Because the product people used to buy no longer exists in that form.
A perpetual licence made sense while software was a finished object. You installed it, it ran, and it stayed as it was. Today everything around the software changes. Operating systems, database versions, encryption, the export formats of the locking hardware manufacturers, what your auditor expects to see. A version nobody maintains ages on its own, even when no one touches it.
That is why almost nobody in this market sells a genuine perpetual licence. What is offered is a one-off payment, plus an annual fee for updates and support, plus a partial re-purchase every few years to get back to current. The running cost is there either way. It simply does not appear in the quote.
We say it plainly. You pay annually for the operation of your locking plan. That is what the price stands for, not access to the software.
This has a practical effect. When your auditor asks who operates the system and to what standard, you have a clear answer. portier is ISO 27001 certified. A purchased licence cannot give you that, because it is not a property of the software. It is a statement about who runs it.
Buying and running it in your own house are two different questions. If your concern is that your data does not leave your premises, that is a question of deployment, not of licensing. portier Vision 5 runs on site, on your own database.
Any questions? Get in touch.