Tag Archives: Subscription

Autodesk starts answering subscription questions, but many remain

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Getting worthwhile non-rubbery information out of Autodesk on the maintenance to subscription push has been like pulling teeth. Well, one tooth has popped out now. There are a rotten mouthful still to go, but some progress is being made.

Here is the latest Autodesk communication on this subject. While it gives the impression of providing transparency, there’s still not enough there to provide enough certainty to convince any but the most naive customers to throw away their perpetual licenses. If you try pumping Autodesk’s numbers into my costing spreadsheet, you can get so far and then you’re back to guesswork again. If you guess low, it’s merely a bad deal. If you guess high, it’s an atrocious deal. For you, not for Autodesk; I’m sure Autodesk will be happy with whatever deal it decides to inflict.

There are huge holes in what has been stated that allow Autodesk to charge pretty much whatever they like in the future. I have about a dozen questions about those holes. If they get answered, I’ll let you know.

In the meantime, I suggest you still assume it’s a trap to leave you open to future massive price gouging without the safety net and escape route that a perpetual license provides.

Autodesk license costs options – summary

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Note: an updated version of this post is available, using new costing information from Autodesk that was unavailable when this original summary was written.

In this series of posts, I have examined various payment options for CAD software and compared them with the cost of staying on your Autodesk maintenance contract long-term.

In this fourth and final post, I will examine the validity of the various assumptions I have made; lay out all the data with best/worst options lists; provide combined graphs; and sum up.

However, that means this is a very long post. I want to ensure one essential point doesn’t get lost, so I’ll state it right up front. I will fully justify it later with objective evidence, but for now, here it is:

DO NOT switch from maintenance to subscription.

Just don’t do it. It makes no sense to do it on any level. You would throw away your valuable perpetual license, of course, but that’s not all. Despite what Autodesk is implying in its sleight-of-hand marketing, subscription will cost you more money.

Assumptions

Because Autodesk isn’t telling customers all they need to know in order to make a rational choice, I’ve had to make some assumptions in order to work out the relative viabilities of the various options. Here, I’ll lay those assumptions out and explain why I made them. Some of them are very soundly based, others less so.

  1. Autodesk will continue to make maintenance available long-term. This has been repeated by Autodesk people at all levels and is currently pledged in writing on Autodesk’s web site. On the other hand, Autodesk has said one thing and done the other on multiple occasions, so who knows? Autodesk is also making noises about how terrible it is for the poor thing to have to go on operating in the same way that has made it billions for decades. I certainly can’t promise that Autodesk’s promise is worth the pixels it’s written on. It’s safe to assume that Autodesk will do all sorts of nasty things to maintenance customers over the next few years, but I’m relying on our fortitude in standing up to that.
  2. The maintenance price increases of 5%, 10% and 20% are cumulative, resulting in actual price increases of 5%, 15.5% and 38.6%. This has been confirmed by Autodesk here.
  3. Following that set of increases, the cost of maintenance will increase by another cumulative 20% per year. This is a total guess. I can’t imagine Autodesk reverting to 0% a year, but it’s always possible the increases could be worse than this. The increases could be more stepped than this assumed smooth progression (e.g. 50% one year, 0% the next). Anything could happen, and Autodesk isn’t telling us. I’ve chosen what appears to be a likely middle ground.
  4. Subscription (rental) prices will be frozen until after 2019. I’ve assumed this because Autodesk will want to keep subscription looking good in comparison to maintenance while it tries to persuade people to come on board.
  5. Subscription prices will increase 10% per year from 2020. Another guess. I’m pretty sure the price will keep going up, and it may be worse than this if Autodesk gets a sizeable portion of existing users tied in by then. Autodesk will rack up prices as high as it thinks it will get away with. My 10% assumption, if it’s low, will make subscription look better than it really is in my comparisons.
  6. The offered 60%/55%/50% discount on subscription will be maintained for three years from the point of changeover, not three years from now. That appears to be implied in Autodesk’s statements, and a three-year lock-in appears to be a standard Autodesk marketing technique.
  7. Following the three-year lock-in, the subscription cost will then change to 60% more than maintenance. This is being kept secret from customers but has been stated to stock market analysts by Amar Hanspal.*
  8. This 60% premium will be based on the maintenance price at the time, not the original pre-increase price. I can’t imagine Autodesk choosing the lower-cost version of a 60% premium, can you?
  9. The maintenance plus 60% price will be capped to always remain below the subscription price at the time. This is based on Autodesk’s promise that customers who convert to subscription in 2017/8/9 will always receive some non-quantified discount.
  10. The amount the maintenance plus 60% price remains below the subscription price will be minimal. I’ve assumed $1 below the subscription price. Maybe that’s harsh, but because Autodesk is refusing to quantify this discount amount, I think it’s fair to assume we won’t like the size of it.
  11. For option 8, Autodesk will offer maintenance customers who switch over in 2022 a 50% discount on subscription, locked in for 3 years. Autodesk has made very similar offers over the last year or so. I’m assuming such offers will continue to arise from time to time, but there are no guarantees.
  12. Bricsys will continue to provide perpetual license and maintenance options. I’m highly confident in this one. Autodesk’s rental-only move is manna from heaven to Bricsys, and the availability of perpetual licenses is a big drawcard for disaffected Autodesk customers. Bricsys won’t throw away that competitive advantage.
  13. For options 9 and 10, BricsCAD purchase and maintenance costs will rise by 10% a year (compound). Another guess. Based on the Bricsys price history to date, 10% may be on the high side. However, because Bricsys prices are so much lower than Autodesk ones, an error in this assumption will have a much smaller effect than errors in the Autodesk price assumptions.

