Factory Design Suite Premium Maintenance Plan

[Anonymous]

I am the mananging director of a small furniture design company in the UK. Last year we bought a perpetual licence for Inventor Factory Design Suite Premium. For a small business CAD software is a serious consideration and a considerable amount of capital investment. We kenw at the time that there was a desktop subscription option but realised that in the long term the perpetual licence would be better value for money.

We have just been contacted by our Autodesk reseller that the Yearly Maintenance Plan is going up by 10% this year and a further 10% next year. They seem as bewlidered by this move from Autodesk as we are. This is a huge increase and we are seriously considering moving to another software package, preferably one that doesn't impose unnanounced huge price increases year on year!!

Very unhappy about this uplift in the Maintenance Plan and feel like we are being given no alternative but to pay up or cancel thus leaving us with no further software update or support from Autodesk. 20% over two years is a huge price hike!!

Anybody having similar issues like this with Autodesk?

[dgorsman]

Nothing compared to some of our other software.  Costs can change for any reason, so its important to keep evaluating which programs are right for where the business is.  That includes both direct costs (licensing, support) and indirect costs (loss of productivity switching programs, different capabilities).

[pendean]

In addition to other comments... Do you truly need to use all the software bundled in Inventor Factory Design Suite Premium? That would be the first thing to evaluate, occasional need (or nice-to-have requirements) may not justify a fulltime subscription to a Suite from Autodesk.

[Anonymous]

Pendean,

In response to your reply it is not right that after less than 12 months we should be considering the termination of subscription for some of the elements within the package. The issue here is the total lack of notification by Autodesk to their resellers that an uplift of 20% was going to take place over the next two years. To then suggest that we should start sifting through the package to see what we actually need in terms of a maintenance subscription is not the way forward here. The uplift is unjustified in our opinion.

regards
Philip Evans
Managing Director
[Email Signature NortekGroup]
Trading as:
Nortek Technical Furniture Systems Ltd
Vale Business Centre
Priesty Fields
Congleton
Cheshire
CW12 4AQ

Tel: +44 (0) 1260 298321
Fax:+44 (0) 1260 298169
E-mail: phil@nortekgroup.co.uk:mailto:phil>
Web: www.nortekgroup.co.uk:http:>:http:>:mailto:phil>

[pendean]

Friend, I'm not disagreeing with you at all, just trying to offer another suggestion to evaluating your software needs as others have suggested. We all do this periodically: we too cannot afford to just go with one vendor for life

And no offense to your reseller, but there are good ones and bad ones out there and I'm amazed to this day how some of them don't seem to know much and others are so proactive about sharing info it can be overload.

Good luck with your quest.