When IT comes into the mix

[AllenJessup]

Here I'm the CAD Manager and do all the license managing and deployments. I know of some shops where the CAD Manager is in charge of standards and training but their IT dept does the licenses and deployments. I hope everyone in those shops communicates the upcoming changes to IT ahead of time. One can hope that the new license structure is along the lines of other industries and can be easily understood by IT that may only deal with CAD a few times a year.

Also. If you're not involved in the software purchasing. Make sure you purchasing agent understands that if you're renewing after May 7th 2020 and are eligible for the 2 for 1 trade in. You must take advantage of it on the FIRST renewal of lose out. It used to be that if you missed an opportunity your reseller might be able to squeeze you in after the fact. But not any more.

[Mark.Lancaster]

@AllenJessup 

Great points....

In my experience and for as long I've been supporting Single User Subscription or the subscription model, to this day I still see the "deer in the headlight" look when you talk about this.    Its only going to multiple when this transition will start impacting customers. 

[AllenJessup]

Yes. I'm lucky. I get the quote from the reseller. I get to fight with them over the price. If it were up to purchasing they'd probably just copy the PO from last year and ask for a quote based on that. Then pay whatever the quote was for up to the amount on that budget line.

The bosses in IT have often wanted their people to take over the management of the software. Luckily their employees know they don't want to do this.

Maybe next year I should hand the license management over to them. Open a help ticket and wait a couple of days. I'm not poking specifically at out IT dept. Their amazingly responsive considering their resources. But sometimes they do get overwhelmed. 

[lynn_zhang]

Thanks @AllenJessup for sharing your insights and advice from your own experience! 

[JamesMaeding]

@AllenJessup 

"The bosses in IT want their people to take over..."

The number one question I would ask if changing companies would be if the IT dept worked on same level as cad managers, or above. If above, "this has been a nice conversation, best of luck, bye."

I've experienced the IT group that had no obligations to really make things work, just explain that they are "doing their best". Its the worst mistake a technical company can make, and you can bet I warned all my friends of how that particular company ran.

[chriswade]

Wait, CAD Manager and IT Manager are two different things?

Really, I much prefer the system we have here, I am both the CAD and IT Manager and it actually works well, especially with things like this garbage that Autodesk is forcing on us.

Let's be clear, this has nothing to do with making our lives easier, this is all about making them more money in the long run and increasing the number of licenses they can say they have sold, which makes it look like they have an even bigger market share than they really do.

[JamesMaeding]

@chriswade 

Depends on the company. If you do have separate people, the CAD Manager really is also IT, but may or may not be respected by the IT dept.

It will be interesting to see how many more seats each company will need to cover their needs. I bet its like 20%, which is a huge price increase. The first year, you could literally buy everyone Bricscad for the price of just the extra acad's needed. Then the following years would be 1/5 the rental price since you buy bcad as perpetual with yearly sub.

Bricsys will need to hire more sales people.

[AllenJessup]

Only a few of our 1,200 users have CAD. So separating the functions makes sense. 

[chriswade]

Yeah, that would make sense then. For us, we only have a handful of employees that don't use CAD, so definitely makes more sense to combine them.