Category Archives: Thoughts

The game has changed – Robert Green migrates to BricsCAD

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Is anybody left who still thinks BricsCAD isn’t a serious replacement for AutoCAD? If that’s you, perhaps the latest news might make you take it seriously. No, not the Heidi Hewett news. Even more recent news than that!

Robert Green, CAD Management guru, Cadalyst writer and consultant (not to mention a rather good guitarist) has been announced as the first Bricsys Certified Migration Consultant.

Image courtesy of Bricsys

Read all about what Robert has to say on this Bricsys blog post.

Anybody who has been reading this blog for the last few years will be surprised by none of what Robert has to say in that blog post. It’s not merely a repeat of what I’ve been saying for some time now, it’s all factually correct and easily verifiable by any competent CAD Manager.

I’ve been there and done that. I’ve gone through the process of taking a very complex custom AutoCAD environment, applying it to BricsCAD and giving it to my users. They loved it. No training was required to work as usual. Most things happened quicker, more conveniently, or both, starting right from the speedy installation. Once the product is in place and established, training can then be applied to take advantage of the places where BricsCAD is ahead of AutoCAD.

If you’re a CAD Manager where AutoCAD is used and you haven’t checked out BricsCAD yet, it’s about time you did.

This might come as a shock to those who see Autodesk domination of DWG CAD as a permanent fact of life, but the game has changed. AutoCAD’s stagnation and comments by senior figures show that the former flagship is clearly unloved by the powers within Autodesk. AutoCAD LT, even more so. An unimpressive AutoCAD 2019 shows that major improvements can no longer be expected in exchange for your ever-increasing annual payments, and with large numbers of people having been offloaded from the research and development teams, who would do it anyway? Meanwhile, BricsCAD development shoots ahead.

Thanks to decades of hostility towards customers that has only accelerated in recent years, Autodesk can’t even rely on customer loyalty for survival. When there’s a serious competitor that offers an easy migration path, the inertia that has kept Autodesk alive so far in the DWG space is no longer enough. The feeling among industry observers I meet is that Autodesk is in a decline of its own making. The only debate is whether that decline is temporary or terminal.

Back to Robert et al. Autodesk has lost many good people, and Bricsys is gaining them. The momentum is clearly with the Belgian company. Anybody want to run bets on who the next big name defector will be?

Why One AutoCAD is smart strategy

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OK, so Autodesk may have blown the AutoCAD 2019 rollout, triggering an apology from CEO Andrew Anagnost.

OK, AutoCAD 2019 may have the smallest set of significant advances in the history of AutoCAD releases. If you’re wondering, I give it 1/10. The “there can be only one” hype could easily refer to meaningful improvements to the product per year. This year’s improvement is… drawing compare!

Still, AutoCAD 2019 is a significant release for reasons beyond the content of the core product. An examination of the One AutoCAD strategy reveals a collective corporate mind that’s smarter than it’s being given credit for.

In case you’ve missed it, the idea behind One AutoCAD is that if you subscribe to AutoCAD, you can now also get a bunch of vertical variants of AutoCAD thrown in, renamed as “Toolsets”. You need to ask for it, and it’s for renters only, no perpetual license owners need apply. Oh, and Civil 3D isn’t part of the deal.

This concept has been received less than enthusiastically among respected independent observers such as Ralph Grabowski and Robert Green. I’m going to go against the trend a little and point out several ways in which this is a smart move for Autodesk.

  • It represents the first time Autodesk has had anything of substance to positively differentiate between maintenance and subscription. Until now, it’s all been negative: give away your perpetual licenses to avoid forthcoming maintenance price increases.
  • It provides some substance to Dr Anagnost’s “give us a year to show the value of subscription” request to customers. OK, it may have taken a lot more than a year, but at least it’s now possible to point to something that customers can gain by subscribing, rather than having the embarrassment of an empty promise hanging around.
  • It acts as an effective distraction from yet another price rise (7% on top of Autodesk’s already sky-high subscription costs). Yes, this new price still applies even if you don’t use the toolsets. Yes, it still applies even if you’re a Mac user who doesn’t have these toolsets available.
  • It will almost certainly be used as justification for future subscription price rises. How can you complain about a few more dollars when you get all those products included in the price?
  • This stuff has already been developed to a point that Autodesk considers mature (web apps excluded), and it isn’t costing Autodesk anything to “give it away”.
  • It means that the glacial or non-existent rate of improvement of AutoCAD and its variants suddenly appears less important. How can you complain that nothing worthwhile has been added to your AutoCAD variant this year when you now have access to hundreds more commands than you used to have? This line has already been tried with me on Twitter.
  • It provides a marketing counter-argument against competitors who sell DWG-based AutoCAD-compatible products that provide above-AutoCAD standards of functionality (e.g. BricsCAD).
  • If an increased number of users start using the vertical variants, there will be increased pressure on those competitors to handle the custom objects created using those variants. This will act as a distraction and reduce the ability of those competitors to out-develop Autodesk at the rate that has been occurring for the past few years.

There are a couple of flies in Autodesk’s One AutoCAD ointment:

  • Critical mass – it has yet to be seen how many customers are so won over by this concept that they sign up for it. Remember that it’s only available to a minority of customers anyway, and if the bulk of customers remain reluctant to give up their perpetual licenses then all this is moot. If the move-to-rental numbers are small, then the anti-competitive nature of this move is negated. The marketing gains still apply, though.
  • Interoperability – traditionally, the AutoCAD-based verticals add custom objects to the core AutoCAD objects, which when opened in vanilla AutoCAD or another vertical, appear as proxy objects that either don’t appear or will provide very limited access. Improved but still limited access can be provided if Object Enablers are installed. Object Enablers are not always available for the AutoCAD variant you want to use. LT? Mac? Old releases? Forget it.This has always been a highly unsatisfactory arrangement. I have worked for a company that explicitly prohibits drawings containing proxy objects and rejects any it receives, and that has proven to be a smart policy. Also, the vertical variants of AutoCAD have always had hidden DWG incompatibilities built in. AutoCAD 2015 user? Try to use a DWG file that has been created in a 2017 vertical variant. Good luck with that, even though all those releases supposedly use 2013 format DWG. Paradoxically, you can expect to experience much better DWG interoperability with non-Autodesk products and their add-ons than you will with AutoCAD and its verticals, because the non-Autodesk products are forced to work with AutoCAD native objects. It remains to be seen how, when, or even if Autodesk addresses these issues.

In summary, this strategy has potential to significantly benefit Autodesk. Will it work? That will largely depend on how many customers are prepared to put aside their mistrust enough to hand over their perpetual licenses to Autodesk. That mistrust is mighty large (Autodesk’s been working hard for years on building it up) and recent sorry-we-broke-your-rental-software events have reiterated just how valuable those perpetual licenses are.

Autodesk has produced what it considers to be a very attractive carrot. Is it big and juicy enough to attract you?

Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (EDS) awareness

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This post has nothing to do with the usual subjects covered by this blog. It’s more personal than that. My niece Carrie and her two daughters have suffered, and continue to suffer, from a rare, painful and debilitating condition called Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (EDS). That suffering could have been reduced if there had been more knowledge of the condition among the medical profession.

I’m somewhat cynical about “awareness campaigns”, but this is different. This awareness can have a major beneficial impact on real people, if the awareness is among the people who can make a difference: medical professionals.

I’m asking you, kind reader of my blog, to forward this link to anybody you know in the medical profession. One day, they might come across somebody with this condition and have something lodged at the back of their minds; something to make them think, “Maybe it could be EDS? I’ll look that up.”

Here is Carrie’s story. This is a reprint of an article on page 22 of Arthritis Today magazine, Autumn 2018 edition.

EHLERS DANLOS SYNDROME – Diagnosis makes a difference

by Carrie Johnson

Some of us are naturally more flexible than others, or hypermobile as the medical people describe it. For many, being hypermobile is not a big deal and may even offer advantages in certain sports and careers. For others, these stretchy tissues can cause serious ongoing health challenges which are painful, unpredictable and sometimes disabling.
My younger daughter Cate hurts her joints very easily doing things other 6-year-olds take for granted. She’s dislocated her shoulder three times at rest. Her jaw is so loose that she struggles to speak clearly, and has been in speech therapy for years. Chewing a steak is out of the question!

