New China Initiatives Bentley

Bentley Systems, Incorporated announced two initiatives in support of China’s massive investment in its infrastructure. The first initiative headquartered Bentley Asia’s operations in China, making the company’s portfolio for infrastructure readily available to the China community. The second, Bentley’s Power Program, offers this same community free introductory subscriptions to professional Computer-Aided Drafting and Detailing (CADD) software.

“China is experiencing an infrastructure boom of historic proportions and will invest US$800 billion dollars in infrastructure over the next five years,” said Greg Bentley. “It ranks No. 3 in the $4 trillion global construction market and No. 1 in growth – growing at an astounding 11 percent rate.”

Bentley Asia
Early in 2005, Bentley formed the Bentley Asia Operating Unit to provide sales, support, and service to this part of the world. The operating unit currently has more than 250 Bentley colleagues throughout Asia.

“Recognising that the People’s Republic of China is by far the largest contributor to Asia’s investment in infrastructure,” said Mr. Bentley, “we formed the Bentley Asia Operating Unit in Beijing.”

Power Program
The Power Program offers the MicroStation PowerDraft CADD product and an upgrade path to more comprehensive solutions for distributed enterprises–through a subscription-based model.

Infrastructure software is complex and mission-critical – relationships between users and vendors are critical, with regular contact a requirement for success. Unfortunately, the common situation in China is that these relationships are broken and the benefits are not making it to users.

The Power Program’s subscription-based model establishes those relationships and immediately raises the benefits of software for the China infrastructure community. And, in appreciation for the first-year start-up and training costs that many new users may incur, the program offers a year of free subscriptions to new users.

The PowerDraft Private option offers users and developers in China a first-year subscription to MicroStation PowerDraft for free; the price for future years is 200 RMB per year. The software is supplied as a full product (not a demo) in the Chinese language.