Creo Parametric Maintenance & Licensing

[msteis]

Can someone tell me what happens if a company discontinues their maintenence with PTC. Does their network license get modified some way that their software stops working, or do they just loose their tech support and upgrades?

Thanks,

Matt

[Marco_Tosin]

Matt, if you don't pay for maintenance your license file doesn't change.

You have no more tech support or upgrade and, if your SW return in maintenance, you have to pay for all the years you haven't paid.

Marco

[msteis]

Marco,

PTC's reseller can't or won't just sell you a new seat of Parametric at full price say 5-10 years later without paying the 5-10 years in back maintenance?

Matt

[Marco_Tosin]

Yes, but it depends how much you have to pay.

Maintenance cost about 20% of every SW license, then you have to apply your discount on MNT (30-40-50%)?

So if you have 50 % of discount then you pay 10% of the value of the the license every year, therefore reactivating maintenance it's worth.

Marco

[TomU]

Wow, I want to know how to get 50% off maintenance.

Like others said, licenses are permanent. The only functionality you will lose is access to technical support and possibly some of the online help content. The software will keep running just fine.

No matter how long you've been off maintenance, you will never pay more to get back on than new-purchase price. As others mentioned, PTC will typically become very flexible when trying to get you back on maintenance.

If you're still on maintenance, and not yet running the latest version of everything, make sure you request new licenses and download all current versions of the software before your maintenance expires.

[rohit_rajan]

if you have more than one license then you should have atleast 51% of individual license seats under maintenance....

otherwise they would stop your current maintenance..also.

[Marco_Tosin]

Tom,

we are not a very big factory, because we have about 150 seats of Windchill and a little bit more of 50 Creo.

But when we renewed our three years maintenance agreement with PTC, we also have planned a list of possible developement project on Windchill.

For this project we are required to buy some SW, so we discuss with PTC about buying SW and have less maintenance to pay.

Depending on how much SW we could buy, PTC have proposed us three different amount of discount.

Then it was all about negotiation.

[dgschaefer]

Actually, you only pay 12 months back plus the year forward. If you've been inactive for less than a year, you only pay for the time you've been inactive. We did this back in 2009 when the economy tanked, coming back to maintenance in 2012, I think. Nice thing was, because they were interested in our return, we could renegotiate what we owned and reduce our maintenance bill substantially. We tried to negotiate in 2009, but they wouldn't budge then.

However, PTC has no written policy for this that I know of. They can change it at will, and have in the past. When we dropped maintenance in 2009 it was only 9 months, I believe, but it changed to 12 months by the time we renewed.

As far as repurchasing, as I understand PTC wants you to renew rather that re-buy. Two year's of maintenance is cheaper than a new seat. And, as I said, once you're off for a while they are eager to get you back and more flexible.

[jlynch]

Sorry for digging up an old post but there's not much info out there and my question seems relevant to this conversation.

We have 7 seats of Creo, including 1 Flex 3c, 1 Eng II, and 2 ISDX and AAX addons  so our maintenance was coming in pretty high this year. and the reality is, we're still on Creo 3, and we are using more and more SolidWorks, because this is what our clients are asking for.

So we thought it prudent to look at down scaling our support (after our reseller trying to push us to subscription) to just 4 heavy seats. We were then told that if we do this, we would have to relinquish our licences that are no longer on support.. have anyone ever heard of this? so we couldn't run our 3 Creo parametric licences that we no longer have support for even though we bought the software outright?

any info appreciated.. but I'm tempted to just drop support completely (we only use it for software upgrades and right now we are on creo 3, moved to creo 4 when ever a client wants us to which we currently have licences for and move any other workload we have to solidworks and deal with creo 5 if / when we need to..) 

really frustrated right now to be honest...

[BenLoosli]

It all depends on how the licenses are 'upgraded'. If PTC is combining some sub-licenses into new bundled functionality, they could be removing some core licenses from your pool to lower costs. You can also just stop paying maintenance on certain modules to freeze them and work withy the current functionality.

I have 8 licenses on active maintenance and 7 inactive. I can use all 15 if 7 users are on Wildfire 4, I think is when we stopped. The other 8 are currently set for Creo 3.