My older daughter Lucy is fourteen and has spent the past year dealing with severe nerve pain triggered by a dislocation which tore her hip. She was sitting at the dinner table when it happened. Lucy was bedridden for more than four traumatic months before learning how to function with persistent and often intense pain. She missed nearly two-thirds of school last year.

I’ve always been bendy myself and had my fair share of painful joints and other problems. However, towards the end of my last pregnancy, I suddenly couldn’t weight bear because my hips were dislocating with every step. I’ve had several surgeries, but the repairs didn’t last. The pain and restrictions persist nearly seven years later, and now many other joints have joined the party.

Despite years of unexplained symptoms and endless medical appointments, it wasn’t until Cate was nearly five that we were all diagnosed with the hypermobile type of Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (EDS).

EDS is the name given to a group of genetic or inherited disorders which affect collagen, a vital building block in the connective tissue or “glue” which holds our bodies together. Although EDS is increasingly recognized as causing musculoskeletal pain, collagen is the most abundant protein in the body, meaning there is almost no limit to the places where issues can arise.

Poor eyesight, dental crowding, soft and fragile skin, excessive bleeding, digestive system issues, and autonomic dysfunction are just some of the problems my daughters and I deal with every day. Cate’s skin splits open easily, so a simple scratch will heal slowly and often leave a scar. Lucy recently had a spontaneous nosebleed so severe that blood streamed from her eyes and she bleed through a bath towel in fifteen minutes. In hot weather, if I stand up quickly I lose my vision, get very dizzy, and sometimes faint. To combat this, I am supposed to drink lots of water but I also have gastroparesis (stomach paralysis) and often can’t drink anything at all.

Many health professionals appear reluctant to formally diagnose EDS, perhaps because it is considered rare and has no cure. Since hypermobility occurs on a spectrum, it can also be difficult to distinguish a flexible but otherwise healthy person from someone with EDS or a related disorder.

For my family though, our EDS diagnosis was the first positive step towards us taking back some control over our lives. Not only do we finally have an answer for all the things that were going wrong, but we are also able to meet others in the community with the same condition, and to seek treatments which have the best chance of improving our quality of life.

We see occupational therapists, pain specialists, and have a phenomenal physiotherapy team to help us build strength using techniques appropriate for our hypermobile joints. Now we know about EDS we avoid certain activities, and my daughters are very fortunate to have a wonderful paediatric rheumatologist to coordinate their care. Because of our diagnosis, we’ve been able to access some sources of assistance to help a little with the significant financial strain on our family.

Although it’s considered rare, some experts believe EDS and related hypermobility disorders may be underdiagnosed. Symptoms can vary dramatically, even within the same family.

“Carrie’s story is all too familiar to me as a specialist clinician in this area of Medicine, but I suspect on reflection, colleagues will realize they too have patients with similar histories in whom the diagnosis has not been considered.” said Dr Alan Hakim, Consultant Rheumatologist and Clinical Lead of the Hypermobility Unit at London’s St John and St Elizabeth Hospital.

“The value to individuals and families of a diagnosis, and our then ability to adapt and better treat them should not be underestimated. The challenge internationally is to both help non-specialists recognize these conditions, and to develop more multi-disciplinary teams with resources to support people like Carrie and her family.”

For more information about hypermobility disorders and Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, visit the websites Hypermobility.org or www.ehlers-danlos.com.

Original article: https://www.arthritiswa.org.au/useruploads/files/arf5527-arthritistodaymagazineautumn2018.web.pdf

Guest post (BlackBox) – Why every click counts

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With a bit of tongue in cheek, “This is not only my first guest post on [blog nauseam], it’s also my first guest post on any blog.” Thanks, Steve!

I get to write about one of my favorite AutoCAD features, and share a short personal story.

Yesterday I read Frank Mayfield’s article on time-sensitive Right Click, which made me recall an opportunity to help a new user on a design task the other day. I led them through an approach to mitigate a design issue, noticed they weren’t using time-sensitive Right Click, and asked them why?

User: Why not?

Me: Fair question; because it’s extra clicks.

User: It’s just a few extra clicks.

Me: Correct; every click counts.

User: Yeah, but it only takes a few seconds.

Me: Correct; how many seconds? Do the same task each way and time it.

User: <Does the task each way>… It only takes an extra 6 seconds.

Me: Good. Now extrapolate that; how many times a day do you do this?

User: Oh, all the time! Haha Hundreds of times a day.

Me: Okay, call it 100, because you won’t do that everyday.

User: 6 secs, 100 times a day, is 600 secs, that’s only 10 mins per day.

Me: Correct; extrapolate that over a year: 5 days, 50 weeks.

User: <Does the math>… Holy crap! 2500 mins? 41.7 hrs? That’s more than a week!

Me: Correct; you just cost the owner a week of otherwise billable time in extra right clicks. Get it now?

User: I get it now.

Me: I know.  <Smiles and walks away>  (<— Yes, I smile! A lot actually)

The user has since opted for the more efficient method on their own, and demonstrated this mindfulness for detail in other areas as well.

I show them the trade-offs and let them choose for themselves.

Accountability makes us better, more capable. Owning our decisions and learning from missteps earns respect. Only then do we see what a real team can do. #GetAfterIt

Are your drawings SHOUTING?

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This post was inspired by a question raised by Jamie Myers in the CAD Managers Unite! Facebook group.

Long ago, before CAD was in common use, I was taught technical drawing at school. One of the things I was taught was to follow drafting standards, BS308 at the time. Later, I was expected to follow AS1100. One of the things I was taught was to always use capital letters in text on drawings, using the approved ISO font. Without a machine, without a template. This stuck to me to such an extent that even today I use all caps when handwriting notes. Note to wife? Caps. Shopping list? Caps. I can’t help it, it’s hardwired.

Let’s do that paragraph again, this time using the case as it would be seen on most drawings in my experience, and as I would automatically tend to enter it on a drawing:

LONG AGO, BEFORE CAD WAS IN COMMON USE, I WAS TAUGHT TECHNICAL DRAWING AT SCHOOL. ONE OF THE THINGS I WAS TAUGHT WAS TO FOLLOW DRAFTING STANDARDS – BS308 AT THE TIME. LATER, I WAS EXPECTED TO FOLLOW AS1100. ONE OF THE THINGS I WAS TAUGHT WAS TO ALWAYS USE CAPITAL LETTERS IN TEXT ON DRAWINGS, USING THE APPROVED ISO FONT. WITHOUT A MACHINE, WITHOUT A TEMPLATE. THIS STUCK TO ME TO SUCH AN EXTENT THAT EVEN TODAY I USE ALL CAPS WHEN HANDWRITING NOTES. NOTE TO WIFE? CAPS. SHOPPING LIST? CAPS. I CAN’T HELP IT, IT’S HARDWIRED.

Show those paragraphs to 100 people in the street and ask them which is the most legible, and I’m pretty sure the mixed-case one will be chosen by the vast majority. It also uses up less space, which can be an issue on a crowded drawing.

You wouldn’t use all caps on the Internet unless you were SHOUTING because otherwise you would be mistaken for one of those unhinged conspiracy theorists. Just as I’m hardwired to write in upper case, I’m also hardwired to skip blocks of upper case text on the Internet (e.g. Terms of Use) without even attempting to read it.

Why, then, do so many of us still use ALL CAPS in drawings? Inertia? Standards?

There are some legitimate arguments that can be made to support the continued use of upper case on drawings. I was taught that capitals were used to ensure that when a drawing was reproduced, taken out on site and subjected to folds, dirty fingers and oil stains, the chances of something being rendered illegible was smaller in the case of a capital letter. It has been pointed out that ‘up’ and ‘dn’ are identical when inverted. Quick, is ‘l’ an upper case I or a lower case L?

