Tag Archives: Bullshit

Too soon? Autodesk cancels 30% subscription price increase

29 Replies

Autodesk had announced plans to increase some subscription prices by 30% on 7 November 2017. Resellers have already passed that information on to customers. Here’s the detail of what was going to happen:

Three Important Changes to Subscriptions with Multi-User Access

Autodesk is increasing prices on subscriptions with multi-user access to reflect the value and flexibility that sharing licenses provides our customers. As part of this change, we will stop selling new subscriptions with multi-user access for select products.

Beginning November 7, 2017:

  • Prices for new and renewing subscriptions with multi-user access for most individual products are increasing by ~17-19%.
  • Price for customers to switch from a maintenance plan to an industry collection with multi-user access will increase by ~30%.
  • New subscriptions with multi-user access will no longer be sold for Revit, Inventor Professional, and Navisworks Manage

This was basically an attack on multi-user (network) licensed subscription customers. It’s not obvious what Autodesk has against such customers. On the one hand, Autodesk states that sharing licenses provides customers with value and flexibility. On the other, it states that it’s going to stop selling such useful licenses! You might think that such cooperative customers would be spared the worst of what Autodesk has in mind, but apparently not.

Well, now they will be spared. For now, at least. The 30% increase is being cancelled (confirmation from Autodesk’s Felice S can be found here). I’ve asked for clarification on whether the other measures are also being canned.

Edit: Felice has confirmed that only the 30% element of the announcement has been cancelled and the other measures are going ahead.

It’s unclear why Autodesk would announce such increases at this stage. It’s obvious that Autodesk intends to rack up subscription prices hugely at some point in the future, but it struck me as unwise for Autodesk to show its hand this early. We know the prices are going to shoot up, not only because it’s obvious to anyone capable of joining the dots, but also because Autodesk has already done the rack-up-the-prices thing with multi-million increases for angry but trapped Enterprise Agreement subscription customers.

Unfortunately, most Autodesk customers aren’t aware of what has happened to Enterprise Agreement customers. Even among those who do, there are some trusting souls who would discard their valuable permanent licenses to maybe save a few short-term bucks in the vain hope that Autodesk won’t later impose massive price increases on them, too. I’m not sure what would give anyone reason to believe that, but I have seen people express such a view. What the 30% increase did was to destroy such a charmingly optimistic belief.

That’s why the price rise decision has been reversed. Autodesk might state that this flip-flop shows that it is responsive to customer feedback, but that would be bullshit. Although it was hardly a popular move, there has been relatively little angst about this. The 5%/10%/20% maintenance price increases have attracted far more public criticism. There’s no sign of those increases being reversed, so Autodesk, please don’t come the “we’re listening to our customers” crap. If you listened to your customers, you’d still be selling perpetual licenses.

No, this increase has been reversed because it became obvious (thanks to feedback from resellers, not customers) that it was badly mistimed. It gave the game away too soon.

Too late! We noticed.

It’s probably more accurate to call this a postponement rather than a cancellation. Autodesk will impose ~30% price increases on its subscription users just as soon as it thinks it can get away with it. And 30% will be just the start. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when, how much and how often.

We have also learned that multi-user (network) licenses are distinctly unpopular with someone very important at Autodesk. Why? Because they’re useful to customers! What a bizarre anti-customer culture there must be within parts of Autodesk for somebody to even think this way, let alone communicate it externally.

To sum up, here are the lessons from this episode:

  • If you sign up for Autodesk subscription, you’re going to get screwed. Hard.
  • The writing is on the wall for network licenses. If your business finds them invaluable, you’re also going to get screwed.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Battle of the Bullshit part 5 – Bentley back in the bad books

3 Replies

Having earlier earned my praise for raising its game in its PR battle with Autodesk, Bentley has unfortunately reverted to BS mode with its latest effort.

In its message “Upgrade your Autodesk Licenses – Top 5 Reasons Why You Have a Choice“, Bentley’s marketers have chosen to step beyond the facts. Bad idea.

