From Q1 2016 Results Earnings Call Transcript
Carl Bass, Autodesk ceo: This is probably the first time we've really talked about [Internet of Things], and it's one of the areas where our customers are really interested in. I was doing the prepared remarks last night when I came upon this tweet, and it made me pause about including it, because the tweet was something like "IoT is like teenage sex, everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone else claims they are doing it."
And so it did give me a little bit of pause, but let me just tell you that we do know what we're doing and it has become a huge focus for our customers in all of our industries. IoT has been often associated with just purely manufacturing, but it's also in the building space and I would say this is both for vertical and horizontal construction, a big deal. Sensors have been built into every building, they are being put in every infrastructure project from electrical infrastructure to sewage infrastructure, to dams, roads, bridges are all having it.
The important thing for us is figuring out how do you help customers not only collect that data and analyze that data, but how does that feed back into better products that they build in turn for their customers.
Also many of our customers are contemplating transitions of their own. You've certainly seen things along the lines, from large industrial companies like GE talking about essentially jet engines as a service as opposed to selling jet engines and railroads as a service, and so it's a huge interest.
What we saw in the market was that there was a real lack of contemporary modern tools to do it. There are a lot of old tools that have been around for a long time. We're doing some in-house development that we started from scratch and we will be opportunistic about finding M&A [mergers and acquisitions] opportunities.
Comments