I understand all caps usage varies substantially from country to country and the language used will also make a difference.

Let’s have your viewpoint on this subject. Please comment and/or pick a poll option. It’s a deliberately binary poll so you can’t fudge and have to pick one, and it’s about which one you think is better (most suited for purpose), not which one you use.

What case convention is better in drawings?

View Results

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This and usually a few other polls live at the top of the left sidebar (on a PC browser). Here is the polls archive.

ADSK bubble trouble

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Autodesk has now recorded ten successive quarters of losses totaling $1.289 billion.

Autodesk’s share price had been rapidly rising during the previous nine lossy quarters. If last quarter’s $119.8 million loss was business as usual, why did the ADSK share price plummet? At the time of writing, it’s $23.65 down on its pre-Q3-results high.

Alongside the usual we’re-doing-great stuff in the Q3 announcement, Autodesk announced big layoffs, with another 13% of the workforce to go. Merry Christmas, employees. This follows on from another 10% who were axed last year. Don’t think I’m gloating about this. I’m not; these are real people with real jobs, many of them undoubtedly very good people, and they have my sympathy.

But doesn’t the market love companies cutting jobs? Maybe not when the bill is going to be $135 to $149 million when the CEO states it’s not going to cut costs anyway:

Every penny generated reinvested back in the company – just in different areas: digital infrastructure and construction products. We’ll hire at least that number back. Not cost cutting. Rebalancing.

It may not have helped if traders noticed the Autodesk CFO selling stock on 24 November, a few days before the 2018 Q3 financials were out? This was smart, because he made about $113,000 more on that transaction than he would have if he had sold on 29 November. I’m not suggesting there was anything improper about this, but it was hardly a confidence-inspiring move.

Edit: From R. Scott Herren via Twitter: “…that sale was a 10b5-1 planned sale setup more than 6 months ago. You can find that info on the SEC filing.”

But I suspect it’s just Autodesk’s ongoing failure to pull itself out of the loss trough and desperate-looking need to shed workers that has started to erode confidence in the veracity of its repetitive “Another Great Quarter!” narrative. Maybe the market has started to look a bit deeper than just giving Autodesk a simplistic “it’s OK, revenue always dips when moving to subscription” free kick? Maybe the oft-quoted “new subscriptions” metric has lost its shine as it becomes apparent that subscription numbers aren’t directly proportional to income?

I’ve said it before, but ADSK ain’t ADBE. Different products, different customers, different history, different pricing strategies, different results.

Autodesk’s high-price strategy with poor customer acceptance and big losses differs markedly from Adobe’s low-price strategy with reasonable customer acceptance and merely reduced profits during the transition. Here is Adobe’s record, before and after giving up selling perpetual software licenses. Note the lack of red ink.

All is not well with Autodesk’s subscribe-or-GTFO plan, and it looks like people other than customers have started to notice. Autodesk’s bubble has been pricked and some rapid deflation has occurred. Time will tell whether this is a blip or a trend.

Disclaimer: I am not a financial analyst. This is not financial advice. Make your own decisions.

Autodesk founder outraged by Amazon snatch of cloudy purchases

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Autodesk co-founder John Walker (it’s not his fault, he relinquished control of the company many years ago) recently posted this on Twitter:

In a move reminiscent of the infamous removal of Orwell’s 1984 from Kindle devices (which Amazon promised a court it would never repeat), John’s Audible.com (owned by Amazon) audio books, purchased in 2009-2010, simply went away.

John’s reaction was to post a video of harmless inanimate objects being blown away by a powerful firearm, so I think it’s safe to say he was not overly pleased about this turn of events. Can’t say I blame him.

This is a variant of the old joke on those cheesy pre-show anti-piracy ads that have annoyed owners of legitimately purchased videos for many years:

“You wouldn’t steal a car.”
– I would if I could download it.

Amazon’s version goes:

“You wouldn’t steal a book.”
– I would if I could delete it from my server.

OK, Amazon is obviously doing evil here, but what can John do about it? Maybe nothing. As pointed out in a series of responses to John’s post, Amazon considers itself fully entitled to do this. Amazon also allows itself permission to change the rules as and when it sees fit.

Does this sound familiar? It should. “What’s yours isn’t really yours, even if you paid for it. It can go away when we feel like it. We can change the rules when we feel like it. No guarantees. Just keep paying and hope for the best.”

This is why we don’t CAD in the cloud. Or subscription CAD, for that matter. Owning stuff is still important.

I continue to snigger at your pronouncements of technological inevitability

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Back in January, I declared my amusement at people proclaiming impending technology trend takeovers as inevitable and irresistible. Among other things, I had this to say (it’s a familiar phrase in Britain):

What a load of bollocks.

 
Today I was provided with another example (thanks Ralph):

What falling e-book sales tell us about technology in 2017

I encourage you to read that post, which seems to me to be right on the money. E-books, yesterday’s Next Big Thing, are now in sharp decline. The inevitable technology takeover turned out to be not quite so inevitable after all. Who could have guessed?

Here’s another quote from my January post:

Next time somebody tries to tell you something like, “The whole software industry is moving to the rental model, all software will be sold that way soon, there will be no avoiding it,” please refer them to paragraph two above.

 
Autodesk has bet the farm on not just one apparently inevitable technology trend, but two. If either rental-only software and cloud-based CAD/BIM/M&E fail to live up to expectations, Autodesk will be in a world of pain.

That’s quite a gamble, and Autodesk has already blown a billion bucks on what it probably thought was a sure thing. Anybody who thinks there’s such a thing as a sure thing in technology hasn’t been paying attention.

Dissecting Dieter’s perpetual points

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I like Dieter Schlaepfer, we’ve been arguing for years.

Dieter and I have never met in person, but online we go back to the CIS:ACAD CompuServe days of the early 1990s. Dieter’s a good guy who has done a splendid job with AutoCAD documentation content for decades. He is genuinely interested in improving the product and customer experience, and has done a great deal to do so over the years.

Dieter’s responsible for the most-commented post on this blog, AutoCAD 2013 – An Autodesk Help writer responds with 164 comments and was a heavy contributor to the 95 comments on the recent AutoCAD 2018 – why did the DWG format change? post.

If you read the comments here, you’ll know that Dieter is the only Autodesk person brave enough to put his head above the parapet and enter into discussions here in recent times, even though he’s not doing so in any official capacity. Autodesk’s PR people give me a wide berth and the Autodesk view would be completely unrepresented here if not for Dieter. He’s prepared to put his hand up and say, “But what about this?” when it’s an unpopular viewpoint and nobody else is prepared to say it. Props to Dieter for that.

Among Dieter’s many recent comments, he outlined 12 considerations in the rental v perpetual argument. Myself and others have been having fun eviscerating his tortured pub analogy, but his more serious arguments deserve a more considered response than can be comfortably provided in a comment, hence this post.

Let’s take Dieter’s considerations one by one. Bear in mind I’m approaching this from a long-term Autodesk customer point of view. You may look at things differently, and that’s fine.

1. Cost – if a rental, lease, or membership were low enough in price, almost everyone would do so (at a dollar a month, heck, I’d lease my shoes)

Fantasy argument. If Lear would hire me a private jet for $1 a month, sure, sign me up. The reality is that rental costs more, except in the short term. That’s why companies rent things out: to make money. That’s why Autodesk is doing it; it’s an attempt, however hamfisted, to make more money. On cost, rental loses.

2. Business model, terms and conditions, and their consequences

Vague. But given the terms and conditions attached to Autodesk rental (standalone users must use a terrible licensing system) and the consequences (software stops working the instant you stop paying), rental loses big-time here.

3. Quality of fulfillment – this is to your point

Not sure what Dieter means here. ???

4. Tax consequences

This varies from place to place. I can get a 100% write-off whether buying a perpetual license, maintaining it or renting it. I may want to get a bigger write-off sooner, or not. Neutral.

5. Opportunity cost – by tying up a lot of cash, what potential opportunities do you lose?

Depending on a business’s cashflow and other circumstances, this is a possible valid argument. However, only in the short term. Because rental costs more in the long term, it costs you more in potential opportunity in the long term. Overall, rental loses.