Most of that page is just straightforward promotion of Bentley’s self-perceived strong points. No problem with that. But the first full paragraph? Hmm.

Here’s the first example:

Preserve the value of your Autodesk licenses that otherwise would be lost as a result of Autodesk’s decision to no longer offer or support perpetual licenses.

It’s true that Autodesk has decided to no longer offer perpetual licenses. It’s false to state that Autodesk will no longer support them. Perpetual licenses are fully supported with maintenance. Without maintenance, support suffers, but it’s still there. Of course, customers may be rightly fearful about the nasties Autodesk may introduce in future to “persuade” perpetual license owners into subscription subservience, but we’re not there yet and it’s misleading to imply that we are.

What else?

Your perpetual license is a valuable asset. But, if it cannot be upgraded and maintained, it loses all of its value.

It’s true that your perpetual license is a valuable asset. It’s misleading to imply that Autodesk perpetual licenses can’t be maintained. Maintenance is still available, although Autodesk is making it more expensive.

It’s misleading to imply that perpetual licenses can’t be upgraded. It’s true that Autodesk stopped selling upgrades to non-maintenance customers a while ago (having earlier priced them out of the market and then disingenuously citing lack of demand as the excuse for dropping them). But perpetual licenses under maintenance agreements can be upgraded (and are; it’s the biggest part of the deal). They’re obviously also being maintained, so Bentley’s not being fully frank there either.

Finally, a non-upgradable off-maintenance perpetual license does not lose all of its value. It’s still a valuable tool that is capable of doing useful work and generating income for years to come. That’s kind of the point of perpetual licenses; you can stop paying anybody anything and still use the product. In Europe you can even still sell the product.

Elsewhere, Bentley promotes its licensing flexibility. It’s true that Bentley’s continued support for perpetual licenses and availability of rental (term licenses in Bentleyspeak) means it’s 100% more flexible than Autodesk. That doesn’t make it all hunky dory in Bentley license land, though. I don’t see any mention of Bentley’s practice of rounding up your network license use to your detriment, allowing you to silently overshoot your license allowance, then sending you a huge punitive invoice at the end of the billing period.

To be fair, I wouldn’t expect to see that mentioned in marketing materials. But if you have a look at what Bentley customers have had to say about it, particularly from those people who have been over-billed because Bentley has counted license use unfairly, you’ll see that it doesn’t go down at all well with customers. So bear that in mind if you’re thinking of taking up Bentley on this or any other offer.

The rest of the marketing blurb seems fair enough, even if some of the clichéd stock photos are a bit groan-inducing. However, its effectiveness is severely curtailed by its failure to provide details of exactly what is being offered and under what conditions. As I noted with a previous Bentley attempt, curious customers are expected to fill in an online form to obtain information, and that’s a barrier.

It seems I need to repeat something I wrote in an earlier post:

Raise your game, people; we’re not all stupid out here. If you can’t support your argument with the truth, then your argument isn’t a good one and you need to rethink it.

I’m used to Autodesk doing dumb things because it has forgotten to learn from its own history, including pretty recent history in some cases. This episode seems to indicate that Bentley has the same problem.

Bentley, here’s some free advice. You don’t need to exaggerate in order to make Autodesk’s treatment of customers look bad. Autodesk is doing a magnificent job of that without any help. The facts are enough. Also, if you have a great offer, just tell us what it is. OK?

Further Autodesk subscription inflexibility

5 Replies

Autodesk’s claim that its all-rental business model adds flexibility for customers has always been bullshit.

That’s a self-evident truth. Nobody believes that removing customers’ purchasing options amounts to anything but inflexibility. Particularly when the purchasing option removed is that preferred by the vast majority of customers.

But wait! There’s more! I recently discovered that it’s even more inflexible than I originally thought!

If you sign up for single-user (standalone) subscription licenses you’re stuck with them for the duration of your agreement. You can’t upgrade them to multi-user (network) licenses. Doesn’t matter how much cash you wave in Autodesk’s face, or how much you point out that single-user subscription licensing is a crock, it will be a case of “computer says no”.

Astonishing.

