Monday, October 26. 2009

Bentley Positions PowerMap as Alternative to ESRI/ArcGIS

While doing some research on a previous post I did a Google search on "lynchburg va esri." One ad that popped up in the results:

Alternative to ESRI
Powerful Standalone Mapping With Bentley PowerMap
www.bentley.com/powermap

The link to the top text brought me here. While there's quite a bit of text about Bentley PowerMap's features and benefits, and the promise of a free trial, I didn't see anything about it being an alternative to ESRI.

Bentley is getting aggressive with its marketing of PowerMap and subtly positioning it as an alternative to ArcGIS. (Google that phrase and look at the sponsored links!)

Tuesday, October 13. 2009

Bentley Now #1 in GIS/AEC Software

If you read the many releases from Bentley's invitation only Be Inspired: Infrastructure Best Practices Symposium and Awards (Joe Francica is in attendance) you'll learn of Bentley's move from #2 to #1.

External market rankings that Mr. [Greg] Bentley [CEO] referenced included:

#1 in GIS/geospatial architectural, engineering and construction (AEC) software, per Daratech, Inc.

- press release

Bentley Systems Signs Technology Agreement to Use LiDAR Data

Bentley signed a “continuous technology transfer” agreement with PointTools to be able to reference LiDAR point clouds to Bentley design data. Greg Bentley, the company’s CEO said that incorporating point clouds into the engineering design workflow was something that they have wanted to solve for a while but wanted to “do it right.” Bentley said that the hardware has improved greatly over the last ten years and that embedding the Vortex engine (Ss2) to reference and manage point clouds. “is a real breakthrough to reference point clouds into every workflow,” said Bentley. The Vortex engine from PointsTools will be embedded in the next version of MicroStation and ProjectWise SELECTseries 2 and delivery is scheduled for early Q1 2010. Aerial LiDAR data can be referenced to MicroStation drawings and workflows. This will not import point clouds into the drawing file but users can use point clouds as a reference for “snapping” to the point cloud data with an existing CAD drawing. PointTools is hardware neutral and Bentley saids the performance is excellent.

Bentley Systems Emphasizes New Licensing Options and Interoperability

While some companies are solely focused on the feature/function race against the competition, Bentley Systems understands the more cost-conscious nature of the current economic conditions. As such, the company's CEO, Greg Bentley (at right), announced options that provides for the “pooling” of licenses at the country-level, and “bundles” at an individual level. Now, bundling of software suites is certainly not new, but Bentley has taken the step to add training (“live” or “on demand”) and content as added value for users. This “Passport Subscription” option is an annual license that is priced very aggressively versus a perpetual software license. For example, for the mapping professional, the perpetual license costs $5926 but for the Passport subscription the cost is $1295 and includes Bentley PowerMaps, Descartes, and ProjectWise.

At a country-level, Bentley’s License Pooling option was a nod to organizations that have offices throughout one country but need to “pool” their licenses for a more cost effective means of allowing as many people as possible to share licenses. Whereas Bentley had previously offered site licenses, the country-level licensed pooling expands this option beyond a single geography.

Both options closely align with a “software as a service” model for sharing of licenses. And it’s a good move on Bentley’s part. The constant harping on more features by some software companies is often fruitless. By acknowledging that not everyone uses software during 100% of their work time, Bentley is squarely addressing both an issue of workflow and cost.

Another issue that the company has addressed is interoperability through “i-models.” According to the company, an i-model “is a container for open infrastructure information exchange. A key characteristic of i-models is ‘provenance’: knowledge of its origin and evolution –it’s change management history.” Though Bentley did not use the term “metadata” this is exactly the kind of information that it is providing through the use of their ProjectWise Navigator V8i (SELECTseries 1) solution. A very unique benefit of this feature is the ability to subscribe to notifications that a user’s work has been updated by someone other than themselves. This "dynamic" information is certainly beneficial when large teams are collaborating on massive projects. [photo courtesy of Bentley Systems]

Bentley Systems' CEO Comments on Economic Outlook

At a press conference today, concurrent with the BE Inspired Awards Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, Bentley Systems CEO, Greg Bentley, commented on his observations of the economic climate for his company and whether stimulus money provided by countries worldwide was having a positive impact for his business. "Stimulus is helping…but, infrastructure professionals are having a hard time. We are not seeing any upturn. Remember, infrasturure isn't for stimulus but it is for sustaining, said Bentley. 'Projects that are shovel-ready have already had their design work."

Bentley's remarks were based on the fact that the company can track software usage and that those usage levels were down at this time.