6. Financial accounting – rental, lease, or membership costs can easily be assigned to each project and billed to each customer

If I don’t have the need to do that, it’s irrelevant. But even if that’s the way you need or prefer to do things, it’s still only partially true that rental can be a benefit. Let’s say you have won a project that is planned to take 9 months and rent Autodesk software for a year: it costs you $3000 and you pay up front (because you’re not insane enough to pay Autodesk’s monthly rental prices). You finish the project in 10 months. You use that software for other smaller projects that crop up during that 10 month period, and after it’s over. Quick, how much of that $3000 do you apportion to each project? See, it’s not as simple as it appears.

It’s really not difficult to have perpetual license software costs handled in the same way as overheads and other long-term costs that can’t be directly attributed to a project. You’re not going to be able to sack your accountant thanks to software rental. Neutral.

7. Flexibility – you can easily increase or decrease the number and types of licenses for several (not just one) products

Ah, flexibility. Let’s say I’m convinced by Dieter’s other arguments and convert my perpetual license to rental under the current so-called “discount” offer. In doing so, I throw away my flexibility. I can’t ever stop paying or my software stops working. Down the track I may not need that license for a while, but even then I can’t hop off the rental train because if I do that and then hop back on, my software costs will treble (roughly – it varies).

As for the several products thing, Autodesk has been pushing customers into suites and collections where a high price is paid for a block of products. Can you drop back from a collection to a product or two for a while, then back to other products or up to a collection again? Sure, Autodesk is very flexible. Just forego your “discount” and pay an astronomical increase, no problem.

Autodesk has been progressively removing its customers’ flexibility for decades and will undoubtedly continue to do so as long as it thinks that will make more money that way.

So please don’t come the rental=flexibility argument with me. On flexibility too, Autodesk’s rental loses.

8. A truly perpetual software license requires you to maintain obsolete hardware and old operating systems, and discourages the adoption of new technologies

No it doesn’t. A non-upgradable license might do that, whether perpetual or otherwise. That doesn’t apply to perpetual licenses under maintenance. It didn’t even used to apply to perpetual licenses not under maintenance. Whose fault is it that perpetual licenses not under maintenance are no longer upgradable? Autodesk’s. False argument.

9. Perpetual licenses put most of the financial burden on new customers rather than spreading it more fairly between all users

Actually, with perpetual licenses the financial burden is much more fairly spread. What costs more, developing a product from scratch or maintaining it? Perpetual license purchasers pay a higher amount for the initial purchase, just as the developer pays a higher amount for the initial development. The developer is fairly rewarded for providing the product for the customer to use. Following that, the developer is fairly rewarded for maintaining and improving it.

But I really hope you’re not trying to convince people that Autodesk is price-forcing customers onto rental in order to be fairer to them, because I think incredulity would be the appropriate reaction. False argument.

10. Perpetual software licenses create “a long tail” of product versions, making data sharing between users more difficult

Perpetual software licenses that are maintained do no such thing. If a vendor provides good value for that maintenance payment, then people will maintain the software. Autodesk maintenance value for money has been dreadful in recent years, leading to people dropping it. Improving Autodesk’s performance in that area would reduce the length of the tail. Making maintenance value for money even worse by racking up prices will lead to people dropping it and sticking on old releases much longer. Autodesk’s rental push is lengthening the tail, not shortening it.

Incidentally, there is a new benefit for subscription customers with multi-user (network) licenses. Guess what? Five releases are now supported rather than four. Yes, Autodesk rental is literally lengthening the tail. False argument.

11. Perpetual software licenses encourage users to use less secure software and operating systems in a time when cybercrime and espionage are mushrooming

See 10 above. False argument.

12. Providers of perpetual licenses have less incentive to support long-time customers than providers of rental, leased, and membership business models do

Absolutely wrong. This is literally the exact opposite of observed reality.

You know what model really provides an incentive for vendors to improve the product? Perpetual licenses with optional paid upgrades. With the perpetual/upgrade model, if there’s no improvement, there’s no ongoing income. But that model was too much like hard work. Easier to just remove our options over the years to manipulate customers into paying more and getting less. Autodesk priced that model out of the market and then killed it off because it wanted to get people paying for just using the software rather than as a reward for improving it.

It’s proven by history. The closer Autodesk got to the all-rental model, the worse the rate of improvement became. As an improvement incentive, rental loses.

There you go, Dieter. Rental loses on five considerations and wins on none. And I’m being generous by considering points 10 and 11 as neutral.

Feel free to add your own observations on perpetual v rental. If you want to have a go at Dieter’s arguments or mine, go for it. I just ask that you play the ball, not the man.

Why owning stuff is still important (repost)

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This post was originally published on 19 November 2012. What’s happened since then is that Autodesk has indeed ended the sale of perpetual licenses and gone all-rental even though customers remain reluctant.

Autodesk’s cloud push, however, is struggling. Many Autodesk cloud products are dying or dead. Others (mostly free) carry on but many have failed to live up to expectations.  Some paid cloud products (e.g. Fusion 360) are starting to generate some return on Autodesk’s huge investment. However, it’s all years behind schedule. We were supposed to be cloudy CAD users several years ago. It hasn’t happened. How much of that is because of technical blockages, how much is because we have problems trusting the cloud, and how much is because we prefer to own our software licenses? I have no way of telling, but I’m sure the latter factor is somewhere in the mix.

Most of this post might as well have been written today. The three Cs matter in 2017 and I believe they always will. Here’s the original, unmodified.

Let’s start with a few questions:

  • Do you own your home or rent it? Given the choice, what would you prefer? Why?
  • Do you own your car or rent it? Given the choice, what would you prefer? Why?
  • Do you own your TV or rent it? Given the choice, what would you prefer? Why?
  • Do you own your computer or rent it? Given the choice, what would you prefer? Why?

If you’re like me, you answered the same for most or all of those questions. I own all of the above and rent none of it. I prefer owning all of the above. Why? Three Cs:

  • Continuity. If I own my home, there’s a pretty good chance that I’ll be able to go on living in it as long as I like. There are exceptions (wars, natural disasters, etc.), but ownership is generally much safer than renting if it’s important to retain access in the long term. This is because it removes the significant possibility that the owner may eventually terminate the agreement for reasons of their own, or make the relationship financially impractical.
  • Control. If I rent my home, for example, there are strict limits on what I can do with it. I can’t just install an air conditioner if the place gets too hot in summer. The owners or their representatives can come calling to make sure I’m looking after it as they desire. If I want to keep pets or smoke in the property, my options are severely limited.
  • Cost. There’s a reason people invest in property to rent out to others, or run profitable multinational businesses hiring out cars. It makes sense to be on the side of the relationship that’s taking the money rather than the one that’s paying it out. In other words, it usually makes financial sense to be the owner rather than the renter.

That doesn’t mean renting things never makes sense, of course. I wouldn’t buy a car to drive around while visiting another country, for example. Many people can’t afford to buy their own homes and have no alternative but to rent. But that doesn’t alter the basic point that ownership is the most desirable situation to be in. Let’s look at another situation and see if that point still applies:

  • Do you own your music or rent it? Given the choice, what would you prefer? Why?

There are an increasing number of people who feel that owning music is old hat. For example, have a look at Scott Sheppard’s blog post on this subject. Here’s one thing Scott has to say:

When you think about it, you don’t want to own an album or CD, you want to hear the songs when you want to.

Sorry, Scott, but there is more to it than just hearing songs when I want to. I have thought about it, very carefully, and I do want to own an album or CD. I want this for the same reasons I want to own my home, my car and so on.

