Item 1. Business
Item 1. Business
Our Business
Bentley Systems is the infrastructure engineering software company.
Our purpose is to advance the world’s infrastructure for better quality of life. We empower people to design, build, and operate better and more resilient infrastructure through the adoption of our intelligent digital twin solutions.
We were founded in 1984 by the Bentley brothers and on September 25, 2020, we completed our initial public offering (“IPO”).
Our enduring commitment is to develop and support the most comprehensive portfolio of integrated software offerings across professional disciplines, infrastructure sectors, geographies, and the infrastructure lifecycle. Our software enables digital workflows across engineering disciplines, across distributed project teams, and from offices to the field. Moreover, our intelligent digital twin solutions empower our users to achieve sustainable development goals by realizing outcomes that are more sustainable and resilient.
Our users design, build, and operate infrastructure assets across the following sectors:
• Public Works/Utilities , which represents approximately 59% of our sector-attributable annualized recurring revenues (“ARR”) (1)(2) , includes roads, rail, bridges, tunnels, airports, and ports; federal, state, and municipal agencies; and networks for electricity, gas, water, wastewater, and communications;
• Resources , which represents approximately 27% of our sector-attributable ARR (1)(2) , includes mining, oil and gas “upstream,” offshore, pipelines, environmental management, and renewable energy;
• Industrial , which represents approximately 9% of our sector-attributable ARR (1)(2) , includes process and discrete manufacturing, oil and gas “downstream,” and power generation; and
• Commercial/Facilities , which represents approximately 5% of our sector-attributable ARR (1)(2) , includes campuses, office buildings, retail facilities, and hospitals.
Our Products and Solutions
We serve enterprises and professionals across the infrastructure lifecycle by improving project delivery and asset performance. For projects, our software encompasses conception, planning, surveying, design, engineering, and construction, as well as the collaboration required to coordinate and share the work of interdisciplinary and/or distributed project teams. For assets, our software spans the operating life of commissioned infrastructure assets, allowing our accounts to manage engineering changes for safety and compliance and to model performance and reliability to support operations and maintenance decisions.
(1) Refer to the section titled “Key Business Metrics” included in Part II, Item 7 of this Annual Report on Form 10‑K for additional information, including our definition and our use of ARR.
(2) Sector-attributable ARR refers to the proportion of our ARR which can be attributed either based on the sector-specific classification of the account and/or the sector-specific classification of the product giving rise to the ARR. The portions of our ARR which cannot be sector-attributed consist generally of ARR within accounts that are diversified engineering firms which work in multiple sectors, and as to that portion of their ARR which are for products that are not sector-specific, such as MicroStation, and structural or geotechnical modeling and simulation applications, and ProjectWise, which are used across any and all sectors.
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Our Bentley Open engineering applications and Seequent geoprofessional applications are primarily cloud-connected desktop modeling and simulation applications that support the breadth of engineering and geoprofessional disciplines. Bentley Infrastructure Cloud , provided via cloud and hybrid environments, extends enterprise collaboration during project delivery, and helps manage engineering information during operations and maintenance. Bentley Asset Analytics solutions automatically detect and analyze issues to trigger key operational workflows, improving overall asset performance.
Powering these products is our Cesium and iTwin Platform , our cloud‑native technology platform to create, curate, and leverage infrastructure digital twins, which was augmented through the acquisition of Cesium in September 2024. Through our platform, our existing products are becoming increasingly iTwin -enabled to take advantage of digital twin capabilities, and we are developing a new generation of iTwin -native, data-centric applications that leverage artificial intelligence (“AI”) to increase engineering productivity.
The proportions of our revenue generated respectively from Bentley Open engineering applications and Seequent geoprofessional applications for modeling and simulation, and from Bentley Infrastructure Cloud and its principal offerings, are referenced in the diagram below.
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Our comprehensive portfolio of integrated software offerings comprises:
Engineering Applications . We offer an open modeling environment comprising domain‑specific authoring applications and an open simulation environment comprising applications to analyze the functional performance of designs that work together to improve engineering quality, streamline production of multi-discipline documentation, and reduce rework. These Bentley Open applications for modeling and simulation support a wide variety of file formats – both Bentley and third‑party – and industry standards and design codes, enabling digital workflows across design, simulation, and analysis, and ensuring engineering data is not locked in, but remains open and accessible.