Simplifying CAD Management the Autodesk way

7 Replies

According to Autodesk, one of the benefits of subscription (rental) is simplified administration. To prove it, Autodesk has provided a simple guide for CAD Managers called The Software Administrator’s Guide to Autodesk Subscriptions – How to Set Up, Install, and Manage Your Software and Users.

It’s 18.7 MB and 78 pages long.

Don’t worry though, this simple guide helpfully includes a simple guide on how to read it.

Among other things, this eBook provides handy hints on how subscription’s simplified administration regime for standalone licenses requires you to pre-emptively name all your users, set them all up with Autodesk accounts and define what software each is allowed to use. There’s a note to say that your Internet connection needs to be working at the time of installation (obviously) and also every 30 days (less obvious) or you won’t be able to use the software.

The guide describes how you can simply go online to Autodesk Accounts (assuming it’s up), and switch those permissions around when Bert is away on site and Ernie needs to hop on his PC at 6 PM to make a quick change before a drawing goes out. It mentions how Ernie will be sent an email with a link to follow so they can sign up before using the product. The CAD Manager is encouraged to check with Ernie to make sure it all worked, and check online to ensure Ernie’s sign-in went according to plan.

Make sure you get in early tomorrow morning before Bert’s shift starts so you can switch the user permissions back again. What? You planned to have the day off? Don’t you understand that your job has been redefined by Autodesk? I dub thee “not a team player”.

Don’t complain, because the new procedure is clearly much more simple than the old-fashioned perpetual license method. You know, the one which involved the far more complex procedure of Ernie logging on to Bert’s PC and using the software, then Bert logging on and using it the next day. How did we ever cope before Autodesk’s magnificent management enhancement?

If the huge job efficiency boost provided by this simplified new method doesn’t have CAD Managers throwing their perpetual licenses at Autodesk in a subscription-hungry frenzy, I don’t know what will.

Simplifying CAD Management is alive at Autodesk.

Video nicely captures Autodesk customer sentiment

3 Replies

In this video starting at 42:21, Greg from Pixel Fondue had a few words to say about Autodesk’s attempt to price-force perpetual license owners onto subscription (rental). I think he captures the current Autodesk customer mood quite nicely.

Here are some of the highlights from Greg and others:

44:36 – If you’re gonna eff me, know my name.

45:20 – The only thing they forgot to attach to this was the head of a horse.

46:54 – If they didn’t think it was a tough sell, they wouldn’t have written a 2000 word essay…

49:14 – This is a trade-in, and they’re looking to take this [Entertainment Creation Suite]. So I give you this, this $12,000 investment … I give it back to you, plus like another $1,000 … and you give me the exact same thing. Except I no longer own it.

51:02 – Hi! Give us your thing you bought from us, we’ll rent it back to you… dumbass!

58:49 – It’s OK to be pissed, and Autodesk needs to know that people are pissed. So, Teresa, people are pissed. That’s a bullshit letter. Be honest with us.

Bullshit Returns – Autodesk maintenance price hike part 2

Leave a reply

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

2 Replies

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.

Another series of Autodesk statements

2 Replies

Having established what happens when Autodesk claims to have no plans to do nasty anti-customer things, (it goes ahead and does them), let’s examine another nasty anti-customer thing it hasn’t got around to doing. Yet.

Will Autodesk discontinue the maintenance program that allows customers to keep their perpetual licenses up to date? Let’s see what Autodesk has been prepared to put in writing so far:

There are no announced plans to end maintenance subscriptions.

Matt DiMichele, August 2015, Autodesk Community Perpetual License Changes forum

Hmm, we all know what “no plans” means, don’t we, children?

I assure you we have no plan to discontinue maintenance subscription plans for existing perpetual license owners.

Andrew Anagnost, September 2015, Cadalyst interview with Robert Green

“We have no plan” again, eh? That’s a concern.