  • Continuity. If I own a CD and look after it, I know I’m going to be able to keep using it indefinitely. I don’t have to worry about whether the rights holder wishes to continue making that music available, or changes the terms of the agreement to my detriment.
  • Control. If I own a CD, I can listen to it in good conditions on my home system without the music suffering from lossy compression. I can put it in my car’s player along with a few others and quickly flip to it without having to search for it among several thousand tracks. I can rip the music from the CD and place it on my iPod Nano watch, or Android phone, or computers, and play it when and where it’s convenient. I’m not reliant on any external parties or connections.
  • Cost. Once I’ve paid for my CD, the incremental cost of each listen is extremely close to zero. I’m still enjoying music I bought years ago, cost-free. My eldest daughter only listens to music on her iPod, but she generally buys CDs rather than downloading songs from iTunes. She does this because she works out what’s cheapest and it’s usually the CD, even allowing for one or two tracks she doesn’t want.

The cost issue may or may not apply, depending on the album and the service, but for me the other two factors are dealbreakers anyway. Besides, there are other reasons I want to own an album. These include artwork, lyrics, the pleasure that comes from collecting and owning an artist’s works, and so on. I understand that these aspects are down to my personal preference. There are plenty of kids out there who just want to listen to this week’s stuff without thinking about the future too much. However, huge numbers of those sort of people aren’t customers, and don’t enter into the commercial equation. When they download music, they don’t pay for it.

Scott’s experiment with Spotify is hardly a compelling argument for non-ownership. He lists a whole bunch of things that are irritating and which detract from his ability to listen to the music when and where he wants to. Things that don’t apply to those of us who own our music (or those who download it for free). In fact, it’s a very convincing argument that the “anytime, anywhere” mantra needs to be turned on its head. Want to ensure that you’ll be able to listen to the music you want? Anytime, anywhere, uninterrupted, problem-free and independent of external factors? Ownership, not Cloudy stuff. Every time.

With that in mind, let’s look at one more situation:

  • Do you own your software or rent it? Given the choice, what would you prefer? Why?

Let’s sidestep the convenient (and court-approved, in some locations) legal idea that customers don’t actually own the software they buy. Let’s interpret the word “software” above as the ability to use the software. This includes whatever is required to do so, from a media, technical and licensing perspective. While you and I might prefer to permanently own our software (or licence to use that software), Autodesk likes to think that society:

is moving from [sic] only requiring access to products instead of owning them

and so it wants to:

move from offering a perpetual license with maintenance to a termed subscription model

In other words, Autodesk doesn’t want you to own software any more, it wants to rent it to you. This desire is clearly the prime mover behind its Cloud push. Never mind that the last time Autodesk tried renting out its software, the experiment was a dismal and short-lived failure because of a lack of customers. This has nothing to do with what you want, it has everything to do with what Autodesk wants.

Is this all OK with you? Do continuity, control and cost really not matter when it comes to software? Are you happy to hand matters over to your friendly vendor and not think about the future too much, like some pop-happy teenager? Or, like me, do you think owning stuff is still important?

Please let me know if you would like to see occasional selected reposts like this in future or would prefer to avoid post necromancy.

AutoCAD 2018 – why did the DWG format change?

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In my review of AutoCAD 2018, I had this to say about AutoCAD 2018’s changed DWG format:

Why does AutoCAD 2018 need a new DWG format? It probably doesn’t. The 2013 DWG format is capable of holding pretty much anything you want… Although Autodesk cites performance reasons with certain drawings, I strongly suspect the new DWG format was introduced purely to make life difficult for competitors, and to encourage wavering customers to stay with Autodesk for fear of losing compatibility. In other words, it seems likely this is an anti-competitive change rather than a technical one.

In a recent blog post, highly respected Swiss-based Autodesk development and research person Kean Walmsley had this to say on that subject:

The main reason for the break in compatibility is some longer-term work that’s going on inside the AutoCAD codebase. For now this is really only surfacing in small ways – I expect it’s contributing some performance benefits, for instance – but the work is absolutely critical to the long-term viability of the product.

Kean’s a straight-shooter and I’m always ready to be corrected if it can be shown that I’m wrong. So I would be interested to learn more detail about this long-term work that’s critical to the long-term viability of the product. It might be good news for customers or really terrible news. If the groundwork is being laid for a file format that’s more heavily cloud-reliant or subject to continuous change, say, that would be an absolute tragedy for customers.

Autodesk is clearly manoeuvring customers into a position of maximum tie-in using various nefarious means, and if the DWG format change is part of that then it’s to be condemned. Maybe further information would help alleviate such concerns. Kean can’t provide that information, and neither can the selected bloggers who were given some insight under NDA last week, but I’m sure someone at Autodesk could. That is, if there really is nothing to worry about.

Kean also had this to say:

AutoCAD continues to be a core part of Autodesk’s business – and it continues to receive significant investment in terms of development resources – but don’t expect that to translate to buckets of shiny new features: AutoCAD’s feature maturity means the investment is rightly being focused in other areas (at least for now).

This had me wondering if Kean mistyped “immaturity”, because almost every AutoCAD feature from the last decade was released immature and only the lucky few eventually got finished. There’s a huge mass of outstanding work left to do in AutoCAD just to bring its existing half-baked features up to scratch, practically all of which could be done without disrupting customers with a new DWG format.

As for the feature set itself being mature, I can’t agree with that, either. Maybe it’s considered mature within Autodesk because of defeatist thinking about what’s possible with DWG-based CAD software? Kean’s comments seem to reinforce that impression. From where I’m standing, the lack of progress in recent AutoCAD releases demonstrates a severe lack of imagination and hunger to improve the product, not any inherent natural plateau in CAD development.

I believe this because Autodesk’s keener competitors have shown that no such plateau exists. Bricsys has proven that it’s very possible to improve an AutoCAD-like DWG-based product out of sight with genuinely useful and productive new features, and they can do it without changing the DWG format. Incidentally, my preliminary tests indicate BricsCAD V17 opens and saves DWG significantly faster than AutoCAD 2018, again without the need for a new format. More on that in a later post.

Back to Kean:

This is a tricky balance – and could easily be interpreted as a big company not caring about (some of) its users and only being interested in milking its cash-cow – but the work happening behind the scenes is significant and I believe will ultimately prove to be of real value to our customers.

Real value? History has taught me to be dubious about that. Many things that Autodesk promotes as being of value to customers turn out to be of net negative value. Time will tell with this one.

Sorry, but I really don’t believe that Autodesk cares about AutoCAD and its users as anything but an income source. I know there are still honest, hardworking, enthusiastic people within Autodesk (like Kean) who want to improve the product on behalf of customers. Good luck to those people, because their efforts are being stymied by management. The results we’re seeing out here in customer land are dismal, and no matter what spin is put on that, it must be disheartening.

Autodesk people, caring about users? Sure. Autodesk, the public listed company, as directed from the top? Nope. Autodesk’s actions and inactions tell me otherwise. Zero cares are given. No words can fix that, no matter who they come from.

AutoCAD really is being treated as a cash cow; hang one of those bells around its neck and be done with it.


(Original image: Daniel Schwen)

Bullshit Returns – Autodesk maintenance price hike part 2

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In this post I continue skewering the welcome post to Autodesk’s Moving to Subscription forum. See here for part 1.

Access to new industry collections – Available only through subscription, you’ll realize significant savings when you need two or more Autodesk software products.

Bullshit. Industry collections are just rental-only engorged suites. Suites are those things with many more than two products; things that Autodesk has been pushing hard for years, before dropping them from the price list. If you already have a suite that contains the products you need (remember, Autodesk’s statements are aimed at existing perpetual license holders), switching to an industry collection will cost you vastly more. That’s the opposite of significant savings.

New and improved support – Enjoy faster response times and the option to receive help by scheduling a call with Autodesk technical support specialists.

It’s just possible this isn’t bullshit. Autodesk support can certainly be sub-optimal and it’s just possible that some of the massive slab of funds Autodesk expects to collect will be diverted to improving support for those who pay the most. Maybe. But I bet Autodesk’s very best high-cost efforts still look very weak compared with the free support provided by Bricsys.

Simplified administration – Access tools that streamline deployment and software management when you standardize all of your Autodesk products on subscription.

