Tag Archives: Pixel Fondue

Teresa from Autodesk in subscription interview

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As a follow-up to the Pixel Fondue video I posted about earlier, Greg from Pixel Fondue conducted a follow-up interview with Teresa Anania, Autodesk’s Senior Director, Subscription Success.

Greg and I asked for your questions for Teresa and I passed on several of my own to him. A word of warning: don’t do as I did and watch through all 54 minutes waiting increasingly impatiently for those questions to come up. They don’t. Anyway, thanks to Greg for conducting this interview and to Teresa for participating.

Greg has now posted the video. Here’s the TL;DW (too long; didn’t watch) version:

  • Greg came up with some suggestions for making subscription more attractive (mainly to entertainment and media customers) and Teresa seemed open to those suggestions.
  • Teresa doubled down on a bunch of the spin that has been thoroughly skewered by myself and many others.
  • There was a rehash of the pricing information we already had a couple of months ago using the same figures Teresa provided in this blog post.
  • The one new piece of information was that somebody who switches from maintenance to subscription will be able to retain access to all prior versions held during perpetual license ownership. This could be interpreted in several different ways and it wasn’t clarified, so I guess we’ll have to wait for something in writing.
  • Despite what Teresa has apparently told some customers on the phone, there was no mention of a less unattractive subscription offer that involves keeping your perpetual license. Indeed, Teresa made it clear that trading in your perpetual license was very much still part of the deal.
  • Future costs for maintenance and subscription were as vague as ever but Teresa thinks it’s pretty impressive that Autodesk put out three years of pricing when asking customers to make a decision with decades-long implications.
  • Teresa wants you to give Autodesk a year to prove how wonderful subscription will be, and is very confident that subscription is for “the greater good”. (Andrew Anagnost also did the “give us a year” thing on Twitter so I guess we’ll see that theme repeated in an attempt to buy more time).
  • She has solemnly stated that Autodesk is never going to gouge its customers and wants to start building better relationships.
  • Teresa wants to hear from you and suggests the Autodesk Moving to Subscription forum as one way of getting in touch.

Here’s the video:

Ask Teresa from Autodesk your maintenance and subscription questions

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As a follow-up to the Pixel Fondue video I posted earlier, Greg reports:

Since then Teresa Anania (Teresa from the letter) has contacted me and has agreed to do a pixelfondue livestream and answer some questions people may have. So…if you want to ask Teresa something directly post your question here and I will send it to her. I obviously can’t guarantee that I will ask (or she will answer) all questions. Teresa is (to her credit) reaching out to customers in a more personal way here – and maybe we can help her understand our feelings about AD’s move to subscription, especially how it pertains to current license holders.

Teresa Anania is Autodesk’s Senior Director, Subscription Success. It is indeed commendable that Teresa is prepared to step out of the Autodesk PR safe zone and field questions and comments from real people in an environment outside her control.

If you want to ask Teresa a question, hop over Autodesk forum and reply to Greg’s post. I’ll let Greg know about this post here too, so if you reply here he should see it.