What is Bentley’s commitment to Interoperability?
What is true Interoperability? Why does only Bentley offer it?
What does the water industry require in terms of Interoperability?
Current platform support for Bentley’s Haestad Water Solutions
Special Offers
Bentley is committed to delivering interoperability in its Haestad Methods product line. Bentley acquired Haestad Methods in 2004, and since then has not only maintained but also broadened the scope of interoperability delivered with the water, wastewater and stormwater design, modeling and analysis products.
Bentley continues to hold a position as the leader when it comes to interoperable hydrologic and hydraulic solutions, as proved with the many releases of products that are compatible with the latest product releases from ESRI and Autodesk.
Bentley’s commitment to Interoperability
Robert Mankowski, Director of Product Management for Bentley’s Geospatial Solutions has 13 years of experience with the product line, both at Haestad Methods and Bentley, and comments:
"Since the acquisition of Haestad Methods by Bentley, we have clearly shown our continued commitment to AutoCAD, ESRI’s ArcGIS, and to MicroStation users, and we will definitely keep supporting these products.
In order to support new releases of AutoCAD, ESRI’s ArcGIS, or MicroStation, we release new builds of our water modeling software every time a new platform version is released:
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In fact, our relationship with ESRI and Autodesk, albeit that they are Bentley’s competitors, is growing strongly:
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Only Bentley offers true Interoperability
Strategically, Bentley is committed to the concept of interoperability.
Bentley supports the goal of making all of its products work together seamlessly, and in working with open databases. Further, Bentley is committed to being able to work natively in DGN or DWG file formats when designing infrastructure, to being able to manage heterogeneous file types through ProjectWise Integration Server and the geospatial version, the Bentley Geospatial Server.
A versatile multi-platform environment liberates users from a specific platform, allowing them to share a single modeling dataset derived from any major CAD vendor or from ESRI’s ArcGIS. This means that modelers can use and open the same model file in any of the supported CAD or GIS programs’ interfaces.
Marketing programs from our competition in the water modeling market claim that their solutions are interoperable, but in order to use their water products on several platforms, you have to buy multiple water products (i.e. one per platform). This is not going to be cost-effective for users.
Bentley’s water products are the only products on the market to support up to four interoperable platforms in a single product (i.e. for a single price, there is no need to buy separate models for independent platforms).
With our level of multi-platform interoperability, models work together no matter what platform they were created on; people work collaboratively, each in his or her preferred environment; and organizations work more efficiently by leveraging the skills of their specialists and their investments in technology. Moreover, there are no file conversion errors to contend with.
For example, a typical workflow, which only Bentley offers, could be:
On the other hand, organizations that choose a less interoperable platform are often forced to buy additional licenses of ArcGIS or AutoCAD just to run the model, to train modeling team members that are not familiar with the selected platform, and to deal with file conversion errors that increase costs and delay project schedules.
Water industry's Interoperability requirements
Interoperability has become one of the top requirements for utilities and civil engineering firms when shopping for water modeling software. Based on results from the first national water modeling survey, interoperability features claimed 4 of the top 5 user requirements for water modeling software products gathering more than 50% of the votes in the survey.
When looking at simultaneous use of modeling platforms, the results show that only 1% said they exclusively use a GIS-integrated platform:
Bentley’s Haestad Methods products are the only ones in the industry that will satisfy the 77 % of users who require multiple, interoperable environments.
Current platform support for Bentley's Haestad Methods water products
Special Offers
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