Bentley Systems today unveiled its next generation of software for sustaining infrastructure at this gathering of leading AEC executives, infrastructure owner-operators, and 100+ journalists from around the globe. The CONNECT Edition will succeed Bentley's V8i software generation, supporting a hybrid computing environment for comprehensive project delivery and "completing the reach" to all project participants.
MicroStation CONNECT Edition has already been made available to Early Access participants, and many of the ProjectWise CONNECT Edition services, along with the Bentley Navigator CONNECT Edition "app-lication", will be available for Early Access by year's end. V8i modelling applications will compatibly intra-operate with both MicroStation CONNECT Edition and ProjectWise CONNECT Edition, as there is no change to the DGN file format. The CONNECT Edition of Bentley's modelling applications and AssetWise offerings will be released throughout 2015 and 2016.
'Software at your service'
The CONNECT Edition converges Bentley's platform technology to support a hybrid environment across desktop modelling applications, cloud-services, on-premises servers and mobile apps. The CONNECT Edition leverages Microsoft's Azure cloud services to connect all users across projects. Azure also underpins CONNECT SELECTservices, which was successfully introduced earlier this year to extend Bentley's full portfolio for SELECT Open Access, through quarterly term licensing, to all Bentley subscribers. Azure cloud services provide CONNECT Edition users with instant access to unlimited computational nodes to make feasible unprecedented optioneering, for better design outcomes and ultimately improved asset performance. Also through Azure, Bentley's MANAGEservices provides instant-on access to all ProjectWise services.
For each user, the CONNECT Edition provides a personalised Bentley Playlist of applications and apps specific to each participant's project role, with personalised learning paths and just-in-time recommendations. A Bentley CONNECTIONS Passport provides authenticated access to ProjectWise and AssetWise services and software spanning a user's hybrid computing environment. For example, the Bentley Navigator CONNECT Edition "app-lication" provides a user with the same immersive "hands-on" interface across Windows, Android, and iOS, from giant touchscreens to handhelds - for information mobility to and from office, jobsite and the field.
For each project, the CONNECT Edition provides a project-specific Bentley Playbook to recommend, in keeping with the project's profile, appropriate applications and apps to fully address the project's requirements and to support each participant's role. In addition to benefiting from project-specific workspaces, each project can also be cloud-provisioned with pertinent catalogues of functional components and managed specifications, to be incorporated and referenced throughout comprehensive project delivery and handover.
Bhupinder Singh, Bentley's senior vice president of software, said: "With the CONNECT Edition, we are intrinsically availing cloud-based capabilities throughout the software and services we provide, to advance projects through a new 'connected user experience.' The CONNECT Edition's cloud services span existing and evolving computing environments, enabling Bentley's innovations to extend benefits comprehensively beyond our traditional modelling users, throughout the supply chain and to construction. The CONNECT Edition can uniquely advance information mobility with integrity, to and from the right project contributors, anytime and anywhere. Over the next several years, the CONNECT Edition will empower Bentley software, and our users, to attain the full potential of BIM advancements for project delivery."
The common environment for comprehensive project delivery
The CONNECT Edition breaks new ground to support comprehensive project delivery, spanning design modelling, analytical modelling, and construction modelling, through a connected project experience. The CONNECT Edition extends Bentley's market-leading offerings for design integration and work-sharing to now encompass deliverables management and construction execution. To ensure information integrity, unify multi-discipline project teams, and improve project performance, the CONNECT Edition brings together, to an unprecedented extent, these aspects essential to Comprehensive Project Delivery:
* Common project environment - The CONNECT Edition extends ProjectWise capabilities beyond design integration services to the entire project ecosystem. ProjectWise Connection Services reaches all project participants to support cloud-based collaboration enabled through project profiles, authorisations, project playbooks and learning paths. ProjectWise Sharing Service allows co-operating organisations to federate their respective distributed ProjectWise environments. ProjectWise Catalog Service supports project-specific catalogues of managed specifications and functional components. New apps empower field-based workflows, based on mobile i-models that deliver not only visualisation, but also visibility. A new managed issue resolution service, delivered to field users through Bentley Navigator CONNECT Edition, helps users to resolve clashes and punch lists. ProjectWise WorkSite CONNECT Edition provides managed connectivity to the latest project documentation, with review and redlining capabilities for field workers.
* Common modelling environment - The CONNECT Edition is unique in its cross-discipline span, with breakthrough capabilities for iterative collaboration on industrial-scale projects, supporting design modelling, analytical modelling, and construction modelling. A new intuitive user experience is introduced in MicroStation CONNECT Edition, Bentley's flagship modelling application. Its functionality is being incorporated in each forthcoming CONNECT Edition modelling application. All CONNECT Edition modelling applications now support functional components - parametrically defined, intelligent objects with appropriate contextual behaviour across schematic, modelling and deliverable instantiations. To advance computational-intensive analytical modelling for STAAD, SACS, and other applications, cloud-provisioned optioneering is enabled through ProjectWise Scenario Services.
* Common deliverables environment - Documentation Center, a new capability of the MicroStation CONNECT Edition, allows project participants to aggregate, publish and share, for the first time, consistent and combined deliverables across multiple disciplines. ProjectWise Deliverables Management provides an "instant-on" cloud service for the management of transmittals, submittals, and RFIs. ProjectWise Transformation Service manages automated publishing and workflow-driven delivery of i-models and standardized content to project and field workers.
* Common data environment - ProjectWise Engineering Content Management Service embeds Bentley's eB Information Management technology to provide project delivery organisations with a powerful enterprise environment to capture, manage, index and leverage their intellectual property across all of their projects and proposals. ProjectWise Engineering Content Management maintains the relationships and changes to any information it manages, whether incarnated in models, documents or database records. Additionally, user organisations can support field, site and other round-trip data capture workflows through user-customisable, managed forms embeddable in Bentley app-lications.
* Common performance environment - Project Performance Dashboards, a ProjectWise CONNECTIONS Service, will provide insightful analytics, reporting, and accounting to improve visibility into the progress and status of project delivery.
What Early Access users are saying
MicroStation CONNECT Edition Early Access users laud the new capabilities and intuitive user experience of this new generation of software.
Gary Mansager, professional associate at HDR, said: "I really do like the new interface - it makes a lot of sense. The new capabilities are intuitive, and the introduction of the workflows they enable will cut down the time it takes to get things done!"
Robert Cervellione, principal at CERVER Design Studio, said: "What I'm really looking forward to in the MicroStation CONNECT Edition is the new, clean user interface, the improvements in the solids modelling, and the great new constraints and parametric capabilities that can be used to capture design intent and quickly develop reusable model content that is really powerful and versatile."
To apply for participation in Early Access Program II for MicroStation CONNECT Edition, visit www.bentley.com/MicroStationEAP.
To apply for participation in the Early Access Program for the Bentley Navigator CONNECT Edition app-lication, visit www.bentley.com/NavigatorEAP.