Our engineering applications work together to improve infrastructure engineering quality and productivity, resulting in better project designs and deliverables. We take care to enable compatibility across successive generations of our applications, which enables engineers, throughout their careers, to maintain continuity with their preferred interfaces, formats, and methodologies, while advancing their work at the leading edge of innovation.
Our open modeling applications include:
• MicroStation , for flexible 3D design and documentation, providing the common modeling environment upon which our applications are built;
• OpenBridge , for the 3D design and documentation of bridges;
• OpenBuildings , for the 3D design and documentation of buildings and their integrated structural, HVAC, electrical, and plumbing systems;
• OpenFlows , for the planning, design, and operation of water, wastewater, and stormwater systems, incorporating hydrological, hydraulic, and flood modeling;
• OpenPlant , for the 2D and 3D design and documentation of process plants;
• OpenRail , for the planning, 3D design, and documentation of rail and transit systems;
• OpenRoads , for the planning, 3D design, and documentation of roads and highways;
• OpenSite and OpenSite+ , for the planning, 3D design, and documentation of building, residential development, and infrastructure sites;
• OpenTower , for the 3D design and analysis of communication towers;
• OpenTunnel , for the 3D design and analysis of tunnels;
• OpenUtilities , for the design and management of electric, gas, water, wastewater, and district energy networks; and
• OpenWindPower , for the structural analysis and design of fixed and floating offshore wind turbines.
Our open simulation applications include:
• ADINA , for nonlinear simulation and analysis;
• AutoPIPE , for analysis and simulation of pipe stress in industrial process plants;
• LEGION , for pedestrian traffic simulation;
• OpenPaths , for multimodal transport network modeling and travel demand forecasting;
• Power Line Systems (“PLS”) , for analysis and simulation of overhead electric power transmission lines and their structures;
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• RAM , for analysis and simulation of building structural performance;
• SACS , for analysis and simulation of offshore structural performance;
• SPIDA , for analysis and simulation of utility poles and overhead assets; and
• STAAD , for analysis and simulation of structures of all types.
Geoprofessional Applications . Our Seequent applications support modeling and simulation to help geoprofessionals and infrastructure engineers develop a detailed understanding, and take full account of, near and deep subsurface conditions.
These include industry‑leading earth modeling, subsurface‑data management, and geoprofessional team collaboration software and geotechnical products that supplement visible built-asset representations above ground with more probabilistic modeling of subsurface conditions.
Our geoprofessional applications include:
• AGS , for processing, inversion, and visualization of geophysical data;
• Central , for geological model management, to visualize, track, integrate, and manage geoscience data from a centralized, auditable environment;
• GeoStudio , for integrated geotechnical analysis of slope stability, groundwater flow, and heat and mass transfer in soil and rock;
• Imago , for the capture and management of drilling core images;
• Leapfrog , for 3D implicit modeling designed to rapidly integrate, communicate, and interpret geological data;
• MX Deposit , cloud drill hole software for simplifying and controlling how drill and other field data is collected, managed, and shared throughout the lifecycle of an ore deposit from early exploration through to mine production;
• Oasis montaj , for the quality control, correction, visualization, analysis, and interpretation of geophysical, geologic and geochemical data;
• OpenGround , for geotechnical information management for collecting, reporting, managing, visualizing, analyzing, and accessing geotechnical data; and
• PLAXIS , for geotechnical analysis to solve common and complex geotechnical problems, including advanced analysis for excavations, foundations, tunnels, and other infrastructure projects.
Bentley Infrastructure Cloud . Our enterprise information systems span the end‑to‑end lifecycle and value chain of the world’s infrastructure, helping engineers to produce higher quality deliverables, contractors to execute better with their supply chain, and owners to maintain a complete and accurate picture of their asset throughout its lifecycle.
