With over 7.5 million users spanning industries such as manufacturing, aerospace, defense, and automotive, SOLIDWORKS has become a cornerstone of modern engineering and product design. However, the increasing costs of SOLIDWORKS license—ranging between $2,820 and $4,716 annually for a single-user license—demand organizations refine their license management strategies.
As IT investments grow in 2025, particularly in high-value computer-aided design (CAD) and other engineering applications, effective license optimization becomes essential to ensure resource efficiency, uninterrupted software availability, and seamless access for engineering teams.
SOLIDWORKS Licensing Management Complexities
SOLIDWORKS offers diverse licensing models, including network licenses, standalone licenses, and cloud-based subscriptions. While this flexibility supports various organizational needs, it also introduces significant challenges:
Network Licenses: These require constant monitoring to prevent resource contention or cost inefficiencies.
Standalone Licenses: Over-provisioning can lead to wasted costs, while underutilization risks operational bottlenecks.
Cloud-Based Subscriptions: Real-time access management and compliance tracking add complexity to administrative efforts.
Effectively addressing these challenges requires advanced software license management tools and methodologies designed to streamline monitoring, allocation, and reporting processes.
License Waste: A Real Problem
A recent study reveals that organizations with over 200 employees waste 48% of their software budgets—amounting to approximately $235,000 annually—due to inefficient software utilization practices. For companies leveraging SOLIDWORKS, which often employ large-scale workforces numbering in the thousands, the financial and operational implications of such inefficiencies are substantial.
To address these challenges in 2025 and beyond, implementing robust SOLIDWORKS license management strategies is imperative. Effective license management ensures optimal license availability, sustains user productivity, enforces compliance, and maximizes the value derived from software investments, aligning operational efficiency with financial responsibility.
Watch SolidWorks: Strategize Smarter for 2025 Savings and unlock the full potential of your SOLIDWORKS licenses to position your organization for success in the coming year.
Optimize SOLIDWORKS Licenses with Open iT
Open iT, a pioneer in software license management specializing in metering and reporting for high-end engineering applications, helps organizations optimize their SOLIDWORKS licenses, resulting in enhanced operational efficiency, strict compliance, and maximized ROI.
Precise and Detailed License Utilization Reporting
Highly granular license utilization reporting allows companies to monitor SOLIDWORKS usage at multiple levels, including individual users, departments, and projects. This data is critical for identifying patterns such as underutilization, peak usage periods, and potential bottlenecks in license availability.
Cost Optimization through Targeted Resource Allocation
With actionable insights derived from utilization reports and forecasts, organizations can identify unused or underutilized licenses and reallocate them to teams or locations with higher demand. This prevents over-provisioning while ensuring resources are available where needed most.
Strict Compliance with Agreements
Compliance with licensing agreements is a critical concern, particularly in multi-vendor environments. Open iT streamlines compliance monitoring by verifying adherence to usage limits and contractual terms, managing licenses from multiple vendors with varying compliance requirements, and flagging potential compliance issues before they escalate into fines or legal disputes.
User Productivity
Highly actionable insights derived from Open iT reports enable organizations to ensure licenses are readily available whenever users need them. By analyzing license usage patterns and reallocating resources proactively, organizations can prevent delays by addressing license shortages during peak demand periods. Reallocating underutilized licenses to high-priority teams or projects, addressing usage bottlenecks, and fostering seamless access to SOLIDWORKS for engineers and designers can minimize downtime and sustain project momentum.
Key SOLIDWORKS License Usage Reports
Open iT offers a suite of in-depth reports designed to provide actionable insights for effective SOLIDWORKS license management:
License Efficiency Chart
This report offers a granular view of concurrent license usage over time, helping organizations understand how effectively their licenses are utilized. It identifies patterns of underutilization, such as high license counts rarely used simultaneously, enabling data-driven decisions to adjust license pools. By eliminating excess licenses while ensuring adequate availability, organizations can achieve substantial cost savings without compromising user productivity.
Weekly and Hourly Heat Map
The Weekly and Hourly Heat Map visually represents license usage across a typical week, using color gradients to indicate demand intensity. By revealing both peak and low-demand usage periods, organizations identify when licenses are most needed. This information supports strategic resource allocation, ensuring availability during critical periods while avoiding underuse during quieter hours.
Denials by User
This detailed report tracks instances where users were denied access to licenses due to unavailability. By identifying frequent denials and their affected users, organizations can pinpoint areas where license shortages disrupt workflows. Addressing these issues—whether by reallocating existing licenses or acquiring additional ones—minimizes operational downtime and enhances user productivity.
Usage by Month and Year-over-Year
This analysis provides a long-term perspective on license usage, highlighting monthly trends and year-over-year growth patterns. Seasonal fluctuations and growth trajectories become evident, allowing organizations to align their procurement and allocation strategies with actual usage trends. This foresight ensures that license availability scales with demand, avoiding over- or under-provisioning.
Days Since Last Used
By identifying how long it has been since each license was last utilized, this report flags inactive or rarely used licenses. These licenses can be reassigned to high-demand areas or retired to reduce unnecessary costs. This ensures that the license inventory remains aligned with actual organizational needs, optimizing both budget and resource utilization.
Maximize the Value of Your SOLIDWORKS Licenses in 2025
Start 2025 by transforming your SOLIDWORKS licenses into strategic assets with Open iT’s advanced solutions. Gain unparalleled insights into license utilization, optimize resource allocation, ensure compliance, and drive significant cost savings—all while enhancing operational performance.
Make 2025 the year you take control of your SOLIDWORKS investments and achieve measurable results.
Access our exclusive webinar on-demand, SolidWorks: Strategize Smarter for 2025 Savings and unlock the full potential of your SOLIDWORKS licenses and position your organization for success in the year ahead.
You can also contact Open iT for more information
