It goes without saying that any company that intends to win at CAD on the Cloud had better be pretty darn good at doing Internet stuff. So, does Autodesk qualify?
There’s a poll on the right and your comments are welcome.
One promoted benefit Software as a Service is that you are always up to date. There are no local applications to install and maintain. You don’t need to go through expensive and disruptive annual updates and/or install service packs or hotfixes; all this is taken care of for you. The latest and greatest software is always automatically available to you, and because everybody is always using the same version, there will be no compatibility issues. You won’t need to worry about your OS being compatible with the latest release, either. Bugs, if not exactly a thing of the past, will be quickly taken care of without you even being aware of them.
This is something you all want, right? What could possibly be wrong with this picture?
I have been away in Sydney for a while, attending the Australian Fencing Championships. I fenced in five events with uneven success (I came 52nd out of 70 in the Open Foil, for example), but a few things made me happy. First, I was able to fence for Western Australia in the Team Foil event as captain of the WA ‘B’ team, which put up a decent performance in going down to a strong ACT ‘A’ team. Next, I came 6th in the Veteran Foil; down from last year’s 2nd, but quite respectable given the strength of the field.
The event I was really concentrating on, the one in which I most wanted to do well, was the Veteran Sabre. I fenced pretty well through the pools and direct elimination bouts and got through to the final. There, I faced an opponent who had beaten everybody else that day, and I had trouble maintaining the same level of performance. Who would come through to be crowned national champion for 2011? Watch the video (YouTube, 3:02 long) of the Veteran Men’s Sabre Final to find out:
I’m on the left. If a red light goes on, I’ve hit him. If he hits me, it’s a green light. If both lights go on, we’ve both hit each other within 120 milliseconds and the referee awards the hit based on right-of-way rules. Veteran direct elimination bouts are fought until one fencer scores ten hits. Link to results.