As a follow-up to the Pixel Fondue video I posted about earlier, Greg from Pixel Fondue conducted a follow-up interview with Teresa Anania, Autodesk’s Senior Director, Subscription Success.
Greg and I asked for your questions for Teresa and I passed on several of my own to him. A word of warning: don’t do as I did and watch through all 54 minutes waiting increasingly impatiently for those questions to come up. They don’t. Anyway, thanks to Greg for conducting this interview and to Teresa for participating.
Greg has now posted the video. Here’s the TL;DW (too long; didn’t watch) version:
- Greg came up with some suggestions for making subscription more attractive (mainly to entertainment and media customers) and Teresa seemed open to those suggestions.
- Teresa doubled down on a bunch of the spin that has been thoroughly skewered by myself and many others.
- There was a rehash of the pricing information we already had a couple of months ago using the same figures Teresa provided in this blog post.
- The one new piece of information was that somebody who switches from maintenance to subscription will be able to retain access to all prior versions held during perpetual license ownership. This could be interpreted in several different ways and it wasn’t clarified, so I guess we’ll have to wait for something in writing.
- Despite what Teresa has apparently told some customers on the phone, there was no mention of a less unattractive subscription offer that involves keeping your perpetual license. Indeed, Teresa made it clear that trading in your perpetual license was very much still part of the deal.
- Future costs for maintenance and subscription were as vague as ever but Teresa thinks it’s pretty impressive that Autodesk put out three years of pricing when asking customers to make a decision with decades-long implications.
- Teresa wants you to give Autodesk a year to prove how wonderful subscription will be, and is very confident that subscription is for “the greater good”. (Andrew Anagnost also did the “give us a year” thing on Twitter so I guess we’ll see that theme repeated in an attempt to buy more time).
- She has solemnly stated that Autodesk is never going to gouge its customers and wants to start building better relationships.
- Teresa wants to hear from you and suggests the Autodesk Moving to Subscription forum as one way of getting in touch.
Here’s the video:
“Teresa wants you to give Autodesk a year to prove how wonderful subscription will be”. We will give them MANY years to prove it. Meanwhile, we’re stopping maintenance, keeping our perpetuals.
I won’t watch an hour of anything Autodesk has to say at this point. I am having far too much fun polishing our Bricscad and Civil Site Design implementation. I think it will continue to be rewarding to watch more and more people revolt as they get squeezed though.
Just sitting back here with my popcorn watching Autodesk meticulously craft its own noose.
The interview felt like Teresa was just proving to any adesk insiders that she would mix with the natives and risk ritual sacrifice. Neither side wants that, and Greg was wise not to give them what they might have wanted, as then we would be savages who don’t know what’s good for us and need to be told. It was still a good idea as I hope Teresa will do the good she seems capable of when assigned to other tasks…