[STEVEG]

Subscriptions are only for a year.  They have an expiration date.  Perpetual licenses are licenses you own.  They will continue to work and have no expiration date.

[jlynch]

Hi Steve,

yes this was my understanding also - but that changed when our reseller said if we only continue support (not subscription)  on 4 of our 7 licenses then PTC would disable our other 3. which I know wasn't the case because I have a few additional WF5 licences.

Hi Ben - yup see your point there on the "upgrade". I'll make sure that's doesn't happen.

They tried really hard to move us to subscription, but in my view this is not a good idea. our current licences would transition to subscription and if we ever cannot pay for some reason (recessions happen!) we lose the ability to even open our older perpetual versions..

and the fact that we still use creo 3, and are covered with existing maintenance to creo 4, we would have to pay 3 years of subscription before we get the benefit of creo 5 (only because we would't upgrade too quickly)

[TomU]

Time to find a new reseller.  Perpetual licenses are licenses you own.  Period.  There was a time where PTC would not allow you to continue with support if you didn't keep at least 50% of the products on maintenance, but I don't know if that's still the case.  In some ways it really doesn't matter.  As soon as a new version of the software is released, those licenses off subscription will be stuck at the last version they were issued for.  We have plenty of licenses that we've chosen to discontinue support on.  They all still function fine.  With a perpetual license you never have to talk to PTC again to continue using the product.  With a subscription, your ability to run the software ceases the day the subscription runs out.

[TomD.inPDX]

Or you could have the dumb luck I had yesterday and have your MAC address become dysfunctional.

DEAD IN THE WATERS!

I am assuming you can manage licenses without maintenance.  It was always the "promise".

?

I'm covered on maintenance and I still use Creo 2.0  M040.

So what have I been getting for my money?

It's called insurance  (future proofing) and PTC banks on it big, as do MANY others.

Now they are forcing it as a new way to cover stockholders with impressive lipstick.

SW did the same very loudly and proudly... PTC snuck it in with a deceptive promotion.

I dropped SW like a hot rock leaving me with two self-managed licenses (installs/one user).

My business, however is burdened by PTC.  In some years, significantly.

I wouldn't give up my license, but if you talk with VARs, we will be paying more and more.

I don't even want to get into the VAR thing...

[James62]

You can generate new licence file by yourself using the licence management web tool even if your maintenance is not active anymore. I've actually done that recently because the motherboard on the computer where a single node locked licence was installed burned out.

[TomD.inPDX]

Thank you, Jakub.

That would be a rude awakening if some if this were to change.

Maybe I should load Creo 4.0 just to feel I got something for my money.

[BenLoosli]

Or at least grab a new license file for Creo 4 so you can upgrade at anytime.

[DiepLe]

Hi TomU Sorry I do not know who to ask, hope you sympathize! I would like to ask PTC as well as all of you on the forum, having an understanding of the PTC policy applied to the client on my problem as follows: - I bought the Creo 4.0 license permanently. I was running out of maintenance time, and my PC creo4.0 was corrupted, so I had to buy a new PC to reinstall Creo4.0, so my license Is it transferred to a new PC? We hope to help .

[TomU]

Watch this:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GlP25wLiJc&feature=youtu.be

[MartinHanak]

James,

in 2015 PTC allowed to stop maintenance paying partially (for example drop 3 of 7 and remain active 4 of 7).

Unfortunately in 2017 partial maintenance stopping is not possible anymore . Simply said PTC changed rules...

MH

[jlynch]

Hi Martin,

yes this does seem to be PTC's current policy - just off the phone from our VAR and double confirmed for is we partially renew, we will only get a license which includes those continued, not our old ones.    it's a very aggressive policy by PTC I think..

lot's to think about..

James

[BenLoosli]

It is illegal for PTC to cancel your licenses that you have paid for!

You bought a perpetual license to use Creo 2. It is yours forever even if you do not pay maintenance. The only PTC support you can get is to retrieve a new copy of your license file for a new computer.

I have a license file that says 2 seats of Flex3C are at Wildfire 5/Creo level and 15 seats at Creo2 level. My maintenance is only being paid on those 15 seats.

