Autodesk throws rocks at PTC, Simens PLM, think 3, Dassault

In the 30 years that desktop CAD has been enriching our lives, competitors have been loathe to name each other, with few execptions. In particular, press releases announcing competitive wins have typically been against AnonCAD, that CAD system that seems to have close to 99% marketshare, judging from how often it appears in press releases. I don't know if this was an unspoken gentleman's agreement or simple reticence.

(A "competitive win" is when one vendor replaces the CAD system of a competitor. The "win" is usually less impressive than the resulting press release lets on, for it can take years to fully displace the CAD system that formerly enjoyed Most Favored status. In some cases, just one department at MegaCorp switches; or perhaps a new, non-core software package is being adopted, replacing nothing; or in rare cases, upper management was indeed convinced to junk those aging VMS boxes for Windows XP.)

This morning, however, Autodesk went whole hog in naming names:

• PTC's Pro/ENGINEER lost to Autodesk's Product Design Suite annd [sic] Vault Professional at Humanetics Innovative Solutions

• Pro/E lost to Factory Design Suite at Sunkist Research and Technical Services

• Think3 lost to Product Design Suite, Vault, and Inventor Publisher at Paulmann Licht

• Dassault Systeme's SolidWorks lost to Product Design Suite and Vault Workgroup at Kenall Manufacturing

• Siemens PLM Software's TeamCenter lost to Product Design Suite and Vault Professional at NIOB

There are no details on what the competitive wins consist of, except in one instance: a division at Sunkist (Sunkist Research and Technical Services) "selected Autodesk Factory Design Suite software over PTC Pro/ENGINEER software to design the company's flat fruit-packing machine facilities." This tells me that Pro/E is still used elsewhere at Sunkist; as well, the new software is typically used for new projects, and so Sunkist R&TS probably continues to use Pro/E on existing ones.

Actually, I think Autodesk's purpose for this press release is to quiet down the logic expressed regularly by PTC management during quarterly conference calls, in which their thinking is expressed something like this:

a. The CAD market is mature and so it cannot grow
b. We gained several customers last quarter
c. Ergo, our marketshare is growing at the expense of our competitors

With this press release comes Autodesk's virtual "So 2x boo on you, PTC!" reply.

Comments

[R. Paul Waddington]

Marketing is what it is; micron thick gloss: scratch it and you see the true colour below.
It is worth noting I have personally spoken with a number of companies who have in the past been used by Autodesk to tout individual "sales wins". In every case, in the conversations with the individuals sighted in the ads, about why Autodesk product was chosen and the subsequent value (or ROI) did not match did not match the fanfare.
On another occasion Autodesk invited a prominent industry person to speak and trumpet how Autodesk Inventor products had been selected and used by his organization and how they had been “responsible” for his company’s success and, he did a great job. However, several months latter, in a detailed article, in a prominent industry mag’, accompanied by ads, Solidworks claimed the customer – how embarrassing; a change was afoot and was not seen?

[Ralph Grabowski]

I heard something similar at a press event sponsored by a large CAD vender. A customer was trotted out, who dutifully sang the praises of the software.

Later, in the bus taking us to the evening dinner, the customer complained about all the shortcomings of the software. It was a fascinating contrast.

[Roopinder Tara]

We at TenLinks purposely did not cover this "news." After what seemed to be a surge of competitive win press releases -- all at the expense of one market leader -- we realized that the market-leading vendor was not reacting. After some probing, we found the market leading vendor was, in fact, often the winner, and had been converting many customers from other CAD companies, often on a large scale, yet chose to "take the high road" and not publicize these wins (or "throwing rocks," as you have said). So, it seemed clear that allowing a few companies to report on their competitive wins would have have given a distorted view to our readers. Without an accurate accounting of the total picture (as in who might be winning overall from good data from all vendors), it is best for us to avoid competitive wins altogether.

[Evanyares]

You win some, you lose some.

Personally, I don't care about wins and loses. I care about how well their products serve customer needs.

[John Patrick]

I can validate that Sunkist Research does not use any of the PTC software at all.