For Autodesk, switching to the cloud is bigger than the '90s switch to Windows

Jay Vleeschhouwer reports from the Autodesk annual analyst meeting held last week in New York:

... the “cloud”: Autodesk is “on the cusp of the biggest platform change in the history of
the company”, having to do, in broad terms, with distributed, powerful computing.

We estimate that the installed base to date of the principal 3D products exceeds 1 million commercial licenses...

As of the end of FY12, the total active maintenance base, including sales of standalone applications and suites, was 3.166 million licenses...

...its experience has been that the customer demand gravitates to the higher-end versions [of suites]...

Autodesk showed a slide indicating a progression from today’s mix of perpetual and maintenance revenues (for blended desktop and cloud workflows) to a future of per-user subscriptions and usage metering.

Source: www.GriffinSecurities.com 

 

Comments

[Dave Ault]

Indeed it is. They are gambling the future here. I am sure they have done a lot of internal studies on how many they will lose over this and have concluded they will prosper over the long term by doing so. It is alien to me to consider giving up security and autonomy and real cost containment and this will all happen on the web.

Usage metering, such a nice phrase. Like the iPhones with data plans when they first started out and no caps and now where are the new customers sitting? Caps so low as to be pretty useless to heavy data consumers which I assume would be CAD people too.

I will watch the shakeout over this with great interest. Until the advent of MBA CPA c-suite management for corporations you had to improve your companies efficiencies to prosper. Today you merely shift the "production" expenses offshore and we can see how that is now working out. So this same class of individual is making the same promises in a different area to MBA CPA leaders who are going to jump once again into something that will over time bite them in the rear for a number of reasons. Follow the money and it is all about locking users into higher expenses they will never be able to escape from without severe repercussions. Time to leave Autodesk as far as I am concerned.

[CW]

and they can expect to lose my business as a customer. I do not want my intellectual property on any one else's server but mine, and would expect many corporations and government entities to do the same. Carl Bass has ruined Autodesk by forcing us all down this path.

[Jon Banquer]

"and they can expect to lose my business as a customer. I do not want my intellectual property on any one else's server but mine, and would expect many corporations and government entities to do the same. Carl Bass has ruined Autodesk by forcing us all down this path."

I hear you and understand exactly where you're coming from. Wish more people would be as succinct and tell Carl Bass what they think.

[MTBSoftware]

This is a disaster in the making of proportions never before seen in the CAD market.

Contrary to the popular up-sell from the "Cloud" proponents, this is a technical regression not progress.
The "Cloud" does nothing more than turn PCs into the "dumb terminals" they used to be under a mainframe system.
The problem is that the Mainframe belongs to AutoDesk and they won't indemnify "Cloud" users against IP theft or even simple data loss.
Heck they can't even guaranty the security of users personal information.

Carl Bass is betting the farm on this one.
In my humble opinion, its the single dumbest move in a down market since the rebranding of Pro/E.
The day AutoDesk products are no longer offered for local installation can be marked as the day AutoDesk died.

[R. Paul Waddington]

Succinct maybe? My question to CW is, have you actually written to Cartl Bass in person?

[William]

Why all the righteous indignation? Are these Autodesk's competitors planting misinformation? Because the last time I checked, all of Autodesk's products are still available as local installations where a customer can continue to operate the same way they have for the past 30 years.

For those who are comfortable with the security offered (I have been successfully banking online for over 15 years), these new rendering and simulation services are a Godsend. In future, I will be finished with dozens of optimized design alternatives and have all the associated renders before I leave the office on Friday afternoon and in advance of my Monday morning proposal presentation to the client. This may not be your business model and the cloud doesn't much matter to you. But imagine any of my competitors visiting the same client with only a couple design options and the inability to iterate as quickly as I can. They are married to your traditional approach. And it will be my competitors, not Autodesk, who will pay the price for not embracing advances in productivity like Autodesk's cloud services.

[CW]

Still want the cloud?

