Anyone searching for Software AG licensing rules for webMethods, Alfabet, Cumulocity or StreamSets will find that the vendor no longer sells those products. This article records what the vendor itself says about the changes, then covers the main remaining cloud-service licensing document, the ARIS Cloud Enterprise usage guide. The facts about the divestments come from a vendor announcement; terms for products now owned by others are not covered and need to be taken from the new owners’ documents.
What was divested
On 2025-01-07 Software GmbH, described as the holding entity of the Software AG group, announced that, following the divestments of the webMethods, StreamSets and TrendMiner businesses in July, it had also closed the sales of Alfabet and Cumulocity.[1] The same announcement says that StreamSets, combined with webMethods, was acquired by IBM in July 2024, and that the group’s strategy is to operate Adabas & Natural and ARIS as standalone businesses, each led by its own management team. Software GmbH continues as the holding company for ARIS, Adabas & Natural and Software AG’s central functions.[1] It describes Software AG as a Software GmbH brand, owned by Silver Lake.[1]
The announcement does not name the buyers of Alfabet, Cumulocity or TrendMiner, and it does not say how existing customer contracts were assigned. Those details would be in the divestment agreements and customer notices, not in public documents.
What the current website shows
The current Software AG website lists Adabas & Natural, CONNX and JOPAZ as its products, and the A-Z page covers Adabas and Natural and their add-ons.[4] The legal notices for documentation apply to all products of Software GmbH, and the index page lists the Docker images licence, the third-party licence texts and the export control and acceptable use documents.[5][6]
Consequences for asset managers
- Contract chain. A licence agreement signed before the divestments may have been assigned or duplicated. The asset manager should find the current contracting entity from the latest invoice, renewal quote or vendor notice.
- Documentation. Check whether documentation on the Software AG documentation site for a divested product is still current and issued by the owner.
- Entitlement evidence. Check whether licence keys and downloads for a divested product are now provided through the new owner’s portal. The Empower Portal remains the support and download portal for products Software GmbH still supports.[3]
- Audit exposure. The Software AG legal notices do not contain an audit clause, so audit rights for any product come from the commercial agreement in force, and the successor vendor’s standard terms may differ.[5]
ARIS
The vendor describes ARIS as a cloud-native process modelling and process mining business and says it is now operated as a standalone business.[1] ARIS documentation is published on its own documentation site, but it carries a Software GmbH copyright and refers to the customer’s “License Agreement with Software GmbH”, so the Software GmbH legal notices remain the public baseline.[2]
Users and privileges
ARIS user limits in the cloud guide are expressed for the Viewer and Designer roles in ARIS, ARIS Designer, ARIS Architect and ARIS UML Designer.[2] The client installation guide says users need ARIS Architect or ARIS Designer licence privileges to start the download client, plus function and access privileges according to their roles, and that which of ARIS Architect or Designer opens at start depends on the licence.[3] Role assignment is therefore the practical licence control: the licence a user is given, not the software installed, determines what the user may do.
Cloud Enterprise (Dedicated) sizes
The Cloud Enterprise usage guide (April 2025, version 10.0) describes sizes S, M, L, XL, XXL and XXXL, and states that values are environment-wide, including data in all tenants.[2] Selected limits are as follows.[2]
| Limit | S | M | L | XL | XXL | XXXL |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Loaded users in the User Management Component | 6,000 | 12,000 | 25,000 | 50,000 | 100,000 | 100,000 |
| Users working simultaneously | 100 | 200 | 600 | 1,700 | 5,000 | 10,000 |
| Maximum number of ARIS databases | 25 | 50 | 50 | 100 | 200 | 200 |
| Document storage (GB) | 10 | 25 | 200 | 200 | 200 | 200 |
| Database management disk space (GB) | 50 | 100 | 200 | 400 | 400 | 400 |
| Concurrent process mining analysis users | 10 | 50 | 100 | 200 | 200 | 200 |
| Events in the last 24 hours (millions) | 6 | 12 | 25 | 50 | 100 | 200 |
The simultaneous-user numbers are, per the document, based on standard product tests in the vendor’s own environments and simulate user behaviour at fixed intervals.[2] They are therefore sizing guidance rather than contractual counts, although the contract may refer to the size.
Metering and events
Customers must agree that anonymised event data is sent to the ARIS Cloud Enterprise Metering system to track the usage of the installation.[2] Events are generated when read, write, update and delete operations are performed on models and objects by users or scripts; opening a model containing 100 object definitions triggers about 150 events. The document’s examples show 65 events for opening a 64-object model as Viewer in the portal, 350 events in ARIS Architect, 40 events for saving with ten attribute changes and 700 events for moving the model between databases. Exceeding event limits is allowed but can result in performance degradation or outage of certain functions.[2] For licence management this means that scripts and integrations, not just humans, consume capacity, and that the vendor sees usage data without a separate audit.
The guide also states that ARIS products are intended and developed for use by natural persons, and that automated generation or import of content through interfaces can create outsized data and exceed processing capacities and physical limits. It recommends a test or staging environment.[2]
Public Cloud sizes
For ARIS Public Cloud, values are per purchased ARIS project room and are listed for the sizes Enterprise, Public Cloud, Advanced and Basic, covering loaded users, ARIS databases, document storage, process mining and dashboards.[2] The unit of purchase is the project room, so the number of rooms multiplies the limits.
AI Companion credits
AI Companion functions consume activity credits: Text to process model costs 50 credits, AI-assisted search 1, a generic Companion with general knowledge for process mining guidance 4, context-sensitive process insights in the Process Explorer 8, AI-based creation of calculated fields 8 and answers to data-driven business questions 12.[2] The document does not state how many credits a subscription includes, so the order must be consulted. A single text-to-model request costing 50 times a search illustrates how quickly consumption can diverge from user counts.
Support
The usage guide says support for ARIS products is provided to customers with a valid support contract through ARIS Community, where users can also download products, updates and fixes.[2] The earlier client installation guide refers to the Empower Portal for licensed customers.[3] The difference indicates that ARIS support access has been moving to its own community, so the asset manager should confirm where entitlement and download records now sit.
Checklist
- Establish the current licensor and contract for each former Software AG product.
- For ARIS, record the cloud size, the number of project rooms and the Designer or Viewer role assignments.
- Review usage reports from the metering system, including script-driven events.
- Track AI Companion credit use against the credits ordered.
- Keep copies of the usage guide version that applied at purchase, since limits are documented per version.