I may just grab new licenses to have them. ☺

[TomU]

Martin Hanak‌, do you have a link to these "rules"?  I'm looking through the different legal agreements and I'm not seeing anything about this.

[TomU]

I just had a nice chat with my VAR (who I actually like) and he confirmed the same thing.  PTC implemented a policy in October, 2016 where they no longer allow partial maintenance renewals unless you are willing to sign a letter relinquishing your rights to the off-maintenance licenses.  You do have the option to not sign the letter, but then they have the option to not allow you to renew.  Basically there are three scenarios:

1. Renew maintenance on all of the licenses, and keep using them indefinitely (perpetually).
2. Don't renew maintenance on any of the licenses, and keep using them indefinitely (perpetually).
3. Renew maintenance on just some of the licenses, and permanently relinquish your rights to the off-maintenance licenses.

This is the "legal" policy.  Practically PTC has been much more flexible.  Some people have refused to sign the relinquish agreements but PTC still allowed them to partially renew.  It really depends on the situation and the negotiation between PTC and your VAR.  You're much more likely to be able to stop paying maintenance on 5% or 10% of your licenses than you are trying to stop paying on 50% or 80%.  It really is handled on a case by case basis.

Keep in mind as well that PTC is working to actively move everyone over to the subscription model.  Sooner or later the perpetual maintenance renewal prices will become so high that it won't make sense to continue with them, even at the loss of the perpetual license "ownership".

[TomD.inPDX]

That is pretty much the message I was getting.

Someone will eventually cry in the wilderness for a SW users' bill of rights.

There is no way this won't hit the supreme court one day.

That could open up a lot of companies to liability.

[GaryMansell]

Tom,

We have also seen this and are extremely unhappy to be faced with losing perpetual licenses that we bought in good faith. We are a consulting company so our usage goes up and down all the time - we often bring stuff on/off of maintenance.

We were thinking that we might purchase all our future permanent licenses on separate PO's so that they are all separate PTC SON's (but combined into one license file) - thus allowing us to stop maintenance on one of the PO's but the others are separate so that we would avoid this issue - would this work do you think?

Rgds

Gary

[TomU]

Nope.  Your licenses are associated to your customer number.  The PO they were purchased against doesn't have any impact on the licensing.

[MartinHanak]

Hi,

I think you have to verify this strategy with your VAR.

MH

[TomD.inPDX]

Something like each user purchases their own license.  Yea, I can see that working

[jnelson]

Tom

Keep in mind as well that PTC is working to actively move everyone over to the subscription model.  Sooner or later the perpetual maintenance renewal prices will become so high that it won't make sense to continue with them, even at the loss of the perpetual license "ownership".

While I agree with your statement, at the same time I can argue that the maintenance on perpetual licenses are already overly expensive, especially considering the consistent issues that are within every release. New functionality never completed within one release (sometimes taking multiple releases to complete), new "bugs" in the software releases that never get resolved (intended functionality), compatibility with PRO/E and Windchill, and so called major releases that get delayed not just months but in some cases years.... The cost to small businesses to maintenance licenses for what is just a TOOL to get the job done is hard to justify (cost to small businesses may look like peanuts to the larger companies, but it does have a big impact)

Now that subscriptions are being forced upon us (like shoved down our throats), I think in the long run subscriptions are going to be even more expensive to the small businesses. Being FORCED to pay a subscription maintenance just to use the software, regardless of the release, is going to be more costly because once the subscription expires the software can no longer be used. Even if I were to eliminate PRO/E all together here and move to something else, I still need to maintain the subscription for access to my Windchill maintained files.

In my opinion, just mine, I think PTC is going to start losing customers, especially the small businesses simply because of the subscriptions. For my company, I have already started looking at what other options are available, and the overall cost, because I would rather pay that upfront overly expensive price to own the software. However, I will say this, if the subscriptions were going in the direction we were led to believe when CREO was first introduced, I may have a different view on this, especially if I could do subscription on a "per module" basis" and keep my PRO/E base module on a perpetual license

(CREO was marketed something like ANY LICENSE, AT TIME....blah blah blah)