Bullshit. The user-based internet-reliant subscription licensing method is a CAD Manager’s nightmare. The device-based standalone licensing system for perpetual license products, while not perfect, is vastly superior from an administration viewpoint. And don’t get me started on the CF that is Autodesk desktop app.

Because managing two business models (subscription and maintenance plans) is costly, in order to continue supporting maintenance plans, beginning May 7, 2017, maintenance plan renewal prices will increase by 5% in 2017, 10% in 2018, and 20% in 2019.

Bullshit. The price is increasing to push customers into expensive rental arrangements and remove the Autodesk payment escape route provided by perpetual licenses, not to recoup costs. Even if there were substantial costs involved in managing an additional business model (rental), there is more than enough margin in the massive rental costs to cover that. And Autodesk, if the costs are substantial, then you’re doing it wrong. If your management is not competent enough to arrange its affairs efficiently and cost-effectively then I have no sympathy. Don’t come to me with your hand out, crying poor.

But I don’t believe for a second that any such costs really are significant enough to justify those increases. I have searched in vain in Autodesk’s financial reports for such a cost blowout. Maybe I’m missing something, but it would appear that Autodesk’s cost of non-subscription revenue actually fell 9% from 208.5m in FY2015 to 190.6m in FY2017.

Can we long-term customers have some of that saving, please? If not, how about a small slice of the billion dollars a year that Autodesk spends on marketing and sales? Cut the generation of bullshit by a fraction, reward your most loyal customers instead of screwing them over, and everybody will be happy.

Having disposed of the bovine ordure associated with Autodesk’s price hikes, we can next move on to the substance of them. How do the costs work out? Are you better off switching to rental, staying on maintenance or switching to a competing product from a less greedy, more trustworthy company? Look forward to an objective analysis. With no bullshit.

Bullshit Returns – Autodesk maintenance price hike part 1

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Just when you think it’s safe to walk across the cattle enclosure in your best shoes, Autodesk drops another steaming pile of spin for its customers to step into.

Here, I’m skewering the welcome post to Autodesk’s Moving to Subscription forum. However, I believe I should really acknowledge the unnamed author of the Important Updates on Maintenance Plans FAQ, which the welcome post has merely paraphrased for simplicity.

There’s so much bullshit in there that I’m going to split my exploration of it into two posts. Let’s put on some rubber gloves and start delving around in the muck, shall we?

Autodesk believes that subscribing is the best way for our customers to get the greatest value from our tools and technologies

Bullshit. Autodesk believes the opposite, as does anyone else with more than two brain cells to rub together. The whole idea is to get us paying the most for the least (the worst value), not the least for the most (the greatest value). Paying treble for the same product really isn’t the greatest value, is it? Nobody, not even Autodesk, believes that it is.

Don’t take my word for it, though. Have a look at this 2013 Autodesk video in which the following truth is uttered by Autodesk Entertainment Industry Manager, Maurice Patel:

We actually see that for customers that have long-term production needs, where they need software day-in, day-out for multiple years, then the perpetual offering is the most cost-effective offering.

Ouch! When a company contradicts its own counterfactual crap, you know the bullshit meter is well into the red.

Next, have a look at this gem:

subscription will fundamentally change how we deliver extended capabilities and new functionalities through connected services

Bullshit. Subscription (rental) is a payment method, not a technology. It is not intricately linked with any particular software or solution. It need not affect how Autodesk delivers anything.

Only with subscription will you realize greater value through the following benefits: Latest and greatest product capabilities – Get access to Autodesk’s ongoing stream of innovation

Bullshit. For AutoCAD users, Autodesk’s stream of innovation dried to a tiny trickle years ago. Rental, where the whole idea is to pay for access to the software rather than in exchange for improvements to it, will only make things worse.

updates to core products…and additional capabilities as soon as they are available

Bullshit. Updates are also provided to customers on maintenance. Of course, that’s how it has to be; if they weren’t that would be an outrageous breach of trust (and contract). There is no need for the payment method to have any effect on how improvements are delivered.

cloud services for desktop products

Bullshit. Cloud services for desktop products are also available to customers on maintenance, and if Autodesk wants to continue pushing its cloudy vision it will have to keep it that way. Not that you really want to rely on Autodesk’s cloud services.

at no additional cost.

Bullshit. There is plenty of additional cost when compared with maintenance. Rental costs three times as much, and will still be twice the price even in a few years after the price increases.

Continued in the second installment.

The cloud broke
And teardrops fell
On the desks
Of those who fell
For the lure
Of a cloudy hell.


The landlord laughs
To see such fun
Collects his rent
From web he spun
He still gets paid
When things don’t run.


I said t’would be
It’s come to pass
Surprised? Not me
With or without Bass
Autodesk’s cloud
Can kiss this SaaS.

Why Autodesk’s rental won’t make big money from pirates

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One argument I’ve seen in support of the all-rental software model is that it will rake in lots of cash from those users who aren’t currently customers, i.e. pirates. Here’s an example (Carl Bass, November 2016):

We believe some of these people were previously pirating the software and now have a much more affordable option with product subscriptions. This is consistent with the fact that emerging countries are some of the fastest growing areas for product subscriptions. In other cases, these new users have been using an alternative design tool and could now afford software from Autodesk.

Putting aside the correlation-does-not-imply-causation thing, rental simply isn’t a much more affordable option than perpetual licenses. On the contrary, it’s much more expensive (except for short term use). Repeating an #AlternativeFact doesn’t make it any more true.

The idea that people who had been using non-Autodesk software have switched over to Autodesk in bulk because of rental is silly for that very reason; it’s much more expensive now than before. The fact that Autodesk’s previous attempts at rental both failed miserably will tell you all you need to know about its effectiveness at attracting new customers from the competition.

There’s an unspoken assumption that Autodesk software is the best available, therefore everybody would be paying for it if they could. Having spent some time examining AutoCAD-competing products recently, I can assure Carl that such an assumption is not remotely justified.

Back to the anti-piracy theme. The idea that rental will win significant amounts of business from pirates is unlikely for the following reasons:

  1. Pirates are largely cheapskates. They want to pay nothing at all; only a minority will be attracted by software with any  cost associated with it.
  2. The cost of Autodesk’s rental is way too high to attract pirates. It’s too high for most of us who were used to paying Autodesk’s already-high maintenance fees, let alone those who are accustomed to paying nothing at all. Adobe’s rental prices may be low enough to tempt some pirates; Autodesk’s aren’t.
  3. There’s another unspoken assumption here: that rental software won’t/can’t be pirated. The best that can be said about that is that it is charmingly optimistic. Try a Google search on, say, Adobe Cloud Cracked  for a reality check on that score.

Even if it’s impossible to pirate Autodesk’s rental software (it won’t be), it still doesn’t follow that pirates will rush cash-in-hand to Autodesk. Here’s what they would be much more likely to do:

  1. Pirate non-rental releases of Autodesk software.
  2. Pirate non-Autodesk software.
  3. Use free non-Autodesk software.
  4. Pay for low-cost non-Autodesk software.

There might be a small trickle of ex-pirates among Autodesk’s new renters. More than that? Dreaming.

33 years of AutoCAD upgrades rated – part 5 – summary

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In this final post of the series, I’ll examine the patterns that have emerged from the upgrade history I rated in parts 1 to 4. Bear in mind I’m only assessing the DOS (up to R13) and Windows (from R12 on) versions of the full version of AutoCAD. Of course, this only represents my opinion of those releases and is bound to be biased by the uses I and my users have for the software. Your experiences and opinions will almost certainly vary.

What can I say? My assessment is based on a third of a century of experience, and I’ve tried to be as objective as I can. I’m not unique in perceiving the decline of the AutoCAD upgrade; you’ll see the same said by long-standing customers and experienced independents all over the place. Ralph Grabowski, for example:

The new feature list for AutoCAD’s annual “big-R” release has become so short that I stopped producing my annual “What’s Inside? AutoCAD” ebook series in 2013.

