BENTLEY SYSTEMS
DIGITAL REPORT 2020
Bentley Systems: resilience in flexibility IN ASSOCIATION WITH
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Bentley Systems’ cloud offering drives business resilience WRITTEN BY
MARCUS LAWRENCE
PRODUCED BY
ARRON RAMPLING
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BENTLEY SYSTEMS
Jeff Richardson, CDO at Bentley Systems, discusses the state of the art cloud infrastructure that benefits internal and external stakeholders
T
he global business community has responded to the coronavirus pandemic with considerably more focus on remote
working than has ever been seen before. For every industry, from media to construction, demand 04
has rocketed for technological solutions that will enable continued operations with minimal disruption. Bentley Systems, a world-leading software solutions developer serving major infrastructural construction projects around the world, has long been a proponent of this breed of tech, and today boasts a cutting edge cloud infrastructure whose benefits are more apparent than ever. In normal times, its end-to-end suite of software solutions for such large projects ensures a seamlessness of delivery for its users while cutting-edge telemetry capabilities mean development and subscriptions are current, flexible, and fair. All of that remains true during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the global crisis has revealed that Bentley’s greatest strength is perhaps in the flexibility it offers both external and internal stakeholders.
Jeff Richardson, CDO, Bentley Systems
05
1984
Year founded
$700mn Revenue in US dollars
3,800 Number of employees
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BENTLEY SYSTEMS
“ We use the rules of compliance as foundational guidelines, and we always try to exceed those guidelines by orders of magnitude” 06
— Jeff Richardson, Chief Data Officer, Bentley Systems
Jeff Richardson, Chief Data Officer at Bentley Systems, has been with the company since 2004, rising through the ranks from an SAP developer to the head of the firm’s data lifecycle and data strategies. In Richardson’s view, ‘global mobility’ is 2020’s key trend, and it has certainly become the undercurrent for business in a world where face-to-face contact is being kept to a minimum. “Businesses have quickly tried to adapt to global mobility now that face-toface culture is out the window, and we instead need to have a culture of ‘can you do your job globally, but remotely to where you are?’” he says. The scope of the construction projects that Bentley facilitates means the capability required goes way beyond the collaboration tools and Zoom meetings that have come to pervade many industries. Building a 100-storey skyscraper, for example, comes with immense data requirements, with file sizes spanning gigabytes and terabytes. “A single BIM model, made of the structural elements of the building, could be many, many gigabytes of data. The question is: how do remote workers seamlessly
Bentley Systems: ProjectWise Components Center Overview CLICK TO WATCH
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07 access files of that size to make edits,
on integrating a robust and industry-
updates and run analyses?”
leading cloud security platform. Along
Bentley’s state-of-the-art
with instituting a security office, we
ProjectWise 365 tools provide the
have beefed up our security staff and
answer, with distributed file sharing
infrastructure by around 800% in
and caching technology that enable
the past five years, we’re constantly
workers to easily operate within the
running penetration exercises on our
cloud regardless of where and when
cloud infrastructure, and we are just
they are, all with the confidence that
now implementing mock data breach
the system is secure and continually
scenarios with our larger cloud infra-
stress-tested against potential threats.
structure compliance and data teams.
“Living in a cloud-focused world,
As we store more and more of our
security is huge for us. Our CIO, Claire
users’ data in the cloud, it is both our
Rutkowski, came on board in October
responsibility and desire to be as safe
2016 and has been heavily focused
and resilient as possible.” w w w.be nt l ey. com
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During this period of business
‘ELS contracts’, Richardson explains:
instability and uncertainty, Bentley’s
“We were selling contracts like that as
protections for its customers have
far as back as 2006 - I’ve never heard
extended beyond its cybersecurity.
of another company that was doing
Owing to the business disruptions, the
the same that far back in time. With
company has waived the pay-what-you-
the light telemetry we had available
use subscription fees for ProjectWise
to measure usage, we were able to
through to 30 September 2020; a
do that.” Data gathered from across
measure that ties closely with Bentley’s
software suites has not only enabled
mantra that its success is measured
reactive and incisive development of
by that of its users. The firm has been
successive products, but has made
a pioneer of this payment-by-usage
the pay-for-what-you-use model the
subscription model, known internally as
norm for Bentley for over a decade.
E X E C U T I V E P R OF IL E :
Jeff Richardson Jeff Richardson is a seasoned data and analytics executive leader with a cloud-first focus on evolving technology and trends. Over a 17-year career, he has crafted a results-driven strategy for growth and delivered outcomes which have helped Bentley achieve a leading position in cloud technology, record revenue and user growth.