Our lawyers frown on me using words like “never.” Do we have any plans to end maintenance? No we don’t, and our current intent is to keep the program running as long as our customers use it. Just like we don’t have plans to force customers to adopt subscription. If a customer wants to keep using their perpetual license, then they can continue to do so. If they want that perpetual software to be upgraded with the latest and greatest from Autodesk, then I encourage them to take advantage of maintenance. Keeping maintenance for our most loyal customers is the right thing to do.

Andrew Anagnost, 11 September 2015 in a comment following the Cadalyst interview

Another “don’t have plans” and an “our current intent”, eh? Now I’m really getting worried.

…let me get straight to the point. Maintenance is not going away. Autodesk customers can continue to renew their maintenance for as long as they want. And as stated before, we will not force customers to subscription. If you want to keep using your perpetual license, you can do so, or you can get on maintenance to stay current. You are right, maintaining two different business models is costly, but retaining loyal customers is worth it to us.

Andrew Anagnost, 24 September 2015 in a further comment following the Cadalyst interview

Ah, that’s better. Totally unambiguous. Anybody else?

…any perpetual license that you currently own, can continue to be used for as long as you like. Additionally, if that perpetual license is on Maintenance Subscription, then you will continue to receive support and product updates as long as the Maintenance Subscription is active.. We are not ending the Maintenance Subscription program… you can continue to renew your Maintenance Subscription contracts for as long as you wish.

Felice S, November 2015, Autodesk Community Perpetual License Changes forum

Maintenance customers can remain on maintenance for as long as they like and continue to receive the software updates to their product/suites as they become available.

Jeff Wright, VP, Customer Engagement, May 2016, Autodesk Community Perpetual License Changes forum

And if you’re on a software maintenance plan, you can continue to receive all of the benefits of software updates and technical support for as long as you’d like.

Carl White, July 2016, In The Fold blog post

…customers of Autodesk, for one, can continue to renew their maintenance contracts for as long as they want.

Andrew Anagnost, October 2016, Redshift blog post

Well, that all seems very definite, and from so many different sources. How about what Autodesk’s web site says right now in January 2017?

If you currently have a maintenance plan, you will continue enjoying the benefits of maintenance as long as you continue to renew. Autodesk has no plans to stop offering the option to renew maintenance plans; you can renew for as long as you want.

Perpetual Licensing Changes FAQ, Autodesk Knowledge Network

Customers who have a perpetual license on a maintenance plan after July 31, 2016 will have the option to renew their maintenance plan for as long as they wish.

Autodesk Maintenance Plans, Autodesk Knowledge Network

If you currently have a maintenance plan, you will continue enjoying the benefits of maintenance as long as you continue to renew.

Perpetual License Changes Information, Autodesk Knowledge Network

So that’s three “no plans” non-statements but eight totally unequivocal and unambiguous promises, in writing, that Autodesk will not discontinue maintenance plans. If only Carl Bass hadn’t let the cat out of the bag a couple of months ago, there might have been a chance that the more trusting among us would have believed it.

I think you can probably work out what’s likely to happen next. Autodesk will price maintenance out of the market over the next two or three years and then discontinue it, disingenuously claiming that it’s in response to a drop in customer demand. None of the above statements will prevent that from happening. Somebody tell me I’m wrong.

Return of the bullshit – baked beans edition

5 Replies

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.

Battle of the Bullshit part 3 – Beyond Bentley

1 Reply

Somebody at Autodesk really does seem to have it in for Bentley right now. I thought they were friends? Oh well, times change.

Autodesk has launched a campaign to promote its BIM offerings for transportation projects and is promoting this via emails to existing customers, all of which is fair enough. It’s suggesting BIM is a better tool than traditional CAD for such projects. Another reasonable claim, so it’s appropriate for us to evaluate the arguments and examine the options.

What did Autodesk decide to call its campaign? Beyond AutoCAD? Beyond CAD? To BIM and Beyond?

None of the above. It’s Beyond Bentley.

Huh? You may have noticed I’m keen on alliteration, but still, huh? What does Bentley have to do with this? Most Autodesk CAD customers are going to know and care nothing about Bentley products. So why mention them at all? The headline is “Move beyond Bentley to Autodesk, the makers of BIM”. The strong implication is:

Bentley only does traditional CAD. You should use BIM instead, and that means you need Autodesk.

