Experience Gurobi for Yourself

So you’ve clicked the “Free Trial” button on the Gurobi website. Now what?  

You’ve likely requested a Gurobi Trial in order to answer two questions: 

• Is Gurobi the right solver for my optimization application? 
• How will Gurobi fit into my solution architecture? 

To ensure a productive and efficient evaluation experience, our team of Technical Account Managers (TAMs) will work with you to understand your goals and prove the value of optimization within your use case.  

Evaluation Focus: Performance and Licensing

How will you know if Gurobi is the right solver for you? Many of our customers care about one or more of these factors:

• Performance: How fast does Gurobi solve my model?   
• Modeling Experience: What API do I want to work in? Are there benefits to using some of Gurobi’s advanced modeling features? 
• Support: What resources and training materials are available? 
• Integration: How does Gurobi fit into my tech stack and architecture?  

Based on your focus area and current stage of model development, we’ll work with you to create a plan for the evaluation period. The level of detail and involvement from Gurobi is up to you—we can provide a license to do benchmarking on your existing model, or we can facilitate a collaborative trial with our Optimization Experts, who can do performance tuning for you. If your model is still in progress, we can point you to some of our API features that could improve your modeling experience.   

Once we’ve established your performance and resource requirements, the conversation naturally turns to licensing. All users get access to the same powerful Gurobi Optimizer regardless of license type, but the licensing mechanism will depend on your computing environment and optimization usage pattern.   

Choosing the Right License Option  

Gurobi performance and licensing discussions can be intertwined. For example, deploying hundreds of single-core containers to solve models in parallel via a cloud service provider is done with a different licensing mechanism than solving a model on a 16-core, on-premises server for hours at a time. The TAMs will help you determine the best cost-effective license option that integrates well with your tech stack and architecture, while ensuring that your current optimization needs are met and future needs considered.    

Of course, things don’t have to go in that order. If you want to understand the licensing options before testing Gurobi, that is fine too. But do keep in mind we still like to understand your modeling goals in order to make some initial recommendations.    

Preparing for a Successful Evaluation Experience

The evaluation period should feel informative, productive, and gratifying for optimization users and business stakeholders alike.  

As our TAMs and Account Managers get to know your application better throughout the duration of your Gurobi subscription, we’ll work with you to make sure you can scale your usage and maximize the value you get from Gurobi. And you’ll also get access to our team of Optimization Experts—a service that is included in every commercial Gurobi license. 

Ready to take the next step in your optimization journey? Check out this article for a more detailed look at the evaluation process, or request an evaluation today!