Bentley Infrastructure Cloud encompasses:
• ProjectWise , for project delivery, supporting information and document management, and engineering‑specific collaboration and work‑sharing for distributed project teams and enterprises;
• SYNCHRO , for construction, spatially and temporally integrating a project’s 3D engineering models into its construction schedules to visualize and assess sequencing strategies; and
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• AssetWise , for asset operations, capturing and managing changes to engineering models and enterprise information for compliance and safety, and to model performance and reliability.
By unifying data between engineering applications and enterprise systems, Bentley Infrastructure Cloud helps organizations manage their data in a single environment, enabling integrated workflows, improved collaboration, and increased productivity. Data also can be easily enriched throughout the lifecycle. Powered by our platform and infrastructure schemas and thus seamlessly integrating with Bentley Open applications, Bentley Infrastructure Cloud enables better creation, delivery, and ongoing operation of better infrastructure, through complete and evergreen digital twins.
Bentley Asset Analytics . Our asset analytics solutions unlock real-time insights and time-saving automation through AI-powered infrastructure digital twins to optimize asset performance and workflows. These solutions are applied to specific asset types and use cases.
Bentley Asset Analytics solutions include:
• Blyncsy , for inspecting and detecting roadway conditions;
• Bridge Monitoring , for identifying and classifying bridge defects;
• Dam Monitoring , for assessing, monitoring, and analyzing risks to dams; and
• OpenTower iQ , for creating digital twins of cell tower infrastructure.
Cesium and iTwin Platform. Our Cesium and iTwin Platform for developing infrastructure digital twin applications, leveraging our infrastructure schemas, enables users to create and curate cloud‑native 4D/5D digital representations of physical infrastructure assets, incorporating underlying engineering information federated with operational and enterprise data, and then to model, simulate, analyze, synchronize, track, and predict performance over time. Using digital twins, our users can more fully extend digital workflows across the entire infrastructure lifecycle, increasing the value of infrastructure engineers’ work.
The platform was augmented through the acquisition of Cesium in September 2024. Cesium technology is used to develop powerful 3D applications of the land, sea, sky, and space—helping organizations understand their assets, environments, and operations in a 3D geospatial context. The combination of the iTwin Platform and Cesium enables developers to seamlessly align 3D geospatial data with engineering, enterprise, and operational data to create digital twins with astonishing user experiences that scale from vast infrastructure networks to the millimeter-accurate details of individual assets.
Through our platform, we are adding digital twin capabilities to our other offerings to enable users to better leverage data throughout the infrastructure lifecycle. The platform also supports a thriving ecosystem of third‑party developers who use our open‑source tools to develop applications for the built and natural environment. With tens of thousands of developers, Cesium is the de-facto developer platform for 3D geospatial applications. The combination of the iTwin Platform and Cesium provides new opportunities for growth and value creation for this developer ecosystem.
Additionally, some capabilities of the platform are offered as discrete iTwin products. These include:
• iTwin Capture , for capturing, modeling, analyzing, and sharing reality data, enabling users to easily create engineering‑ready, high-resolution 3D meshes of infrastructure assets using drone video and survey imagery;
• iTwin Experience , for visualizing and navigating digital twins, empowering owner‑operators and their constituents with insights into critical infrastructure; and
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• iTwin IoT , for acquiring and analyzing sensor data, enabling users to seamlessly incorporate Internet of Things (“IoT”) data created by sensors and condition monitoring devices for real-time safety and risk monitoring in infrastructure operations and construction activities.
Comprehensiveness of Our Offerings
Our offerings are comprehensive across professional disciplines, infrastructure sectors, geographies, and the infrastructure lifecycle, resulting in what we believe to be durable competitive advantages:
Professional Disciplines . Each infrastructure project requires seamless and deep collaboration among professional disciplines, which can include civil, structural, geotechnical, subsurface, and process engineers; architects; geospatial professionals; city and regional planners; contractors; fabricators; and operations and maintenance engineers. Our open modeling and simulation applications facilitate iterative interactions between disciplines and coordination across project participants. Additionally, we believe our collaboration systems lead the market in managing infrastructure engineering firms’ preferred work-in-progress workflows.
