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.
With today's technology Bentley, a supposed leader in this department, should have a MUCH MORE EFFICIENT WAY TO MANAGE LICENSES. The Trust Licensing models fails in many ways and ONLY benefits the software manufacturer. They like to tell you it's a benefit, and in there own strange thought process it is. In the real world...it isn't, not at all, not even close.
I cant have two versions of Esri products open because we only have 1 license. We can't have 2 licenses of AutoCAD open because we only have 1 license. Why is it that we can have 10 (mild exaggeration) licenses of Microstation open when we only have 1 license? The way they license software is nothing short of ridiculous. I never heard of the 'wait an hour' after your partner logs out before you can log in. What? What world do you live in where that is a remotely useful scenario for anyone but the software maker. Its just a recipe for them to charge us more money, plain and simple.
We have been there, done that with "1 license equals 1 user". Way back when we did that, we heard that was simply too restrictive for users -- and not from just one organization... from many. We started providing a much better way to address the problem of "...we need more licenses, but it takes x amount of time for us to request, get approved, requisition, etc. to get those." We are helping to prevent production from being impacted simply because there aren't enough licenses use our products. Over the years, we have been on the leading edge of making licensing better and better (case-in-point is the Portfolio Balancing referenced in this and other threads). Some users have gone the route of "checking out" licenses to emulate the old-style "node locked" way, and a number of them quickly realize the administrative hassles in doing that. The bottom line is that we offer more licensing options than any other software vendor we are aware of. And we will just keep making it better.
Thanks for you help Phil,
Also, I have dealt with offices that had server/internet glitches, which then lead to several days of the entire staff not being able to open their software because they could not get to their license server. That is a ridiculous cost, which the Bentley team has done a good job avoiding.
--Thanks,
--Robert
We tried 'checking out' the licenses only to find out that it did NOTHING. All other users could still use the products. We tried it on multiple stations with the same result.
Where, in your "offer more licensing options than any other software vendor" is the option for 1 license = 1 user? Why not give your customer this option? Instead, you offer NO WAY at all to restrict usage and bill us for the extra usage.
How do you expect a for profit company to budget for this? How do you explain to the team why it cost the company $640 in out of pocket expenses to plot a sheet set? This software arrangement does not benefit small businesses at all
Unknown said: Where, in your "offer more licensing options than any other software vendor" is the option for 1 license = 1 user? Why not give your customer this option?
Where, in your "offer more licensing options than any other software vendor" is the option for 1 license = 1 user? Why not give your customer this option?
That's a very good question. Lots of licencing options but not the one that a lot of users are asking for.
There is a way of having one licence , one user. You would need to come off SELECT and then have a node locked licence, but it can be done as we have done it. Not sure why Bentley don't allow node locked licences that are on SELECT. Perhaps they view the extra revenue by over usage as a real benefit to them.
So Bentley, why can't companies have node locked licences that are on SELECT and therefore get all the related benefits?