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Computerworld - ... by vendor's new subscription scheme. Imagine not having to worry about buying software that you'll never use or getting too many licenses for a particular product. Nice dream, huh? Well, starting Sept. 1, Bentley Systems Inc. in Exton, Pa., will make its Select Subscription Program available to users of its design tools and applications for markets such as construction, transportation and civil engineering. According to Joe Croser, Bentley's global marketing director, if you opt for Select, you can exchange the software licenses for a product that you don't need for one that you do once each year.

Bentley, a privately held company that had revenue of $336 million last year, has more than 150 products to choose from. Croser says that if you're running "a 10-year-old app that may no longer do the job as well as a new one," you can trade it in. What's more, you get credit for the current price of the product you're exchanging to apply against the cost of the new software. If your old tool happens to be worth more than the one you want, you get more licenses for the new one, Croser says. Conversely, if you want something pricier than what you have now, you pay the difference. Select requires a two-year commitment and costs 15% of your software's price annually; you also get maintenance and updates, plus tutorials and other goodies. The big question: Will more software vendors follow Bentley down this path? "I do think other organizations will catch up," Croser predicts. Let's hope so.

Options for remote control abound ...

... for network managers. With the number of mobile and work-from-home employees growing quickly, remote access control vendors have been rapidly releasing an array of product choices for you to consider. Paul Roscoe, president of the vBusiness unit at Sentillion Inc. in Andover, Mass., argues that you need to make the end-user experience for remote workers "the same as they have in the office."

Roscoe says his unit's first offering, called vThere, does just that. The software provides a virtual image of an end user's application portfolio that can be loaded onto a corporate laptop or a home PC. Your end users won't have to fiddle with VPN access; vThere authenticates them as if they were logging onto a LAN and then handles all the VPN rigamarole. And sysadmins can manage remote systems with the same tools they use on LAN-based machines, Roscoe says. Warning: Don't try this with workers using dial-up connections. Devices are provisioned over the Internet, and each vThere image runs between 2GB and 4GB in size. That's a lot of bytes, Roscoe admits, but he says it's a one-time event -- all updates are incremental. The technology only works with Windows now, but Sentillion will add Mac and Linux support early next year, Roscoe says. The company charges a one-time license fee of $9,500 for vThere, plus $125 per user.

Across the country, Seattle-based Aventail Corp. this week is releasing an ST2 software update for its EX series of remote-access appliances. Chris Witeck, director of product marketing at Aventail, says the new release adds device "watermarking" capabilities so it can immediately identify managed devices, and it's able to permit remote machines to connect during off-hours for batch-processing applications. It supports Windows Mobile handhelds and provides a quarantine zone for