Today, the latest data measurements are even more precise and complex, making for a robust service model that is accurately proportionate to the user’s needs. Not only does each contract have an unlimited potential value ceiling for Bentley, they also ensure users are never encumbered with a subscription that they don’t need and actively use. The tech also paints a
A prolific speaker on the topics of cloud, data and analytics, Richardson can often be found at conferences and networking events in the Greater Philadelphia and mid-Atlantic area. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Providence College, where he was also a Division I swimmer, a master’s degree in Statistics from Central Connecticut State University and recently completed a business capstone program at Yale University.
picture of the usage increase that has come with vaster proportions of workforces working from home during the w w w.be nt l ey. com
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For an open relationship with your data.
Multi-cloud Data Integration & Analytics | qlik.com
11 COVID-19 pandemic. “When the crisis hit, many companies who were using other, server-based products in offices became stuck and couldn’t access those resources. For our customers, the users of our distributed cloud products, the transition was seamless and we can actually see that in the telemetry. It shows us that our work-sharing products had no disruption in usage during the country-based shutdowns resulting from the pandemic. In fact, our collaboration tools actually saw an 8-13% increase in usage, year on year,
“ A single BIM model, made of the structural elements of the building, could be many, many gigabytes of data. The question is: how do remote workers seamlessly access files of that size to make edits, updates, and run analysis” — Jeff Richardson, Chief Data Officer, Bentley Systems
from last year.” w w w.be nt l ey. com
BENTLEY SYSTEMS
Partners enabled us to build an analytical suite in conjunction with our Microsoft Azure partnership.”
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“Bentley tends to partner with software vendors very tightly to build solutions for things that work for us and can be fed back into the larger software development ecosystem. SAP is a great example, and we’ve been a tight partner with them since about 2005. We use SAP for all of our internal applications, such as ERP and CRM systems, to run operations internally along with its people management and success factors. We work very closely with SAP to develop products that we’re going to use, and I’m positive that development is used to enhance SAP’s only products too.”
“Over the past ten years, Qlik has been a great software vendor and partner for Bentley. We’re using the most recent release of its cloudfocused Sense technology, and it has
“I have a close relationship with a lot of the guys that started the company. As an analytics and data storagefocused cloud developer, Thoughtspot is positioned to be the market leader in cloud-based analytics.”
“We recently partnered with Snowflake to support our cloud-first approach, and it is rapidly growing to become the leader in data warehousing and storage technology. We’re going to use Snowflake internally to store our featurelevel data, which consists of huge amounts of highly detailed telemetry data. Their pricing structure is very elastic, with a fair billing model focused on pay-what-you-use, just like Bentley.”
The sheer capability and flexibility
develop solutions in collaboration with
of Bentley’s cloud infrastructure, which
its key vendors to solidify its leadership
has in recent years been a huge invest-
in the market. Not only that, but cloud-
ment focus for the firm, has been
based operations have made Bentley
predicated on CEO Greg Bentley’s
enormously flexible in how it operates,
insistence that its operations are
meaning that, of its 3,800 staff world-
cloud-first and cloud-forward wherever
wide, Richardson says that only 73
possible. This pioneering approach
were unable to dive into the working-
to cloud, dating back to the launch
from-home scenario of the coronavirus
of Microsoft Azure and the subse-
pandemic from day one.
quent close partnership that the two
Across such global operations, this is
firms have shared since, has enabled
a great indicator of Bentley’s flexibility
Bentley to both seize the opportunities
at work. As the coronavirus pandemic
of cloud-centralised operations and
gathered pace, Senior Leadership of
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“ Living in a cloud-focused world, security is huge for us. Our CIO, Claire Rutkowski, came on board in October 2016 and has been heavily focused on integrating a robust and industry-leading cloud security platform” — Jeff Richardson, Chief Data Officer, Bentley Systems
IT meetings were held to workshop worst case scenarios, and the preparation that resulted has ensured what Richardson calls a “totally seamless” shift to the new normal. Questions of access to vital resources from home, including licences, hardware and software were answered promptly in a show of remarkable preparedness in such unprecedented times. “We use the rules of compliance as foundational guidelines, and we always try to exceed those guidelines
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by orders of magnitude; comply-
the next decade.” This sentiment is
ing whilst building infrastructure
reflected in Bentley’s continued ability
that supports those guidelines in a
to serve its clients and continue as nor-
best practice sense, and exceeding
mal internally, a powerful indicator that
those standards as far as possible,”
Bentley’s cloud software will retain its
Richardson enthuses, highlighting
market leadership long into the future.
the strategic focus that has ensured Bentley Systems is ready for anything. To close, Richardson shares the ethos at the heart of Bentley’s operations: “We don’t want to build cloud software that’s reliable for today, we want to build cloud software that’s reliable for w w w.be nt l ey. com
BENTLEY SYSTEMS, INCORPORATED 685 STOCKTON DRIVE EXTON, PA, UNITED STATES 19341 T +1 610 458 5000 www.bentley.com
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