Lifecycle Stages. Both project delivery enterprises and owner‑operators benefit from our software, which enables digital workflows to extend across the infrastructure lifecycle, from design to construction and ultimately asset management. This capability allows our users’ digital engineering models to be leveraged as the context for real-time condition monitoring to achieve better and safer operations and maintenance.
Infrastructure Sectors. Most major engineering and project delivery firms pursue an ever‑changing mix of projects across the public works/utilities, industrial, resources, and commercial/facilities sectors and for flexibility tend to favor an infrastructure engineering software vendor whose portfolio correspondingly spans their full breadth. This comprehensiveness provides diversification for our own business, as an incidental advantage. For example, when there have been cyclical downturns in the primarily privately‑financed industrial, resources, and commercial/facilities sectors, we have historically witnessed offsetting counter‑cyclical government investment in public works/utilities.
Geographies. While design codes may vary by country, infrastructure purposes and engineering practices are fundamentally the same throughout the world, which makes it possible for our infrastructure modeling applications to be used globally. Our offerings are available in most major languages, supporting country‑specific design codes, standards, and conventions. Our development teams are also globally dispersed, due in part to acquisitions made in various countries, but also to provide any needed last-mile localization of our applications. Our global comprehensiveness enables our project delivery accounts to compete more efficiently across geographic markets, thus also providing global supply‑chain sourcing choices for owners.
The Digital Twins Opportunity
Over our company’s history, as computing capabilities have advanced, the scope of infrastructure engineering software has correspondingly increased. However, project and asset software markets have developed independently from one another and connected digital workflows have not been offered. We believe the advancement from siloed project-specific software including for computer-aided design (CAD) and building information modeling (BIM), and asset-specific software including for geographic information systems (GIS), to unified and “evergreen” infrastructure digital twins will have the effect of merging what have been to date separate market spaces as well as enabling new use cases that were not possible or practical with previous technologies.
We believe that the growing adoption of infrastructure digital twins will serve to overcome the factors that have held back the digital advancement of infrastructure engineering and will facilitate the broader use of engineering data in the operation of infrastructure assets. Moreover, we believe that due to the comprehensiveness of our offerings across the infrastructure lifecycle, infrastructure digital twins and newly enabled digital workflows spanning design, construction, and operations will most particularly benefit our users and enhance our competitiveness.
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This includes the increasing use of AI, which represents a paradigm shift for infrastructure sectors, which create massive amounts of data during design, construction, and operations. Infrastructure organizations can leverage AI during the design phase and reuse their data to automate repetitive tasks, such as documentation and annotation, enabling engineers to focus on higher-value activities. For example, Bentley’s OpenSite+, the first engineering application leveraging generative AI for civil site design, includes a design copilot to drive new levels of productivity and accuracy. By applying AI during the operations phase, infrastructure data can be analyzed for deeper insights. For example, Bentley Asset Analytics solutions include AI agents that automatically identify maintenance issues and recommend preventive action, avoiding costly breakdowns or safety hazards.
Our Commercial Offerings
Licensing and Subscriptions
We offer a variety of licensing and subscription options so that users can choose what works best for them, their project, and their organization.
For larger organizations with centralized management of their engineering software portfolio, we offer our Enterprise 365 (“E365”) subscription. Our E365 subscription is an all‑inclusive global consumption‑based plan which provides access to our comprehensive portfolio of solutions with uniform pricing across all countries. E365 subscriptions require a Cloud Services Subscription (“CSS”) (as described below) and are charged to accounts primarily based upon daily usage or elective subscriptions, dependent on product. They are also inclusive of “Success Plans” (described below). Our ProjectWise and AssetWise enterprise collaboration solutions utilized under E365 are charged based on the total number of users within a calendar quarter, or fixed asset bands, respectively. While the majority of our E365 subscriptions revenue is attributed to daily consumption of our applications, E365 subscriptions can contain floors or ceilings on usage charges.