 
Back to my own assessment, here’s a graph that shows how I rated the releases:

One thing’s obvious and that’s the permanent drop in the rate of improvement that set in with the onset of the annual release cycle. My average rating for AutoCAD Version 2.0 to 2000 is 7.7. For 2000i to 2017, it’s 3.4. Autodesk switched to doing half as much worthwhile development between releases, but charged the same upgrade fee. Value for money halved.

We entered the era of an endless stream of annual releases with fewer genuinely useful new features. Worse, the abbreviated cycle meant most of those features went into production half-baked in design, implementation or both. Some of those undercooked features (the lucky ones) got some attention in the next release. Many more of them never got fixed, or got quietly removed later, or eventually got patched up years after the user base had ignored them to death.

Have a look at the decline from 2010 downwards. The average for the last five releases is 2.0. The rate of improvement per release, starting from a low point, took a nose dive. Value for money, which was poor, is now dire.

Conclusion? AutoCAD is in maintenance mode. Autodesk’s attention (and investment) is elsewhere and it is just going through the motions of updating the software. Progress has stalled. Inspiration is AWOL.

Nevertheless, through all this, we have still paid for new releases in various ways, and in huge numbers. No wonder Autodesk is convinced we’ll be silly enough to pay over the odds to rent software; there’s a precedent.

The more Autodesk has moved away from the optional upgrade model, through optional maintenance*, then effectively compulsory maintenance**, then finally to the compulsory rental model***, the weaker the upgrades have become. Autodesk no longer feels compelled to put in the development effort that will convince customers to shell out for the advantages provided by a new release.

Autodesk wants an endless revenue stream in return for merely providing access to the software, rather than as a reward for improving it: money for nothing. That’s Autodesk’s dream, and an understandable one. For customers, it’s a nightmare: nothing for money.

Part 1 – AutoCAD Version 1.4 to Release 11.
Part 2 – AutoCAD Release 12 to AutoCAD 2002.
Part 3 – AutoCAD 2004 to AutoCAD 2010.
Part 4 – AutoCAD 2011 to AutoCAD 2017.
Part 5 – Summary.

* Maintenance was previously called VIP and then Subscription.
** Autodesk restricted the availability of upgrades, priced it out of the market, and in some cases only sold perpetual licenses bundled with maintenance, before finally eliminating upgrades altogether.
*** Autodesk’s third attempt at rental (there were failed attempts in 2001 and 2013) was first called Desktop Subscription and then just subscription. I generally call it rental to avoid confusion with The Maintenance Formerly Known as Subscription.

I snigger at your pronouncements of technological inevitability

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It always amuses me when people proclaim a rising technology as not just promising, but the way of the future that will inevitably take over. Anybody can see that’s the way things are heading, they say. No use fighting it. Don’t question the certainty of the forthcoming tech revolution, you Luddite! It’s a sea change, resistance is futile, get on board now or be swept away on the flood waters of progress.

What a load of bollocks.

What really surprises me is when people who are old enough to know better join in with this sort of thing. Those of us who have been around a while have seen many “inevitable” technological revolutions dry up and fizzle out, some more than once. It gets old.

Remember a few short years ago when touchscreens were going to be part of everybody’s desktop setup as ubiquitous as the mouse? I do, but I also remembered touchscreens on desktop computers failing in the 80s for the exact same ergonomic reasons they went nowhere this time around (thanks for the lesson, HP). That’s why none of the monitors I bought in the last few years have had touchscreens, and I’ve yet to see a single desktop touchscreen in active use.

Next off the rank is VR. Some of the people who were around when virtual reality failed the first time are somehow now convinced it’s now The Next Big Thing, despite the reasons it failed originally remaining stubbornly in place. No, in three years’ time you’re not going to be holding site meetings in your office wearing a silly pair of goggles and bumping into the coffee machine. Really, you’re not. It didn’t happen in 1990 and it won’t happen in 2020 either.

Here are a couple of things I enjoyed reading recently.

  1. Music Content – Giant 200-CD ‘Mozart 225’ Box Set is a Surprisingly Hot Seller
  2. Music Technology – Value of vinyl sales overtakes digital downloads in the UK

To celebrate, I went out and bought a gramophone, I mean, turntable. I’m happy to report that I still haven’t parted with a single cent for online music. That’s so  yesterday.

Next time somebody tries to tell you something like, “The whole software industry is moving to the rental model, all software will be sold that way soon, there will be no avoiding it,” please refer them to paragraph two above.

Return of the bullshit – baked beans edition

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In an October 2015 post I’ve only just noticed, snappily titled No More Software Like a Can of Baked Beans: Why Software Subscription Serves It Up Fresh, Autodesk VP (edit – now CEO) Andrew Anagnost bravely attempts to sell Autodesk’s move to all-rental software. This is a rather belated response, but fortunately there is no statute of limitations on skewering spin so let’s get started.

How does he go? On a positive note, top marks for creative writing! The general theme is a strained and somewhat Californian analogy in which perpetual licenses are like canned goods (bad), and rental is like fresh produce (good). However, it’s presented well and professionally written. Among the highlights are:

  • Perpetual software licenses are like high-fructose corn syrup – no, I’m not making this up. Stop laughing at the back there!
  • This is a change that is simply a better experience for everyone – everyone who likes the experience of paying more for less, that is.
  • It’s to create a better product, something tailored to customers – creating a better product seems beyond Autodesk, at least where AutoCAD is concerned. Actually, it’s to create a more expensive product. Tailoring is something we customers been doing for over 30 years without the use of rental software, thanks.
  • There will be less disruption – except a) how we pay for the product is independent of how/when the product is updated and the disruptions inherent in that, and b) even ignoring the erroneous conflation, it’s a mistake to assume that continuous updates are less disruptive. Recent history proves otherwise.
  • Companies (e.g. Autodesk) will work even harder to keep you happy as a rental customer – history gives the lie to this one, too; the closer Autodesk has got to this model and the more people have been locked into annual subscription/maintenance payments, the worse the value for money has become. It also ignores the various alternative ways Autodesk will use to try to keep you tied in. What do you think all that Cloud investment has been for?
  • Autodesk is focusing on helping customers succeed with its products and services – I don’t think so. Autodesk is focusing on trying to keep its shareholders happy.
  • Serial numbers are a terrible dehumanizing thing, rental will make them go away and relying on Autodesk’s internet expertise for Cloud-based licensing is a much more attractive proposition – serial numbers are fine, that’s just silly. There are a host of unnecessary problems introduced by Cloud-based licensing, even when dealing with companies that aren’t as crap at the Internet as Autodesk (e.g. the Redshift site won’t even let me scroll back up once I’ve scrolled past the end of the post). The idea of Autodesk disposing of serial numbers and implementing a phone-home scheme instead is pretty terrifying, and I can only hope that technical issues prevent it from ever reaching production. Mind you, the fact that some new thing is clearly unfinished to the point of uselessness doesn’t seem to prevent Autodesk releasing it these days, so who knows? Hmm, I feel another post coming on about this…
  • Autodesk will make all your customization work for you on all computers and other devices wherever you go – let’s put aside for a moment Autodesk’s total failure to even provide a usable vanilla AutoCAD on the Cloud so far. CAD Managers, would any of you care to hop in and let Andrew know what’s wrong with this picture?
  • Constant automatic incremental updates are like reading news articles daily and much more convenient than larger upgrades which are like getting a whole year’s worth of news at once – again, this makes the fatal error of conflating payment and upgrade delivery methods. Putting that aside, if we’re talking about virus definitions and OS or browser security hole fixes, then yes, automatic updates are the way to go. CAD software, not so much. Particularly software from Autodesk, given the incompetence shown to date in its attempts to make this model work. Even putting aside the practicalities, I could do a whole long post on why this concept is all wrong. Maybe I will later. Meantime, Andrew needs to talk to some CAD Managers to get some idea of how the real world works.
  • “OK, so there’s still the major elephant in the room: What about the cost?” – good of you to mention that elephant, tell me more.
  • For customers, there is real financial advantage by eliminating that huge upfront payment. – For some customers, yes. Not so many, though. Short-term customers are the minority. What about the millions of long-term users who would have their annual costs blown sky-high by falling into your rental trap? Andrew, I see you mentioned the elephant in the room and then tried to avoid meaningful discussion of it, giving the impression you had addressed the issue without actually doing so. Sorry, but I noticed. Care to try again? Tell me more about how you expect either a) customers to be better off by paying more, or b) Autodesk to be better off despite customers paying less. Pick either one of those and run with it, I’m sure it will be entertaining.
  • “And if you don’t need a product for months at a time, switch it off, and then switch it back on. It will be there ready and waiting for you” – strange, that kind of flexibility seems to work for perpetual licenses too, at a fraction of the long-term cost of rental. No guarantee that flexibility is a reality for rental products, though, because the vendor may not provide that product when I need it, or may have racked up the prices to exorbitant levels, or may have introduced new incompatibilities or other technical problems. Oh dear, the boot is very much on the other foot with that argument.
  • “After three years, software becomes obsolete…” – er, no. Many people (myself included) are happily productive using at least some software more than three years old. Some of it works better than the newer stuff. Hands up all those people who couldn’t possibly live without the latest version of Word or Excel, for example. Anyone? Didn’t think so.
  • “…and the pace of obsolescence is rapidly increasing” – if we’re talking Autodesk software, then the pace of obsolescence is doing the opposite. AutoCAD improvement has slowed almost to a halt, for example. There is little in any of the last few releases that gives an AutoCAD 2017 user a significant productivity advantage over an AutoCAD 2013 user, say. And anyone using AutoCAD 2010 or earlier has a much more efficient Help system than that provided in any of the last 7 releases. I guess that’s the kind of anti-progress that happens when you sack a bunch of knowledgeable people every few years and divert too many of the remaining resources to trendier projects that you end up junking anyway.
  • Customers of Autodesk can continue to renew their maintenance contracts for as long as they want – except that Carl Bass has now indicated otherwise. Andrew, maybe have a word with your boss and get back to me on that one?
  • “The company is always listening to how to improve the transition and setting out for the long road, not the short win” – except rental is all about the opposite: short term savings that cost big in the long term. And don’t get me started on the irony of claiming Autodesk is “always listening” while promoting an all-rental scheme that goes against the very clearly expressed wishes of customers.
  • “It’s this beautiful kind of world where things are connected and work together better” – does it have rainbows and unicorns, too? Strewth. Come off it, Autodesk is rubbish at CAD interoperability, even among the AutoCAD-based products. Why should anyone who’s been struggling with poxy proxy objects for a couple of decades believe that paying differently is going to act as some kind of magic spell to make everything exquisite in CAD Connectivity Kingdom?