However, I believe many Autodesk customers will think like this instead:

Autodesk seems very concerned about this Bentley mob. I wonder what they’re offering that has the Big A so worried? Bentley must be a big player in this area. I’ve been considering developing an Autodesk exit strategy anyway because of the forced rental thing and I’ve heard Bentley sells perpetual licenses. I must go check them out!

Those customers who do check out Bentley will learn that despite Autodesk’s implication, Bentley do in fact provide BIM products, and quite a few products specifically for transportation. I have no idea if Bentley’s BIM and transportation products are any better or worse than Autodesk’s offerings, but I do know you shouldn’t take either vendor’s word for it, including anything they say in webinars. Find out for yourself with a hands-on evaluation. Because BIM isn’t something you just pop in and out of, make sure you include long-term licensing costs into your calculations.

Battle of the Bullshit part 2 – Autodesk’s sophistry

5 Replies

In my last post, I gave Bentley a well-deserved slap for, er, saying things that perhaps weren’t entirely factual. Now it’s Autodesk’s turn.

What’s this about? Carl White, Senior Director of Business Models at Autodesk, wrote a blog post Not so fast Bentley: Separating fact from fiction responding to statements made by Bentley in its press release Bentley Announces Autodesk License Upgrade Program. Some of Carl’s observations on Bentley’s claims were perfectly valid, but unfortunately he went beyond that and wrote a few more things – “facts” – where he’s on shakier ground. Let’s examine Carl’s interpretation of reality, shall we?

Fact #1 – No Autodesk customer ever  loses the right to use the perpetual software license you’ve purchased, it is “evergreen”.

This is generally true. There are exceptions (read the EULA), but let’s not split hairs. In the vast majority of cases, we don’t lose the right  to use the software. We can, however, lose the ability  to use the software. That loss is practically inevitable long-term because of the progress of technology. I have several old AutoCAD releases I can’t run for environmental reasons, not licensing ones. This means that if we want to use our licenses long-term, we rely on Autodesk’s ongoing cooperation. That’s where customers have legitimate concerns, because there are no guarantees that Autodesk will continue to provide that cooperation. If it does, there are no guarantees that cooperation will remain free or even affordable.

And if you’re on a software maintenance plan, you can continue to receive all of the benefits of software updates and technical support for as long as you’d like.

This has been officially promised, and let’s give Autodesk the benefit of the doubt and assume that this promise will be fulfilled to the letter. There’s still an elephant in the room. What will the benefits of updates and support cost us? Based on what Autodesk has done in recent years, it is a pretty safe bet that the cost of maintenance (formerly called Subscription) is going to rise, and rise sharply. Give it a few years and I expect maintenance customers will be paying the same as rental customers. I expect other strong-arm methods will be used to “encourage” people onto rental. When this happens, our perpetual licenses will be near worthless and Bentley’s claim about a “…write-off of the future value of their investment…” will become uncomfortably close to the truth.

We’ve shared key dates well ahead of time to give customers time needed to adjust, but that does not mean we’re taking away options.

The latter part of this statement goes beyond disingenuous; it’s arrant nonsense. Of course Autodesk is taking away options. Autodesk has been taking away options for years, and this has only accelerated. As of right now, I can no longer buy an Autodesk software perpetual license. I no longer have that option, which I had before. How is that not taking away options?

Fact #2 – Our customers have a choice. When you subscribe to Autodesk software, you have flexible terms (monthly, quarterly, annually), and multiple access points (single user, multi-user and shared). Now Autodesk customers can get the software they need for a year or a month, in ways that are more convenient and better for their business.

Well, I guess the first sentence is kind of true in a sense. Long-term customers (that’s most of us) do have the choice between paying merely a lot  more per annum for an Autodesk license via annual or multi-year rental, or paying vastly  more by doing it monthly. Suggesting this is better for our business is, of course, laughable.

