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]