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/cyber-crims-steal-millions-from-banks/story-e6frf7k6-1226411204846

[MTBSoftware]

William, why the intellectually dishonest sales pitch?
Try paying attention to what the AutoDesk CEO has already stated about the future. ALL product will be "Cloud" only. IP is NOT secure on the "Cloud" and AutoDesk refuses to indemnify customers.
There have already been IP thefts from "Cloud" services.
Sorry, I value my IP a heck of a lot more than that.

The banking security analogy is a red-herring trotted out to help sell the unsellable.

I'll consider the "Cloud" for my work when AutoDesk does all their development in the "Cloud".
We all know that will never happen.
Ask them, why? Answer, "It's not secure."

[Jon Banquer]

"Are these Autodesk's competitors planting misinformation?"

What misinformation/conspiracy are you talking about, William? Carl Bass is on the record as saying what he is going to do:

http://www.3dcadtips.com/will-autodesk-products-all-be-used-online/

“I’d say two to three years from now, every one of our products will be used online. The only way to use them will be online.”

You ask:

"Why all the righteous indignation?"

Have you considered that some people don't like giving up the control they now have? Currently if an end user doesn't want to upgrade they don't have to. Under this cloud computing scam if you stop paying the monthly fee you can no longer use the program.

Please tell me why someone shouldn't feel like they are being held hostage with what Carl Bass/Autodesk wants to do?

What Carl Bass is going to implement is all about less choices for the end user as well as locking in maintenance fees for Autodesk. End users are suppose to be happy about this and just accept it and follow along like good little sheep?

Do you think Richard Stallman in on this conspiracy and a competitor to Autodesk as well? Here is a blog that I author that lays out in detail why I think cloud computing is so important to CAD companies like Autodesk who have failed to deliver the geometry tools they promised years ago to CAD users:

http://whatwrongwiththecadcampress.blogspot.com/p/cloud-computing-scam.html

[Giovanni Margherisi]

I don't know what have in mind these people.
The security question is only a part of the problem of cloud computing :

1)but if I can't access on their servers for any reason (crash, maintenance etc) and I have a rush job to finish or deliver?

2)If I want to work in any place with no internet connection what have I do?

3)The question of a subscription (monthly or yearly) to use the software is shameful (especially in this time of crisis);I am forced every year to have the new version?

.....and they speak of "democracy of cad" this is blackmail !!!

These things are good for users of facebook!

[plawton]

(Repost)

All:

I’ve been saying it for over a decade: The ONLY way to win is to buy ADSK shares – PERIOD.

If all 1,000,000 suffering users buy just one share per week (today about $30 each), in 2 years, we will collectively own 100,000,000 shares, more than enough to take control of the company (239,000,000 shares outstanding).

We should form a new ‘AOGI’ – Autodesk Owner’s Group International, whose ultimate goal is to make Autodesk a user-owned company. From there, we can change the release cycle from every year to every 4 years, and demand that the software work as advertised.

Be warned, however: The stock will no longer pay cash dividends – indeed, as an investor, you may not see any increase in the value of your 100 shares of stock, once this stupid subscription (‘leech’) business model is gone. The dividend will not be direct profit, it will instead be lower levels of aggravation at work, higher productivity, fewer hardware upgrades, less re-training. In fact, such a user-owned company would benefit employers so much that they too should become investors – the ROI is easy to see and quantify.

In fact, it may be inevitable that the new User-Owned Autodesk become a non-profit – it would save tremendously on taxes, of course, and Autodesk would finally become a good corporate citizen. As you are doubtless aware, in their scramble to become a “billion dollar company” (Carol Bartz, 199?), they have ended up costing the industries they “serve” many times that in utterly unrecoverable time, wasted on ‘upgrades’ (aka ‘musical icons’), patches, increased hardware requirements, training costs, and reduced productivity. The 1,000 employes of Autdesk should not dictate the fate of the millions of users who continuously send them cash, only to have most requests for improvement completely ignored.