Named User Vs. Subscription Licensing Models

Selecting the proper software licensing model can be a rather cumbersome exercise. It requires IT administrator and project managers etc. to go through many different steps and ask questions such as:

• Should I use Named User license model?
• How many users will need access to the software?
• What if more people will join our team down the road?
• Can I decrease without penalties /cancellation fee number of licenses?
• What if a user needs access to the software temporarily and may not need it later? How can I handle the cost of such scenarios efficiently?
• How much paperwork will I need to fill in and how much time will it take to process an amendment request?
• What if person is on vacation? Can I reuse a license for another employee?
• How can I track who/when/how uses the system?
• As a contractor I want to track usage on a per project basis so I can invoice my clients respectively?

It is rare you find “one perfect fit” answer to all of the above questions. As a tradeoff you will go with some approach sacrificing either convenience/human efficiency or money, or probably both to some extent.

The Subscription Licensing Model was designed to address the above licensing conundrum. It focuses on “how” the system is used rather than “who and when” uses the software.

Points based systems sit at the core of the idea and are based on agility, scalability and transparency. These three qualities apply to our new subscription model of the P6-Loader v4:

Agility

A subscription will provide a bucket of points that will be shared across all users and software instances. Increasing or decreasing the number of system users and installing additional instances of software is simple and does not require a renegotiation of your licensing agreement

Scalability

Each operation performed by a user will require a specific amount of points to be deducted from the bucket. The exact number of points depends on the amount of data involved in the operation.

For instance:

• exporting a small project will need less points rather than doing the same for a giant one
• a business scenario that requires export/import on a daily basis will need twice as less points as the same scenario performed for two shifts a day

So the inertness of a classic Named User License model is eliminated allowing the licensing model to handle different use cases without losing cost efficiency.

Transparency

An extensive monitoring and tracking solution gives us the possibility to understand who, when and how they used the system. For each operation performed we capture date/time, user name, project name, operation type (ex. export, import), module name (ex. WBS, Activity, Risk etc.), P6 database, amount of points used and more. The information is available at any time on our online portal and can be exported in a convenient Excel spreadsheet. In addition, the portal provides several graphical charts making it extremely easy to perform per Project, per User and per Module usage analysis as well as understand point’s usage history and trend.

For more information specific to the P6-Loader licensing model please review the different packages available on our product page or contact us for more information.