Windchill license audting question

[JohnMattson]

My understanding is that when you purchase Windchill/PDMLink licenses,
you can buy a combination of Heavy and Light licenses at either a fixed
1-2 ratio, or you can buy by "Role" where certain roles are classified
as Heavy user (e.g. Engineer) and other roles are classified as Light
(e.g. sourcing).



Can anyone describe how PTC would audit your Windchill installation
based on either of these two different licensing schemes?



Thanks, John

[FredSmith]

PTC considers Windchill "heavy" users as members of the customer's product development organization. These are frequent and/or deep users of the product capabilities. The product development organization is defined as members of departments that are typically engaged in product design and development, and go by names such as "Engineering", "Product Management", "Technical Publications", and "Information Technology", to name a few. Other internal users from "Finance", "Purchasing", "Sales", and the like, would be considered "light" users.

Recognizing that there is a lot of subjectivity and variability to these terms, PTC also requires that customers purchase to a minimum heavy/light mix ratio. The intent of this policy is to minimize abuse of the above terms. So, for example,a customer could not claim to have "one product developer and the rest just ship it". The definitions and the mix ratios are not intended to be two different schemes. First, customers should count/estimate their number of product developers, then, if the mix is within the ratio, that's the number of each license required. PTC account managers check ratios only after counts are provided. (Note: The ratio requirements vary slightly by product and what is typical in the customer's industry. Refer ratio questions to your account manager.)

PTC's license assessment procedures are published on this web site - http://www.ptc.com/support/usageassessments/windchill/. At a high-level, the process counts users who have access to the system, and verifies that the customer has purchased an appropriate total number of seats and satisfies the required heavy/light mix ratio. The process also estimates the number of users of specific modules (e.g., PDMLink, ProjectLink, MPMLink, etc.) by analyzing actual system usage. This data is shared with the customer and PTC account manager who jointly decide if any corrective actions are needed.

Customers are assessed randomly, and when requested. The web site includes instructions for conducting a self-assessment. If you would like to discuss the results or schedule assistance, please contact your account manager.

Fred Smith

PTC License Assessment Team

[HugoHermans]

Thank you for your input, Fred.

Can you understand that the license policy you described, is very
difficult for me to be used as an instrument to justify new investments,
internally? It is a fair policy, I recognize, but it leaves so much
opening for discussion, I lost over 10 months last year on such a
licensing discussion.

Although I'm involved in this matter for several years, it's new to me
that every product has it's own ratio. Again an extra point that can be
(mis)used in negotiations.

And last but not least, and I will contradict myself now, we need extra
types of users :
- users that only consult information, infrequently, so a kind of
super-light user. For example, if I want to substitute our home-made
application for drawing viewing by PDMLink and ProductView, even the
light version seems to expensive for some managers.
- what about subcontractors? Will they all need an own named license?
- I configured some extra named users for administration purposes. Site
admin and Org admin come out of the box, but I configured one for
publishing viewables. Do I have to pay for them as well?

Establishing a transparant license policy is important but a challenge.
I've know vendors how gave their price, and that's it. But again, I'm
in trouble using your policy while justifying new licenses.


Met vriendelijke groeten,
Kindest regards,

Hugo Hermans

-

NV Michel Van de Wiele
Michel Vandewielestraat 7
8510 Kortrijk (Marke)
Tel : +32 56 243 211
Fax: +32 56 243 540
BTW BE 0405 450 595
RPR Kortrijk

[cc-2]

Hello

I agree with Hugo on that one 🙂

In addition, PTC in the UK told us that a Heavy user is a ProE users and a Lite user is a non Proe users regardless of how often they use the system. This is quite different than what you said. So I am confused.

Thanks

[HugoHermans]

If I had followed the link Fred Smith (PTC) added to his reply, I would
have found this document myself. It contains the information I was
asking for: View/Print and External users. And a comprehensive
overview. So, thank you for the input.

Regards, Hugo.