A perpetual license for Bentley software is a one‑time purchase with an annual maintenance subscription, called SELECT, which includes 24/7 technical support, access to learning resources, and the ability to exchange licenses for other software once a year. In addition, SELECT offers license pooling, which enables software access from multiple computers, and term licenses, which enables users to access software beyond their license entitlements for monthly or quarterly periods to cover short‑term surges in their workload.
We also offer a 12‑month named-user subscription including license, training, and knowledgeable engineering support procured through our e‑store, Virtuosity, which is a convenient and cost‑effective way for infrastructure professionals in small‑ and medium‑sized businesses (“SMBs”) to access Bentley software.
We deliver our Bentley Infrastructure Cloud capabilities under our CSS, charged quarterly based on the number of users of various levels of functionality. Pricing includes cloud provisioning, although some accounts elect on‑premises and/or hybrid hosting.
CSS streamlines the procurement, administration, and payment process for us and our accounts for cloud offerings, term licenses, and recurring services. Participants in our E365 program use CSS as the funding mechanism for their subscription. At the end of 2024, accounts representing approximately 60% of our total ARR (1) had chosen to institute, for licensing of our software, our commercial models eligible under CSS.
(1) Refer to the section titled “Key Business Metrics” included in Part II, Item 7 of this Annual Report on Form 10‑K for additional information, including our definition and our use of ARR.
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Success Plans and Services
For enterprise accounts, we have transitioned from a traditional paradigm of on‑demand technical support, and professional services contracted episodically, to instead delivering proactive and continuous engagement with users and accounts through “Success Plans.” Success Plans are designed with business outcomes in mind, ensuring that accounts receive the best results from our software. Working collaboratively with our accounts, approximately 800 colleagues, most with domain experience and credentials in infrastructure engineering, deliver Success Plans through structured engagements based on explicit and standardized “Success Blueprints” that include virtual or in‑person engagements with subject matter experts. Success Plans, based on allotted credits toward multiple Success Blueprints per calendar quarter, are bundled into our E365 subscription.
We also offer specialized asset performance services, including through our Cohesive business (described in more detail below), primarily to accounts that use IBM Maximo and our AssetWise solutions for infrastructure asset operations and maintenance.
Our Primary Growth Initiatives
Incremental to our long‑standing programmatic acquisition strategy, since 2020 we have determinedly invested internal resources to accelerate organic growth, with increasing success, through the following primary growth initiatives:
• Accretion in Enterprise Accounts : We have established that E365 helps our accounts implement, propagate, and upgrade our solutions more quickly, encouraging greater consumption of our software and stronger account relationships. We intend to continue to expand the reach of our E365 subscription within virtually all of our enterprise accounts;
• Accretion in SMBs : New business from SMB accounts, including from hundreds of new “logos” each quarter, has become a substantial contributor to our overall ARR growth (1) , and we are encouraged to continue investment in our Virtuosity business and e‑store. Development and deployment of a “low touch” and ultimately “no touch” digital experience will enable this business to further scale and align with the market potential; and
• Catalyzing the Infrastructure Digital Twin Ecosystem: While engineering services firms (which make up approximately half of our existing business) agree that digital twins are fundamental to the evolution of infrastructure engineering, they tend to lack firsthand experience of introducing data‑centric offerings to owner‑operators or examples of successful business models. Our asset performance services, including our Cohesive business, which implements IBM Maximo globally, represent our own “digital integrator” capabilities to prove business models that we can subsequently impart to engineering services firms, accelerating the adoption of infrastructure digital twin solutions.
Our Accounts
We provide our software solutions to over 41,000 accounts in 189 countries worldwide. Our revenues are balanced and diversified between engineering and construction contracting firms who work together to deliver the design and construction of capital projects (representing 51%, 50%, and 50% of our 2024, 2023, and 2022 total revenues, respectively), and their clients, the world’s public and private infrastructure asset owners and operators (representing 49%, 50%, and 50% of our 2024, 2023, and 2022 total revenues, respectively).
We bring our offerings to market primarily through direct sales channels, including through our account managers and our Virtuosity inside sales colleagues and e‑store, which generated approximately 93% of our 2024 total revenues. We also rely on specialist channel partners in geographic regions where we do not currently have a meaningful presence or where, for some of our offerings, direct sales efforts are less economically feasible. Channel partners accounted for approximately 7% of our 2024 total revenues.