Customers can buy and use it for as long as they want and can match their subscription type with the demands of their workforce. When the workforce expands, they can ramp up, or in quieter periods, they can scale it back. In short, subscribing gives you flexibility and predictability.

This is true; rental is  the best option for some customers under some circumstances. It is good that Autodesk has made that option available for the small minority of customers in that situation. However, it is the opposite of flexibility to make it the only  option.

When it comes to value, lower upfront costs make our software more accessible and allow you to try more tools without the risk of a large upfront expenditure. Plus, you only pay when you need it. This is a big deal. Some of our customers prefer this cost is considered an operating expense, allowing you to bill the cost of the software back to the client or project. And if you subscribe for a longer, multi-year term, you lock-in your rate. Combine that with flexibility in the length of contracts and you may find that you’re actually paying less.

Nice attempt at spin here, but ultimately it’s nonsense. Except for the minority of customers who need that level of flexibility, rental is not about paying less. If it was, Autodesk wouldn’t be doing this. Pushing Autodesk customers on to rental is all about trying to extract more  funds from us for the same thing, not less. Suggesting otherwise is disingenuous.

If rental really was  better value, Autodesk would give its customers the choice between perpetual and rental and let the market decide. But wait! Autodesk did exactly that a few years ago, and the market decided; the rental experiment failed miserably. Autodesk knows  it has to make rental compulsory because otherwise most customers wouldn’t go for it. Yet in a painful piece of patent paralogy, it paints this compulsion as a selfless act of customer service.

Fact #3 – Software as a service is essential for technological evolution. It allows for continual and consistent innovation and support. The software will get better, faster and more seamless in the way you use it. The experience is customized to you or your organization, and provides a simplified way to access and deploy software, manage your users and collaborate on projects. With this new way of delivering software, everyone will always have the latest, most up-to-date Autodesk tools available.

Even ignoring the conflation of software as a service (SaaS) and rental, the first sentence is breathtaking in its audacity. It goes beyond spin, beyond disingenuity, into the realms of the surreal. No, SaaS is not essential for technological evolution. The whole history of computing screams that loud and clear. Autodesk wouldn’t exist if the first sentence were true. It isn’t remotely close to true. To be generous, it’s a terminological inexactitude.

Reading beyond the first sentence, there’s a lot of wonderfully utopian wishful thinking that nobody familiar with Autodesk would believe for a second. It’s shown up for the other-worldly spin that it is by Autodesk’s years-long ongoing decline in maintenance value-for-money and its woeful attempts at trying to make continual updates work (which you probably don’t want anyway).

It’s not just Autodesk saying this; the entire software industry is moving in this direction. Frankly, design and engineering software has been a bit slow to make this change. But the benefits for end-users are clear, and it’s just a matter of time before all vendors have similar ways of buying.

While it’s true that various software companies are moving at least partly towards SaaS and rental of conventional software (some more successfully than others), it’s not at all a uniform industry-wide position. It’s disingenuous to imply that going all-rental is already almost universal and Autodesk is just catching up. As for the “benefits for end users” being clear, I guess all those customers who like paying lots more per year for their software will agree.

Yes, it’s likely that many vendors, maybe even most of them, will have similar ways of buying in the next few years. No, it won’t be all of them. No, not all vendors will make rental compulsory for new licenses as Autodesk has done. Some of Autodesk’s competitors (e.g. Bentley, Bricsys) will continue to provide their customers with the ability to purchase perpetual licenses. The law of give-the-customer-what-they-want-or-die tells me that those competitors are much more likely to thrive than Autodesk.

What does this mean? It means that millions of you are already seeing the benefits of shifting to subscription and are making that choice voluntarily.

Voluntarily? Really? I can’t imagine anyone typing that statement in that context without either wincing (if they have any self-respect) or laughing (if they don’t). Strewth!

So who won the Battle of the Bullshit? Nobody. First, Bentley lost. Then Autodesk put in a supreme effort, summoned up a steaming stack of sophistry, and lost more.

Raise your game, people; we’re not all stupid out here. If you can’t support your argument with the truth, then your argument isn’t a good one and you need to rethink it.

