Perpetual Licenses No Longer Available After January 1, 2018

[TomU]

For those who haven't seen it yet, PTC has officially announced that perpetual licenses will no longer be available for purchase starting January 1, 2018.

"...effective January 1, 2018, new software licenses for its core solutions and ThingWorx platform will be available only by subscription in the Americas and Western Europe. Customers in these regions may continue to use their existing perpetual licenses and renew support on active licenses."

Yes, this includes Creo, Windchill, etc.  The only exception is Kepware.

Additional information available here:

• PTC Subscription | PTC
• PTC Accelerates Subscription Business Model in Select Regions | PTC

[346gnu]

Ha ha,

It would appear the censoring software for this forum is set to 'sensitive flower'

I blame my poorly applied hyphenating, the word should not have been.

The word in the previous post

                 **bleep**-eyed

should have been

                 cockeyed

meaning crooked or askew, misaligned. And is not some kind of inuendo. Of course, 'inuendo' could be an inuendo.

The etymology is interesting and varies depending on which website you believe, so ignoring those that have blatently plagiarised each other I quite like the possible Gaelic origin "caog" meaning "wink"

[TomU]

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Thus we will keep one seat of Parametric and Simulation maintained and leave the other sad sorry wasted investment to slowly wither.

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Be very careful.  I've heard of PTC refusing to allow partial maintenance renewals unless you either renew >50% of your licenses or sign a contract saying you won't continue using any of the other off-maintenance licenses.  Not sure if they are still doing this or not.

[DeanLong]

Tom,

Let me re-phrase that as it entered my ears.

Is this similar to my Chevy Cruze I bought in 2012 and now own, has been "maintained" at the Chevrolet dealer to the tune of $1250 per year with oil changes, filters, computer updates to the fuel system, recalls, all offered by GM. But come January 2, 2018 when I walk in the same dealership, I have been loyal to for over 15 years, wanting to buy a new Cruze at FULL price without negotiation I am told sure, we have your fancy new Cruze right here, please sign the contract and pay us the full price without a loan. Oh and we have this additional agreement that states you will no longer drive your 2012 Cruze you own. Is this the same concept PTC has with licenses already paid for in full?

[TomU]

Not sure about the analogy, but fundamentally what they are trying to prevent is some place having say 20 seats of software, only paying maintenance for one of them, but keeping them all up to date.  Of course this only works while everyone is still on the same major version, but I think that's what they are trying to prevent.  Again, I don't know if they are still doing this, but I've told that if you attempt to renew maintenance on less than half of your "in use" seats they may refuse to allow it unless you sign a contract agree to discontinue using the other seats.

[TomU]

I just found the original conversation.  Read these:

https://community.ptc.com/t5/Creo-Modeling-Questions/Creo-Parametric-Maintenance-Licensing/m-p/13706/highlight/true#M3305

https://community.ptc.com/t5/Creo-Modeling-Questions/Creo-Parametric-Maintenance-Licensing/m-p/13719/highlight/true#M3318

[dschenken]

That should be controllable with the license manager. If you are only updating one license and still have 19 others off maint, then you get only one new license code and the rest are stuck with the old release code. Sure, all 20 users could have access from their own chairs instead of the inconvenience of just time-sharing a single computer, but only one can use the license at a single time, same as if there was only ever one license for an entire facility.

[bmüller]

Ok, so for us as „locked-in“ production company using all of our licenses permanently. The subscription offer with extra ISDX & Simulate licenses is the right choice.

The satements from PTC to extinguishe perpetual licenses seems to be very definite.
E.g. we have ~200 seats world wide and 3 windchill servers.
So just switching to solidworks is not possible. (It‘s already hard to use the same creo release in every branch office...)

Regarding PTC price policy, there are huge differences between even equal sized offices in neighboring countries...

Br Bernhard

[346gnu]

Thanks for the warning, I will discuss it with the VAR.

It seems illegal to me.

[346gnu]

I read a car analogy. Stretching it some more ...

