Bentley Offers New Licensing Program for Municipalities

Bentley Systems announced a new program for municipalities that would significantly reduce the cost of ownership for a suite of software solutions in geospatial technology. Based on population, a municipality can obtain the entire Bentley suite of software under a single licencing agreement called the Municipal Licensing Subscription (MLS). For example, a municipality of approximately 20,000 people can sign on to the MLS agreement for about $20K…again roughly $1 per person. For cities of 4.5 million or more, the fee is $425K. Bentley’s objective is to achieve better interoperability when a customer needs to step from design/build to asset management…said another way, from civil engineering and construction to geospatial applications of planning and asset management.

Styli Camateros, Bentley’s VP of product marketing said that "Municipalities are really owner assets of diverse assets…I think we have forgotten that we have created a lot of friction between those who design the assets and those who manage the assets. We should be creating software and creating models that can do facilities management from the same model." So, when a customer who is engaged in an engineering project now needs GIS technology, they can obtain the software without additional administrative licensing fees. The Bentley website has more information about the MLS program.