It's a shame that workgroup is going away because we use it for such limited but necessary functions. All we basically need it for is to work collaboratively without stepping on each others toes. The taking ownership and releasing parts and checking in and out functionality is all we really need. We don't use it much for rev control or workflow checks. I've read through these threads but the utility these posters need are a little more involved than us:

https://forum.solidworks.com/message/657007#comment-657007

Is there anything out there that might fulfill this functionality? Our reseller is trying to charging us \$13-15K to migrate to PDM Standard (which is \$30K after paying for all the license fees) and they want urge us to go with PDM Pro (~\$60k) because Standard servers have a 1gb ram cap and they are "unsure what will happen" with how many users we have. It's unfortunate that we are being forced into one of these options when we use so little of the functionality and it was working just fine before. Any thoughts or directions you could point me in?