You can service the family ford but you must pay the historic costs on the old Model T you keep in the garage.

Having thought about it for 2 minutes, if we are faced with that then given we have Creo 4 otherwise. I will consider stopping maintenance altogether. The software won't go out of date overnight.

1 year completely off maintenance would make a transition to SW as the CAD easy

[TomD.inPDX]

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@346gnu wrote:

<snip>

1 year completely off maintenance would make a transition to SW as the CAD easy

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I augmented my Creo with SW.  You'd think experience would be better.  But you'd be wrong 🙂

We pay on average 20% more than SW people pay for burdened cost on average (okay, sample of one; single license w/o frills of any kind).  This wasn't the issue.  I needed SW and PTC didn't deliver without a huge burden cost.  So the cost of opting into SW for a perpetual license was again, 80% of a new PTC seat with a perpetual license.  But with SW, you also must also buy a 1 year subscription... Like PTC of course, where it is included in the cost.

One big difference... the level of support. 

I peg PTC on a high level of professionalism and consistency.

SW support doesn't even pass the low bar leaving most issues to the VAR.

SW VARs are pretty much Community Members with a handy sales pitch.

[STEVEG]

Well you do have a point about the support from SW.  At my last job the support was through the vendor and wasn't very good.  But that was also about 18-20 years ago.

[DeanLong]

Tom,

In 30+ years in the CAD business (and about a dozen systems under my belt), I have seen just about all the "issues" in and around the daily grind. In each and every one of those cases, the only time "official" software company support was needed was either 1. when the software was originally introduced (or installed at the company) and the World Brain (number of users) was not efficient enough yet to self support through User meetings/collaboration or 2. actual code was corrupted within a file that required the "programmers" to evaluate. But then again, this usually happened within the first 3-5 years of a particular CAD program. Once the code stabilized through field use/bug catches/updates the need for "official" support died off quickly. And in a lot of cases never used again. Case in point, my personal last call to 1-800-PRO-EHEL was in 1997. True enough we needed first hand assistance the day Pro/E hit the streets (yes, I was there) but because our community grew quickly, became super strong and helped one another, ALL BEFORE THE WEB (imagine that, YungUns!), the Help Desk became the UnHelp Desk. In particular, you were speaking of Creo and SolidWorks of today. Both are very mature software neither of which are fundamentally all that different the day they were introduced. Also, the user communities for both are worldwide large and very knowledgable regarding just about everything. So the serious question is: do you or your company still require "official" help contact with either PTC or Dassualt to make your particular machine run each day?

[346gnu]

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@TomD.inPDX wrote:

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One big difference... the level of support. I peg PTC on a high level of professionalism and consistency.

Yes.  But being consistent and professional doesn't help the more advanced users. PTC are relying upon us supporting ourselves via this forum whilst taking money for support. I know this forum costs money but this resource does not require all the maintenance revenue and frankly there seems to be absolutely no seasoned contribution from PTC here. I refuse to teach PTC for free and we have discussed here before how those that are able to support us are simply made redundant; talking to us does not directly generate revenue.

Having 2 licenses of simulate here cost twice as much for the same non-support. I have stopped filing bugs and bad behaviour I find.

SW support doesn't even pass the low bar leaving most issues to the VAR.

SW VARs are pretty much Community Members with a handy sales pitch.

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I hear that the support is at VAR level and VAR dependent. As self supporting we are not better or worse off. I also hear that things are improving.

But with SW, you also must also buy a 1 year subscription... Like PTC of course, where it is included in the cost.

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With a single phone call I got an end end of year offer that makes the PTC options silly. I will wait the year and see what happens. If the offer was truely too good to miss then I will have messed up.

The saving grace is that regardless of end of year, never-to-be-repeated-offers, the full price will still be the sensible option for an permanent license and freedom from anxiety if required.

The variable is - how many years of not paying before the Creo 3.0 becomes too old to be useful. Each one of those years is money is burden free.

[skunks]

Charles,

simulate is bigger as SW Simulation, but simulate without STRUCTURE (original) - i don't need it...