SW Maintenance

[retseirp]

Recently, I have been asked to justify our company’s need to keep maintenance current on (15+) seats of SW (i.e. substantial cost) The suggestion has been floated to only upgrade every two years (which I am against) in order to reduce by half the cost of such maintenance. However, I was interested in getting others’ opinions on the pros and cons of such activities.

 

[JMirisola]

You might want to check with your VAR as to the exact amount, but if your maintenance lapses, you end up paying maintenance plus a fee when you re-up. I want to say it's about $500/seat in fees, but don't quote me on that. While you may end up saving some money, would it be worth it in the end? No maintenance means no support, no service packs...more headaches?

Jeff Mirisola, CSWP
Design Manager/Senior Designer
M9 Defense
My Blog

 

[MDGroup]

Have you talked to your VAR yet? Maybe they can make some type of deal with you to offset some of the cost. With 15 seats, that is a good size account. I would hope they would at least consider helping you out.
You should definitely contact them first.

As Jeff mentioned, the standard late fee is $500 per seat. So, if you could fly solo for at least 6 months, then from a strictly financial standpoint it would benefit.

Can you go without Upgrades/Service Packs?
For most companies, it is fine to use older versions of SW. Especially if all of your files stay within your company. Service packs are an improvement, but if you don't have issues with the features that are fixed, they aren't critical.
But, if someone sends you a SW2011 file, or you find a bug that needs fixed, you are completely out of luck.

What is the skill level of your users?
Is everyone very knowledgable and self-sufficient with running SW. Would any of them benefit from being able to call the VAR with questions, or to ask for assistance? Are there any new users that will need training/classes? Do you have questions about PDM? No maintenance means no support, so if you can handle everything internally, you could be OK.

The positive side is that you can always pay the late fee and get back onto subscription. But if you have an issue, you could be completely shut down until that is completed. I would expect it to take at least week to get a quote, po issued, received, and re-instate all of the licenses, ...

Being on Maintenance is essentially an Insurance Policy for SW. If you never use it, then it is 'wasted' money. But that one time that it saves you makes it worth the costs.

 

[KirbyWan]

We go over this issue every time the bill comes in for SolidWorks Maintenance. I have always felt that the monthly maintenance fees for SolidWorks were too high. They should be IMHO ~10% of the cost of the product per year. In reality they are closer to ~30%. If you plan on going on-a-year then off-a-year and are carefull to time it so that you are working on the highest service pack of the previous iteration in stead of the lowest service pack of the new one you will save money, at the cost of not getting the VAR to answer questions for a year. Remember that if you do this they will require you to pay the subscription for an entire year when you reup. We generally pay just 3 or 4 months at a time.

Another cost savings would be to check you licence server usage and ask yourself do I really need 15 seats? If I have 15 drafters they may only be useing 13 licences at one time. Occasionally someone may have to wait to get on and use SolidWorks, but it may be worth it. If you really hated your drafters you could make them work in three shifts and only use 5 licences Where I work we cut down to one licence from three (without the shift work) and were able to make it work for a year before bumping it back up to two.

It's always best to keep the support, in my book. I just wish it was not so expensive.

-Kirby

Kirby Wilkerson

Remember, first define the problem, then solve it.

 

[SnowCrash]

With 15 seats you could consider a network license for fewer seats if not everyone is working on SW all the time. This is especially effective with shift work.

--
Hardie "Crashj" Johnson
SW 2010 SP 4.0
HP Pavillion Elite HPE
W7 Pro, Nvidia Quaddro FX580