Bentley Systems is going against the grain with a new licensing program that lets customers turn in user licenses they don't want in exchange for seats of a different product in Bentley's portfolio of architecture, engineering and construction software.

For Architects Design Partnership, that means instead of writing off its investment in print-management software that's not being used, the firm can get a credit for the licenses - based on current list prices - and use it to buy seats of Bentley's latest architectural design and documentation software.

"That's something I'm definitely going to take advantage of," says Marc Thomas, IT director at Architects Design Partnership in London. "We have a piece of software called Digital InterPlot that doesn't fit in with our needs, so I'm planning to trade that in, probably for Bentley Architecture."

While Bentley operates in a niche market, its efforts to keep customers happy reflect a challenge all software makers face: customer retention. In particular, software makers with traditional licensing models are trying to compete with vendors that offer lower start-up costs via open source products or hosted options, says Joshua Greenbaum, a principal at Enterprise Applications Consulting.

"On-demand and open source have had the combined effect of disrupting a lot of traditional licensing models and, therefore, a lot of traditional revenue models," Greenbaum says. "When there's a potentially disruptive player involved, customer retention becomes even more critical."

But despite the increased competition, most packaged software makers aren't making concessions in favor of customers.

"Things are still very much geared toward the vendor," says Ray Wang, a principal analyst at Forrester Research. "Once you lock in, after the initial purchase, everything is kind of stacked against you. You've made this major investment, and if you want to switch off the software, the switching costs are very high."

For example, most software vendors make it difficult for companies to stop paying maintenance and support fees on licenses they aren't using. "A lot of vendors require a renegotiation of a license if you want to downgrade the number of users," Greenbaum says.

Bentley's license-exchange program is an exception, Wang says. "It's definitely unique, it's definitely very innovative," he says.