Here’s the TL;DR version of my response to Andrew’s arguments if you can’t be bothered reading all that:

Bullshit.

 
What are the real reasons Autodesk is going all-rental?

  • Autodesk wants to charge us long-term users three times as much money for the same thing and leave us with nothing at the end of it.
  • Autodesk thinks we’re all stupid and don’t own calculators.
  • Adobe did this and made it work, and Autodesk thinks it can do likewise despite significant business differences, much higher prices and an untrusting customer base.
  • Autodesk has run out of motivation and/or ideas to improve its traditional cash-cow flagship products, to the extent that customers increasingly no longer see value in upgrades or maintenance.
  • Increasing income by product improvement is way too difficult; price gouging and spin is much cheaper.

I’ll conclude with my own strained analogy:

Autodesk spin is like a tin of baked beans. No matter how attractive the packaging, the end result is just a bad smell.

Guest Post (Ed Martin) – The Times They Are a-Changin’

1 Reply

I’d like to thank Steve for the opportunity to write this guest post. My post doesn’t necessarily represent Steve, nor does it represent any company. It’s strictly a personal point of view. The purpose of this post is to prompt discussion and debate, and get your opinion.

Recent discussion on this blog has focused on Autodesk and its many changes over the past few years (upgrade pricing, policy changes, term-only aka rental licenses, move to the cloud, etc.), and there’s been a lot of skepticism. If we stand back and look at the landscape, though, Autodesk is not alone. True, they’re moving faster and more aggressively than their competitors, but many software companies are making similar changes.

Change can be disruptive, it can have positive and negative impact, and there can be winners and losers. But … it’s inevitable, and it’s better to understand change than to fight it. To stick with the “time” theme from the title, let’s take a ride in a time machine to the year 2020 and see what all of these changes will lead to.

Thinking ahead to 2020, it’s very likely that major CAx / PLM vendors will be actively promoting cloud services and term-based access or licenses. Some of them may have eliminated perpetual licenses entirely, and some may even be “pure SaaS” companies that don’t offer traditional desktop or server installed software any longer. We may see some consolidation in the industry through mergers and acquisitions. It’s entirely possible that a company that was small in 2016 will be a significant market player in 2020. Open source solutions may gain a greater foothold in the market.

By 2020, there will be some events that impact the market more broadly. There’s a good chance that at least one or two major economies will see another business recession. On the security side, the white hat vs black hat battles will continue, and it’s very possible that we’ll see a security breach that impacts someone in the CAx / PLM world.

I want to start a debate about what 2020 will look like. I’ve provided some starter questions below to prompt the debate. Pick one or two that resonate for you and share your thoughts …

1. How will your company react to the switch to term-based licenses? Why?
2. Which industry players will win and lose? Do you see anyone being absorbed into another company? What will trigger this?
3. If there is a major recession, what will you do with your perpetual licenses, maintenance contracts, and term licenses? Which will you keep, and which if any will you cut?
4. When (if ever) will SaaS / cloud services hit the “tipping point” in your industry? What will be the catalyst that leads to this?
5. What pros and cons do you expect with wider cloud adoption? What must a company do to make the cloud work for you?
6. Do you think that one or more small players (or open source movements) will grow to become a significant force in the market? Where will they win and what will make them successful?
7. If there is a major security breach, what impact if any would it have on the market?

What do YOU think?

Ed Martin

How do I know most Autodesk customers don’t want rental?

13 Replies

In a recent comment, I was asked how I know Autodesk’s move to all-rental is the opposite of what customers want. Have I conducted research? This is an excellent question and deserves a proper answer.

So how do  I know this? Why am I so convinced? There are several independent sources of evidence, one bit of critical thinking and one undeniable proof. They all point in the same direction. First, a bit of evidence.

  • There are many public places on the Internet where this issue has been discussed, including Autodesk’s own discussion groups. The viewpoints expressed everywhere are overwhelmingly against Autodesk’s all-rental plans.
  • There are private places Autodesk customers hang out where I have access, and I receive private emails. Again, the overwhelmingly majority of the viewpoints I see expressed are very strongly against Autodesk’s strategy.
  • There’s a poll right here. How’s it going?

    Autodesk is ending the sale of perpetual licenses. This is:

    • Good (10%, 75 Votes)
    • Bad (90%, 644 Votes)

    Total Voters: 719

    Loading ... Loading ...
  • None of that is very scientific, but Autodesk has  conducted proper research. Among other things, it gathered customer focus groups at AU to determine the mood regarding going all-rental. I know somebody who went to one of those. The customers present at that particular gathering were 100% against.

OK, so you don’t want to accept any of that? Can’t trust the sources? It’s all a bit anecdotal? Fine. How about a bit of critical thinking?

  • Most customers of major Autodesk products are long-term users who would undeniably pay more via rental than perpetual and then have nothing to show for it when they stop paying. What are the chances of most of them wanting  that outcome?

Still not convinced? OK. The most concrete way in which it could be determined whether customers prefer rental would be an experiment in which both options were made available and the market were allowed to decide. An expensive experiment, sure, but impossible to argue with the result.

Autodesk conducted that experiment. Twice. Once quite a few years ago, and again in 2013. Rental was offered alongside perpetual licensing. Rental lost. Twice. It was abandoned as a choice. Twice. The market has spoken. Twice.

Rental for Autodesk products is a handy option for a minority of customers but a non-starter for the majority, given the choice. Autodesk knows the only chance of making rental work in its marketplace is to remove that choice.