There are a few drivers for us (Autodesk) to make this change. I won't whitewash it, but you may still be skeptical of the reasons. We are acting now in anticipation of changes we strongly believe will disrupt the way our customers work in the future and also because of disruptions in the software industry.
Some of the visitors to this forum believe we are doing this solely for our own bottom line and for the shareholders and accountants out there that just care about numbers. There is a self-survival aspect to this change. Software companies in general are shifting to more "software as a service" models. If you search the web for "software industry trends" you will find reports by accepted consulting firms on this transition. And we are taking a cue from history. There are many documented examples throughout technology's past that companies that fail to recognize substantive changes often become casualties of the change. We would really like to be here for you five years from now, ten years from now. Do the shareholders love that our strategy ensures they see continuing profits from our operations; of course they do. But that doesn't mean we are doing it for them.
The more compelling and interesting reason behind our change is what is happening to design in all industries. Mobile computing is driving an expectation of productivity anywhere, anytime and from any device. Cloud computing is providing cheaper and faster alternatives to perform intensive computing processes. Distributed teams, not all of which work for the same company or in the same geography, require collaboration capabilities to be integrated into software. Big data is feared by many, but it is ultimately driving demand for more individualistic experiences by consumers. These trends are impacting design in most industries, but you can find even more industry specific trends when you look closer at manufacturing, civil engineering, gaming, etc. These are the real drivers behind "software as a service", because integrating these capabilites into our solutions for our customers requires our software to really behave like a service, and a connected service at that.
So, why does this result in our discontinuation of sales of perpetual licenses? Here are two reasons. One is again taken from a study of technology's past. Companies that are slow to recognize and respond to disruptive changes are more likely to be overtaken by small, nimble and emergent competitors that they didn't even see coming. By the time they do, it is too late. We don't want that to be us. The second reason gets into software accounting rules. A perpetual license sale requires us to deliver all value and recognize all revenue at the time of the order. That makes it very hard to offer continuous access to services or even to design our software to be more of a service. Services recognize revenue over the time the service is provided. One of the most common methods to achieve this is through a subscription model. As long as we sell perpetual licenses, we cannot fully embrace the design advantages of mobility, cloud, collaboration and customization into our software.
Anxious to see your reactions.
Catherine Wolf
Director, Customer Success
Sustainability and Foundation
If the software moved on with killer new features and bugs that were fixed promptly then people may be more supportive of this "software as a service model". From my own experience of Civil 3D each release brings new bugs to features that worked with no issue in the the previous version and bugs reported 5-6 releases ago are STILL present. All the resources seem to be being poured in Cloud and 360 products.
neilyj (No connection with Autodesk other than using the products in the real world)
Did you find this post helpful? Feel free to Like this post.
Did your question get successfully answered? Then click on the ACCEPT SOLUTION button.
AEC Collection 2025 UKIE (mainly Civil 3D UKIE and IW)
Win 11 Pro x64, 1Tb Primary SSD, 1Tb Secondary SSD
64Gb RAM Intel(R) Xeon(R) W-11855M CPU @ 3.2GHz
NVIDIA RTX A5000 16Gb, Dual 27" Monitor, Dell Inspiron 7760
Thanks for taking the time to retype your post.
I can respond to a few of your posts.
All of your statements appear to be based on one or at most a few of the 100's of tools Autodesk licenses and maintains.
We have a few pure cloud-based services at this time, but my post was not made in reference to only these offerings, but to the direction we are headed where this will become the dominant way to use software.
To my knowledge Autodesk cloud rendering does not support 3rd party engines such Vray, finalRender, Maxwell, Corona, and countless others. Not supporting Vray alone it has excluded a large sector of Arch-viz and VFX markets.
I am not sure about the above. I will inquire with a rendering expert.
I have a license I should be able to log into any workstation around the world that has the software installed, at any time, if my license is not currently in use, I should have access to use it, yet I do not.
The above license behavior does exist today with our Desktop Subscription option for product licensing. You may install the software on any device you like, anywhere and use the software with a login.
At my current place of employment we have roughly 2500 users, all have multiple devices in which our IT department maintains. The failure of subscription? It is expensive, it is expensive per user, and in some cases expensive per device, all in perpetuity. Such is the case most of our users are still using Acrobat 8 and the organization is still running on Exchange 2007. The CIO touts SaaS, the future of the way we will develop software and do business, yet we can't even afford to pay vendors for it ourselves. It really shows me the disconnect from what people are telling the executive decision makers and the true reality, expense, and consequences of the situation.
I understand what you mean. At Autodesk as well, we manage subscription licenses closely and try to ensure every user truly needs a license. For our own customers we are building the reporting mechanisms that will allow IT departments to see usage and manage licenses more effectively. It requires a change of behavior, but it may be more cost effective over the long term to pay for software as needed instead of just in case.
That is the consequence of not delivering regardless if you are a market leader, selling licenses/maint., or rental only. Do you think that being on a rental only model will solve this? I personally don't.
We don't either. Rental models have their appeal, as you have pointed out, but renting itself is not a value to the user. It can be a value to the purchaser. The value we want for users of our products are capabilities like automation of integrated rendering in a design workflow that can infer the user's next logical step would be to render. Or simpler things like accessing a product anywhere from any device. Or delivering incremental software updates instead of large full-version updates that conflict with previous versions. Subscription isn't a destination for us. It is a means to a larger objective. We do need to give you the proof. You are seeing some of it already with services like rendering, and we are working on more.
I see companies having a binge cycle for few months then keeping a minimum license set (yes one or two seats, hey that's great for users too! no steady work) and forgoing the subscription for ten months while the cycle finishes other processes, rent for more two months, then cancel again.
This is a part of the licensing flexibility that we are touting. We expect this will be what some customers do for some users; jump on and jump off. It is up to us to continue to deliver the value that creates more users and more uses of our software.
I do sincerely appreciate your post. I hope you will stay with us during this transition.
Catherine Wolf
Director, Customer Success
Sustainability and Foundation
Big thanks to Info for the most elaborated and compentent post possible
in my eyes your reasoning ( or better say the Autodesk reasoning ) is based on far too many hypothetical factors. The advantage you expect to gain by totally adopting the current hype on all mobile and cloud everything will spread thin in reality later on. Your cloud based services will be constantly beaten in cost and features by lots and lots of eager, young startup companies acting far far more agile than any company the size of Autodesk ever could. Not even to speak of Autodesk's well known heaviness to adopt.
To be honest, regarding innovation, you are beaten within the current model already, it think it's only your long history and customer loyality which keeps you alive (and of course your strategical purchases of complex software , which bring you customer loyality the "forced" way ). I really think your vision of the change coming will not hit home.
The licensing chances and -as it seems - changes in the corporate-wide self-awareness, are like placing a bet using customer loyality as your currency -
Josef Wienerroither
Software Developer & 3d Artist Hybrid
