Change Maintenance & Licensing model to better stimulate innovation

I should think that this is a good spot to deal with anything to do with how they license and innovate.

As for what they innovate and specific details on how they may seem like a good PLM, I should think a good place would be in the following thread, where that discussion is already taking place:

Windchill vs competition

It was started by a Chris C, but it seems there are multiple Chris C's on this forum so not sure if that is you or not...?

Look forward to hearing both aspects from you!

Subscription selling models will hurt everyone in the end, especially when they eliminate standalone software. Think of the cost of moving everything one piece at a time when the costs get out of control and they stop adding features.  They change the file protocols for storage to save space on their side and in order to go to a competitive cad package you have to wait for that software to catch up.  Basically you are stuck paying a subscription and are no better off in the long run.  No control over pricing do to you needing a license in order to continue working or suffer the down time migrating data over to a new system.

Don Anderson  

DON ANDERSON , Don't forget to vote if you agree that they have to change the way they are handling licensing.

I agree in so much as I don't like the idea applied to subscription licensing only.  That being said, it makes more sense for the aspect of system management or drive storage involved.

For example paying $100/yr for Office 365 is ridiculous to me.  However I do understand that subscription for OneDrive type services makes a lot of sense.  Then they blur the line by including cloud storage with licensing cost, which is frustrating!

Hi Lawrence

I think life is going to become more expensive for end users.

I personally hope that PTC will keep their existing models (buy software and maintain it) but also add in parallel the subscription models.

I see advantages for both depending on your business needs.

A company who has a core business with a core number of people (that is have ~100 engineers year after year) is better off buying the software. However a company who is more project oriented and have resources going up and down very quickly may be better with subscription.

Ideal, I should be able to buy the software as required. Ie buying the software when I know some people will need it for many years but also subscribe on ad-doc basis.

I am learning more and more about Windchill 11 and there is something I clearly do not like.

It seems that PTC is keeping their traditional licencing model for what already exist such as Creo/PDMLink etc… but all the new modules and functionalities what they call the Windchill apps are all on subscription models (including things like Thingsworx).

I see a strategy here where more and more of new functionalities  (modules,. Apps whatever you want to call them) are having only one type of licence ie subscription and in a few years, this will represent most of the portfolio so someone at PTC will say, “You know what 10% of our licences are still on the old model (buy the software), let’s crap that now since all of our customers are now used to subscriptions.

Well, I hope I am wrong. I do not want to be FORCED to subscriptions. We know that it has little benefit to end users. The only benefits is revenue for the manufacturers. A mix of both for the reason explained above is definitively a benefit for end users.

Someone to challenge my view

Best regards

To be more specific to your comment.

I see no reason why being of the cloud drive to subscription. Private Cloud could be the answer

How do you handle a subscription license when you are not connected to the internet? My production environment has no connectivity to the internet so all web-based license and support models are useless to me.

I have had many discussions with PTC, up to the VP level, on support when PTC is spending their money developing web-based support tools. When I have a problem, I need to talk to someone about it and have them give me solutions. I cannot run some special diagnostic tool that generates reports to be emailed directly to PTC. When PTC wants to see a log file, I have to print it, scan it back in as a PDF and then send them that. No files come off my production system electronically.

Hi Ben,

fair enough. I guess within their customer's portfolio only a limited number of customers are in your situation.

However, this is what I mentioned, they should continue with the current model and also provide subscription but NOT replacing current model with only subscription.

Best regards

There seems to be some confusion over what Subscription Licensing is and means along with what pros/cons it may have so I started a separate discussion of this on the following page.  I hope that allows more people to be involved in this focused discussion (remember not everyone can see Product Ideas).

Subscription Licensing (w/o Cloud) VS Perpetual Licensing (w/o Cloud)