Battle of the Bullshit part 1 – Bentley’s terminological inexactitudes

2 Replies

I note with interest the blog post Not so fast Bentley: Separating fact from fiction by Carl White, Senior Director of Business Models at Autodesk. In this, he responds to statements made by Bentley in its press release Bentley Announces Autodesk License Upgrade Program, stating:

Earlier this week, Bentley announced an “upgrade program” for Autodesk customers. We found the offer to be disingenuous and mischaracterizes what Autodesk offers our customers.

OK, let’s have a look at what Carl is complaining about. Here’s one Bentley statement that could be considered questionable:

For consideration by owners of Autodesk perpetual licenses facing Autodesk’s imminent deadline for the write-off of the future value of their investment, Bentley Systems is offering recovery of the value otherwise subject to forfeit.

Carl has a point here. The “imminent deadline for the write-off of the future value” line is presented as fact, but at this stage it’s not true. While perpetual license owners may legitimately fear for the long-term value of their investments, there is nothing subject to an imminent deadline other than the end of the ability to purchase further perpetual licenses. Likewise, the “subject to forfeit” thing is a scaremongering phrase that deserves Carl’s “disingenuous” label. Autodesk isn’t subjecting anything to forfeit right now. Anything else dubious in Bentley’s statement?

Bentley Systems considers purchases of perpetual licenses to be long-term investments by our users, so we continually innovate to increase their value. We are glad to now extend this ‘future-proofing’ to Autodesk license owners who otherwise will lose value in their applications.

That’s all pretty reasonable but the “…will lose value in their applications” part is questionable. We might suspect that will happen, but we don’t know  it yet. Perhaps “…may  lose value in their applications” would be more reasonable. Bentley also quotes a customer as saying:

Autodesk continually sets deadlines forcing us to give up our perpetual license for an annual subscription.

Now while it’s accurate to say that Autodesk continually sets deadlines and has certainly been very heavy-handed in its years-in-the-making push to rental (currently called subscription in Autodeskspeak), it has not yet forced customers to give up perpetual licenses. Those of us with perpetual licenses have not  been forced to give them up. We can continue to use them. Bentley shouldn’t use inaccurate statements like this in its marketing, even when quoting others.

In summary, Carl is right. Bentley has  been disingenuous and deserves a slap for it.

If only Carl had just stuck to the sort of analysis I made above, I could have ended my own analysis right there. Unfortunately, he didn’t. He couldn’t resist the urge to add his own “facts”. My next post will put these under the same kind of scrutiny.

Autodesk confirms outrageous upgrade price increase

6 Replies

As I indicated in May, Autodesk will be increasing the cost of upgrades to 70% of the full retail cost of a new license. This renders it totally pointless upgrading Autodesk software at all, which is obviously Autodesk’s intention. This change probably won’t affect many people, as those who have chosen to stick with Autodesk despite everything have already been effectively forced onto Subscription. Anyway, here’s the confirmation from Autodesk:

In early 2013 Autodesk will simplify the current upgrade pricing model, which may affect pricing and/or eligibility for upgrades.  Autodesk is providing advance notice to help ease the transition and ensure that customers have enough time to plan and budget for any impact to your organization.

 As part of this change, Autodesk will be simplifying upgrades into a single offering available for licenses that are 1-6 versions old at a discount of 30% off new license SRP*.  Under the new upgrade program, product versions 2007-2012 are eligible for upgrade pricing and product versions older than 2007 will no longer be eligible for upgrade pricing on our standard pricelists. Our records show you may have one or more licenses that may be impacted by these changes.

Autodesk is making this policy change to better align with the needs and buying behaviors of our customers.  Many Autodesk customers choose to use Autodesk Subscription as their preferred method of maintaining their Autodesk Software.

That last paragraph is just embarrassing. It steps over the line that separates spin from total bullshit. The person who wrote it must have been either cringing (if they have any kind of ethical values) or laughing (if they don’t). The time of Autodesk being straight with its customers is now so far in the past that few customers will be able to remember those days. Those of us who do can only sadly shake our heads.