(1) Refer to the section titled “Key Business Metrics” included in Part II, Item 7 of this Annual Report on Form 10‑K for additional information, including our definition and our use of ARR growth rate.
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We do not have material account concentration. No account, including any group of accounts under common control or accounts that are affiliates of each other, represented more than 2% of our total revenues in 2024, 2023, or 2022.
Our Acquisitions
Since our founding, we have purposefully pursued a strategy of regularly acquiring and integrating specialized infrastructure engineering software businesses, including 12 acquisitions over the past three years. Most acquired products had already been interfacing with our platform prior to acquisition, and our acquisition purpose is typically to improve their technical and commercial integration.
As a public company, we have been able to make platform acquisitions which appreciably increase our scale and/or the scope of our platform capabilities. Our platform acquisitions have been:
• Seequent Holdings Limited (“Seequent”) (2021), to enable infrastructure digital twin capabilities to incorporate modeling and simulation of full subsurface depths, and advancing infrastructure resilience and sustainability by helping geoprofessionals to understand environmental conditions and to mitigate environmental risks; and
• PLS (2022), to bring design, analysis, and management of overhead electric power transmission lines and structures to our grid digital twin solutions. PLS substantially completes the reach of our comprehensive portfolio for the lifecycle integration of grid infrastructure across electrical transmission, substation, and distribution assets, and communications towers.
Our relatively numerous and frequent programmatic acquisitions, which most often “fill white space” within our ecosystem, add their value principally by enhancing our platform comprehensiveness, and accordingly we consider this programmatic aspect of our growth as characteristically within our mainstream business performance (unlike platform acquisitions). Our average historical ARR growth rate (1) from programmatic acquisitions over the past three years has been less than 1% measured on a constant currency basis.
Our Competition
The market for our software is highly competitive and subject to change. We compete against large, global, publicly‑traded companies that have resources greater than our own, and against small, new, or geographically‑focused firms that specialize in developing niche software offerings. While we do not believe that any competitor offers a portfolio as comprehensive as ours, we do face strong competition, varying by infrastructure lifecycle phase and sector:
• our key competitors in Public Works/Utilities applications include Autodesk, Inc., Trimble Inc., and Hexagon AB;
• our key competitors in Resources applications include Hexagon AB, the AVEVA unit of Schneider Electric, and Dassault Systèmes;
• our key competitors in Industrial applications include Hexagon AB, the AVEVA unit of Schneider Electric, and Dassault Systèmes;
• our key competitors in Commercial/Facilities applications include Autodesk, Inc., Nemetschek SE, and Trimble Inc.;
• our key competitors in project delivery systems include Autodesk, Inc. and Oracle Corporation; and
(1) Refer to the section titled “Key Business Metrics” included in Part II, Item 7 of this Annual Report on Form 10‑K for additional information, including our definition and our use of ARR growth rate.
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• our key competitors in asset performance systems include Aspen Technology, Inc., the AVEVA unit of Schneider Electric, Esri, and GE Vernova.
The principal competitive factors affecting our market include:
• product features, performance, and effectiveness;
• reliability and security;
• openness and the ability to integrate with other technologies;
• price, commercial model, and total cost of use; and
• brand awareness and reputation.
We believe we compete favorably against our competitors based on the factors above and that we distinguish ourselves through the comprehensiveness of our software portfolio, our commitment to both integration and interoperability across the entire infrastructure lifecycle, our flexible commercial models, and our direct sales channels.
Our Research and Development
We make substantial investments in research and development because we believe the infrastructure engineering software market presents compelling opportunities for the application of new technologies that advance our current solutions. Our research and development roadmap balances technological advances and new offerings with continuous enhancements to existing offerings. Our allocation of research and development resources is guided by management‑established priorities, input from product managers, and feedback from various channels including users and user-facing teams.
As part of our resource allocation process, we also conduct a cost‑benefit analysis of acquiring available technology in the marketplace versus developing our own solutions.
