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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.

  • 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.

  • Thanks for your reply Claude. It sounds like you have a good understanding of the problems that are imposed on us with Trust Licensing. What is the time schedule to change the policy?

  • 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.

  • Thanks moharr. It sounds like you may be having the same issues as us.?

    Unknown said:
    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).

    As I mentioned in the first post, "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." The calendar hour time frame makes it really tough to manage.

    We haven't had problems with Trust Licensing until recently. We were going over our limit occasionally, but we wouldn't hear from Bentley. Recently, we were told by Bentley that they would be enforcing the overages more than they did in the past. We were told that we have been warned, and the next overage would cost us.

    In addition from having to deal with the policy, I'm getting emails from Bentley that say stuff like, "ultimately it is the responsibility of our users to use only what is owned and covered by their agreement." and "we never want to get in the way of one of our software users trying to get productive, mission critical work done by denying access."

    There is a real disconnect here.