Bentley mentioned that the launch amounted to a $1 billion investment in R&D (accumulated over a 15 year time horizon of investment and acquisitions). The entire software effort was funded internally.

Bentley sees "terrific opportunity" in infrastructure development despite the current economic climate. V8i's objective is to support engineers to manage and sustain infrastructure development. Bentley quoted the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times that identified the importance of having more engineers trained to take care of the U.S. infrastructure situation. The opportunity lies in designing an "intelligent infrastructure" based on a foundation of digitally-designed roads, bridges and buildings on a single platform. Greg Bentley was emphasized a new project delivery model that is an integrated project management solution based on interoperability and team collaboration among all stakeholders of the project.

Bhupinder Singh, Sr. V.P. and that this is "a very exciting day for Bentley...one of the most significant releases in the history of Bentley." The V8i release spans all of the infrastructure disciplines and lifecycle. Singh mentioned that the availability of the products within the V8i portfolio will be on a rolling beta during the 60 day period in which they are delivering the products.

Asked about whether there has been an attempt to bench the improvements against previous releases Bentley said that ProjectWise V8i has seen significant increases and mentioned that one of Bentley's clients has seen a 15x improvement in network file transfers. Within MicroStationn, Bentley said they were focused on bettering the performance of opening extremely large files and although they did not have specific numbers, they said that file open time will be quicker. The rendering engine has also seen improvements for visualization.

Download Keith Bentley's V8i "live" broadcast presentation.

Download Bhupinder's presentation.