Our Intellectual Property
We believe that the success of our business depends more on the quality of our proprietary software, technology, processes, and domain expertise than on copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. While we consider our intellectual property rights to be valuable, we do not believe that our competitive position depends primarily on obtaining legal protection for our software and technology. Instead, we believe that our competitive position depends primarily on our ability to maintain a leadership position by developing innovative proprietary software, technology, information, processes, and know‑how. Nevertheless, we rely on a combination of copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets in the U.S. and other jurisdictions to secure our intellectual property, and we use contractual provisions and non‑disclosure agreements to protect it. In addition, from time to time we enter into collaboration arrangements and in‑bound licensing agreements with third parties, including certain of our competitors, in order to expand the functionality and interoperability of our software solutions. We are not substantially dependent upon any one of these arrangements, and we are not obligated to pay any material royalty or license fees with respect to them.
Our patents cover systems and methods relating to various aspects of software for infrastructure design and modeling, collaboration and work‑sharing, and infrastructure asset operations. Among other things, our patents address a broad range of issues in infrastructure domains from analyzing building energy usage and structural analysis, railway system maintenance, water network design and operation, and augmented reality, as well as techniques for creating, storing, displaying, and processing infrastructure models.
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To innovate and increase our strategic position, our software developers are incentivized to alert our internal patent committee to innovations that might be patentable or of strategic value. We also plan to assess appropriate occasions for seeking patent and other intellectual property protections for aspects of our technology and solutions that we believe constitute innovations providing significant competitive advantages, both domestically and outside of the U.S.
Despite the foregoing, our intellectual property rights may not be successfully asserted in the future or may be invalidated, circumvented or challenged by third parties. Moreover, the laws and enforcement of the laws of various foreign countries where our products are licensed do not protect our intellectual property rights to the same extent as U.S. laws. Enforcement of intellectual property rights against alleged infringers could lead to costly litigation and counterclaims, and our inability or perceived inability to protect our proprietary information could harm our business. While we have recovered some revenue resulting from the unauthorized use of our software solutions, we are unable to measure the full extent to which unauthorized use of our software products exists.
Our Production and Suppliers
Our principal supplier of cloud services is Microsoft, with whom we have entered into a multi-year contract for a committed level of expenditures for Azure. We added Google Cloud as a cloud service provider in 2024 to expand our delivery capabilities and optimize costs.
Environmental, Social, and Governance
In 2024, we continued to build upon our strong commitment to sustainability with an emphasis on goal setting aligned with leading standards and continually improving our reporting. In the fourth year of our formal Environmental, Social, and Governance (“ESG”) strategy, we continued our regular engagement with stakeholders to solicit feedback on our Impact Report. Our greatest opportunity for impact is through the products and services we provide that empower our users to achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Our global colleagues are our greatest asset, and our impact is fueled by their passion and determination. We have a responsibility to support the success and wellbeing of our colleagues. We also have a passion for supporting the communities where we work and operate, through our Bentley Education and Bentley Giving programs. We are committed to helping prepare the next generation of infrastructure professionals to realize our vision of a better and more resilient future. Our impact strategy is rooted in our passion for advancing infrastructure challenges by enabling the building of a better world.
The four pillars of this strategy include:
• Handprint . The ways in which we empower our users to design, build, and operate sustainable infrastructure and collaborate across enterprises to create a better and more resilient future for all;
• Environmental . The actions we are taking to minimize environmental impacts across the business by closely managing, monitoring, and improving our operations;
• Social . The programs and processes that foster an inclusive culture where our colleagues and communities can thrive and do the best work of their careers, as well as the ways we are helping to grow the pipeline of infrastructure engineers through education, recruitment, and community engagement; and
• Governance . Our approach to effective governance is to ensure the highest level of accountability and compliance rigor.
We look forward to sharing updates for our full year 2024 performance in our next Impact Report, scheduled to be published in the second quarter of 2025. To learn more, visit our ESG website at www.bentley.com/company/esg-overview/. The information posted on this website is not incorporated into this Annual Report on Form 10‑K.
