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A licence to thrill the most cautious IT boss
21 July 2006
Bentley has announced a series of improvements to its subscription service. David Littlefield says IT managers are likely to be impressed
Last month Bentley held its first user conference in Europe, where it unveiled a string of updates and new services to a couple of thousand customers who had the time to fly to Prague. Amid the hype and hyperbole, two announcements stood out — the release, at long last, of Microstation XM, which is reviewed overleaf, and a series of improvements to the company’s subscription service.
Most software developers have subscription services of one sort or another. They are a way of providing users with updates and technical support, as well as a method of locking them in semi-permanently. If you’re a subscriber to a service, it’s psychologically more difficult to switch provider, especially if you’ve still got time to run before the renewal date expires. There is a strong argument that updates and support should be provided anyway (you forked out for the software, so why should you pay for the priviledge of receiving an update which merely solves a bug?) so IT developers often work hard to make their subs services genuinely valuable.
Autodesk, for example, says that its subscription service provides a “win-win” situation for supplier and client. “The subscription decision lies with IT or cad managers, who have responsibility for selecting the best solution for their company. The key consideration is how long they intend to use the software. A period of less than three years usually warrants simply paying the upfront licence fee and deciding on upgrades later on,” says Patrik Durvik, Autodesk’s subscriptions manager for northern Europe.
“By comparison, any company looking longer term — say four or five years or more — should consider subscription. Essentially, it could dramatically cut the long term cost of ownership and, because the latest version of the software arrives automatically, keep the company at the forefront of its market… By comparison, the UK cost of upgrading one version of AutoCAD is around 40% higher than that of subscribing, so if a company intends to keep up to date with annual upgrades it is obviously sensible to consider the latter option.”
Interestingly, Autodesk is offering Revit, its 3D modelling solution, on a subscription-only basis, although Autocad and Architectural Desktop are available through subscription or as stand-alone purchases.
The changes to Bentley’s “Select” programme come into effect on 1 September. They include on-demand “e-learning” for Microstation users and, for each Microstation licence covered by Select, Bentley will throw in a licence for collaboration tool ProjectWise.
The company has also added an annual licence exchange service, which will allow users to swap unused licences for something else.
Architects are already waking up to the possibilities of licence exchange. The service allows practices to look at the software they’re licensed for and ask: “Do we really need this?” If not, they can trade it in for something else — at today’s prices. Feilden Clegg Bradley Architects, for example, has bought three licences of Bentley Architecture to allow the practice to trial, very tentatively, Building Information Modelling.
“We’re dipping our toes in as lightly as we can,” says the practice’s IT manager David Appel, who feels better about purchasing the software now that he knows he can trade it in for good old-fashioned Microstation if things don’t work out.
Marc Thomas of the Architects’ Design Partnership (and this month’s Roadtest reviewer) feels much the same way.
Kicking around the practice is an old licence of Digital InterPlot, a program for transfering files of different formats, but Thomas says he is happy to “trade it in for something far more useful, like Bentley Architecture”.
“The thing I like about trust licensing is that I never have to worry I’m doing anything illegal” |
Driving the changes to Bentley’s subscription service is the concept of the “reporting model” rather than the “enforcement model”, according to the company’s global marketing director (platform products) Joe Croser. With an enforcement model, software companies sell their products and take action against people who use them without the relevant licences; the reporting model, on the other hand, puts software houses in the position of telling practices how they are using their software, and coming up with a financial settlement to match the need.
This process began a decade ago with Bentley’s introduction of pooled licences. With pooling, licences are made available to people when they need them; the argument is that there is little point in having a licensed piece of software sitting around unused.
For example, a team of 15 people might not be using 15 pieces of software all the time — in fact, 10 pieces might suffice. Pooling puts software on servers and allows it to be used by a team as and when it’s needed, so you don’t buy programs for specific machines. Bentley says that with pooling, one licence tends to be used by 1.5 employees.
This concept is being extended with trust licensing, which puts usage details on a server owned either by Bentley or the practice itself. With trust licensing, there’s no limit to the number of licences you have — the server merely tells you how programs are being used and averages usage out over a year. So if you go over your licence allowance for part of the year, but under it later on, Bentley will call it quits.
However, if the server reports that your usage is generally higher than your agreement permits, you’ll get a call from someone suggesting you buy some more licences.
David Appel, who has arranged for Feilden Clegg Bradley’s pooling and trust arrangement to run on Bentley’s server, is a big fan. “I think everyone should have pooled licensing,” he says, adding that he wishes Adobe would do it.
“And the thing I like about trust licensing is that you have to be totally honest and completely licensed with Bentley. I never have to worry I’m doing anything illegal.”
But while pooling and trust agreements make it legal for staff to dip in and out of programs that haven’t really been bought for them, practices could find their usage rates are much higher than they thought. Appel says that, although Feilden Clegg Bradley has a clutch of Microstation licences, most of its architects use the cheaper Powerdraft version; he’s already aware that Microstation use could rise now that staff know there is nothing to stop them from using it.
Marc Thomas worries about the same thing. “Maybe the idea is that [Bentley] can come back to you and say: ‘Your users have established a need for this stuff, so why don’t we sell it to you? Or do you want to go back to your users and tell them they can’t have it?’ It’s a hard position to argue back against.”
Joe Croser, however, insists Bentley merely wants to put the right tools in the hands of people who need them, when they need them. And anyway, regular reporting should prevent IT managers from getting too many surprises. IT managers are, after all, types who don’t like surprises.
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