue, I've attached our year to date peak usage of Microstation.  Yes, in June, we had two large projects being worked on which resulted in us being able to use more licenses than we had, which is consistent with this quote from Bentley's definition of Trust licensing: "Thanks to trust licensing, users can always access the software they need to get their work done."

    My interpretation of the attached peak usage graph is that we have been in compliance with our trust licensing obligations all year.

  • I really wish you all the best of luck moharr.  We were just forced into buying another license, so now we have 4 licenses for a program we use less than 8 hours a day across all licenses.  BRING BACK THE HARDWARE KEYS PLEASE!!!!

    I was told that this is now Bentley's Policy to go after everyone and make them pay for all past overages instead of just trying to correct it going forward and forgive the past month or two.  I was even contacted by the Sales Director as well.  It is extremely hard to escalate the issue past the sales people from my experience.  

    It's possible that they are no longer seeing their record revenue growth they did in the past years and now have to go after everyone now, including the small businesses that have a hard time to pay for the prices Bentley sets.

    FYI from Bentleys 2012 annual report press release:

    "Performance highlights include:

    •revenues grew 5 percent to a record $550 million on an historical GAAP basis; in constant currencies, GAAP revenues grew 8 percent and organic growth was 6 percent;

    •subscriptions reached a record 74 percent of revenues;

    •applications use was logged by over 1 million users in 165 countries – and nearly 2 million users when including Passports and iWare apps;

    •investment in R&D and acquisitions was at a record level of nearly $200 million, bringing the total invested since 2005 to more than $1 billion. "