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Human Capital Management
Our colleagues are a key success factor in driving our continued growth. Our talent strategy focuses on creating an enriching colleague experience through an inclusive and engaging culture in which colleagues can develop their career while making a positive impact by advancing the world’s infrastructure.
As of December 31, 2024, we had approximately 5,500 full‑time colleagues globally, including approximately 2,200 in the Americas (the U.S., Canada, and Latin America, including the Caribbean); approximately 1,500 in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (“EMEA”); and approximately 1,800 in Asia‑Pacific (“APAC”). None of our full‑time U.S. colleagues are unionized. Outside the U.S., a small overall portion of our colleagues in certain countries are represented by a colleague representative organization, such as a union or colleague association. Our colleagues bring nearly 70 languages to fulfill the needs of our globally dispersed accounts and users. Our colleagues are highly qualified with an average of six years of total service and advanced academic credentials, including 150 doctoral degrees and over 1,400 master’s‑level degrees.
Colleague Experience
We take a colleague‑centric approach in all that we do. We achieve a strong sense of belonging through focused efforts to build trust and enhance personal and organizational experiences. We encourage meaningful and continuous feedback through annual performance reviews, quarterly alignment sessions, and engagement surveys, helping encourage colleagues to feel engaged and ensuring they have the resources they need to perform the best and most rewarding work of their career.
A key differentiator in creating a positive experience for our colleagues is our Infrastructure Empowered Workforce Plan (“IEWP”). IEWP is a global strategy that empowers colleagues to take advantage of our physical offices for necessary in-person collaboration, while institutionalizing the flexibility to work remotely otherwise, fully enabled by technology. IEWP allows our colleagues to make the best of remote and in‑office work to perform at a higher level and enhances team and business productivity.
Talent Acquisition
We believe our Company’s purpose, mission, and values, as well as our culture, including an intentional commitment to flexible work through IEWP, are drivers for attracting and retaining colleagues. Our talent acquisition strategy leverages best practices to attract, engage, and hire top talent. We enjoy high levels of colleague referrals to supplement our corporate hiring practices, and nurture relationships with universities around the world to hire talented graduates into rotational assignments, all of which provides a strong talent pipeline.
Professional Development
With enhanced capacity to collaborate virtually, colleagues can grow their careers no matter where they are located. We empower colleagues with learning and development resources to support their continuous growth as individual contributors, team managers, or organization leaders. We offer live classroom learning, curated learning pathways, and open access to a powerful learning platform. We also focus on developing the personal and professional skills of our leaders. Our Leadership Excellence and Development (LEAD) program provides leaders with the necessary toolkit to effectively guide their teams while developing Bentley core competencies and a “One Bentley” mindset.
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Belonging and Inclusion
We are a global company with colleagues of different cultures, backgrounds, and perspectives based in more than 45 countries worldwide and speaking nearly 70 languages. We strive to build a culture where all colleagues feel a sense of belonging so that they can fully realize their potential and produce their best work.
Our executive management are key partners in providing access to resources and our leadership team by acting as executive sponsors for our colleague resource groups. Our Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity Alliance (“IDEA”) program includes colleague-led resource groups that empower their members to join peers from across the business and the globe to foster belonging and inclusion. The six resource groups – IDEA India, OpenAbilities, OpenPride, People of Color in the U.S., Veterans and Military Families at Bentley, and Women at Bentley – provide a safe space for colleagues to engage in open conversation, propose positive changes, and build a sense of community.
Corporate Information
Bentley Systems, Incorporated was incorporated in Delaware in 1987 and is headquartered in Exton, Pennsylvania.
Website Access to Reports
Our internet address is www.bentley.com. The information posted on our website is not incorporated into this Annual Report on Form 10‑K. Our Annual Report on Form 10‑K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10‑Q, Current Reports on Form 8‑K and amendments to reports filed or furnished pursuant to Sections 13(a) and 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, are available free of charge on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov and on the Investor Relations portion of our website at www.bentley.com (or investors.bentley.com) as soon as reasonably practicable after we electronically file such material with, or furnish it to, the SEC.
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