Bentley to complete its reach in software services

Bentley Systems, the leading company dedicated to providing comprehensive software solutions for sustaining infrastructure, today announced that Bentley CONNECT Services, to be successively extended to all of Bentley's software subscribers to complete the reach of project and asset information mobility, will be fully provisioned through the Windows Azure cloud from Microsoft.

Windows Azure will unify Bentley's own software and support enterprise, making it accessible to add value directly in the live context of users' work, through Bentley CONNECT SELECTservices for software administration and technical support, and Bentley CONNECT LEARNservices. In addition, it will underlie an incremental business model enabling Bentley to complete its reach in software as a service through Bentley CONNECT MANAGEservices.

Speaking here at The Year in Infrastructure 2013 Conference to the hundreds of owner-operator and contractor thought leaders gathered in London, CEO Greg Bentley reviewed the effective strategies emerging this year, especially among the hundreds of nominated and more than 60 jury-selected finalist projects for the prestigious Be Inspired Awards to take advantage of information mobility for better performance of infrastructure projects and assets. By now comprehensively connecting through cloud services, he said, projects could effectively, securely and immediately augment the information mobility returns on their successful existing internal collaboration initiatives.

To help achieve this, Bentley CONNECT can span users' project environments across participants, firewalls, supply chains, joint ventures and disparate vendors' software, as well as across Bentley's information modelling application portfolio, Bentley's ProjectWise collaboration servers, Bentley's AssetWise servers for operations and maintenance, and Bentley's growing mobile apps portfolio. Cloud services being previewed for users include Bentley CONNECT Project Sharing Services, Bentley CONNECT i-model Validation Services, Bentley CONNECT Content Services, and Bentley CONNECT Scenario Services.

Bentley's decision to choose Windows Azure as the technical foundation of Bentley CONNECT allows it to extend its proven capabilities with new services uniquely enabled by an always-on cloud. By embracing Windows Azure Platform-as-a-Service and Infrastructure Services, Bentley is aligned with Microsoft's commitment to hybrid environments, comprising cloud and on-premises computing, a crucial factor in meeting the unique requirements of organisations that design, build and operate the world's infrastructure. In addition, the global footprint of Windows Azure is a major advantage, as Bentley users are key contributors to projects worldwide.

Bentley Senior Vice-President Alan Kiraly said: "The Windows Azure team has been very collaborative and supportive. We have been impressed with the pace at which Microsoft is adding new data centres and Windows Azure core services in areas such as security, notification, data replication, data synchronisation and big data analytics. We can leverage each of these immediately in our application-level services to further facilitate and streamline our users' workflows in collaborative and distributed environments."

Windows Azure is a scalable and secure cloud platform that provides the opportunity to integrate software and drive company collaboration, said Dewey Forrester, Microsoft Senior Director. Bentley has capitalised on the benefits of Windows Azure to extend its current capabilities and offerings to its customers around the globe via the cloud.