Like all assumptions, those above could be wrong. On multiple occasions I have offered Autodesk the chance to correct these assumptions and replace necessary speculation with information. Indeed, when I re-started my blog in April last year I made a point of emailing Autodesk PR to inform them that I would be covering the subject of rental in a critical way and inviting their participation. No response.

As with all content on my blog, I actively encourage being corrected on any factual inaccuracies. I will happily correct errors that are pointed out to me by anybody, and have done so on several occasions. If at some point in the future, Autodesk decides to become transparent with the long-term cost implications of switching to maintenance and decides to open up to me in particular or customers in general, I’ll dedicate a new post to that information and link to it from this post.

Data

If you want to examine the full set of data and/or make adjustments to the values, assumptions or calculations, here is the Excel spreadsheet I used.

The following tables show the cost winners and losers after the first three, five and ten years based on one AutoCAD license with a 2016 maintenance cost of $545 and 2016 subscription cost of $1680.** All values are in US dollars.

Three years
Average Annual Cost Option
0 Option 0 – drop maintenance, keep using AutoCAD
0 Option 6 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2020
0 Option 7 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022
0 Option 8 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022 (3-year 50% discount)
0 Option 10 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance in 2020
474 Option 9 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance
652 Option 1 – stay on maintenance
672 Option 3 – subscription in 2017
681 Option 5 – subscription in 2019
695 Option 4 – subscription in 2018
1680 Option 2 – subscription now
Five years
Average Annual Cost Option
0 Option 0 – drop maintenance, keep using AutoCAD
0 Option 7 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022
0 Option 8 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022 (3-year 50% discount)
303 Option 10 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance in 2020
416 Option 9 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance
776 Option 6 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2020
790 Option 1 – stay on maintenance
796 Option 5 – subscription in 2019
895 Option 4 – subscription in 2018
1041 Option 3 – subscription in 2017
1784 Option 2 – subscription now
Ten years
Average Annual Cost Option
0 Option 0 – drop maintenance, keep using AutoCAD
383 Option 10 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance in 2020
439 Option 9 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance
995 Option 8 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022 (3-year 50% discount)
1365 Option 7 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022
1366 Option 1 – stay on maintenance
1748 Option 5 – subscription in 2019
1753 Option 6 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2020
1798 Option 4 – subscription in 2018
1871 Option 3 – subscription in 2017
2257 Option 2 – subscription now

Graphs

These graphs show all ten options together.

Annual Costs

Cumulative costs:

Average annual costs over time

I’m not sure how useful the combined graphs are; with ten options things can get a bit muddled. Feel free to mess with the spreadsheet to produce the graphs that interest you. If you hide rows, those options won’t show up in the graphs.

Summary

You may feel it’s pointless trying to work out the best thing to do up to ten years into the future. I disagree. We are forced to do so. Many customers have been paying Autodesk for decades, and without this disruption would probably have continued to do so for decades to come. Now Autodesk is asking us to make a decision that will have effects that go way beyond ten years into the future.

Ten years isn’t really that long in AutoCAD terms, particularly given the recent glacial level of progress. Remember the _XREF_XREF_XREF debacle as if it were yesterday? Still occasionally opening drawings with that problem? That bug was unleashed on the public ten years ago this month.

Autodesk is asking us to make a permanent, irreversible, long-term decision based on very limited short-term information. After that? We are expected to trust in Autodesk and hope for the best. Sorry, but if you’re prepared to meekly go along with that, you haven’t been paying attention. You might as well just give Autodesk your Internet banking login information and say, “Help yourself to whatever you like.”

If you run the numbers based on the assumptions above, it’s easy to see the best and worst things you can do from a cost point of view, particularly beyond the short term. The high-cost options all involve switching to subscription. The further ahead you look, the worse a deal subscription becomes.

Forget Autodesk’s talk of vanishing discounts, saving money by moving earlier, etc. The opposite is true. Doing what Autodesk wants will result in you paying much more; maybe three or four times the amount you need to. Because that’s the whole point of Autodesk’s rental scheme.

Here’s the bottom line.

Switching from maintenance to subscription will cost you more money.

As a bonus, you get to throw away a perfectly good permanent license. Burn your boats and enjoy a costly cruise to Empty Wallet Land on board SS Subscription? You’d have to be completely crazy.

Posts in this series:
1. Autodesk license costs options 1 & 2 – stay on maintenance, subscription now
2. Autodesk license costs options 3, 4 & 5 – bait and switch
3. Autodesk license costs options 6 to 10 – abandon maintenance or Autodesk
4. Autodesk license costs options – summary
5. Autodesk license costs options – summary 2

Edit:
* It appears Amar may have been misquoted in the transcript I read and the number is actually 16% rather than 60%. An updated transcript with the former number can be found here.
** I am informed that the price was reduced from $1680 to $1470 in August.

It’s worth noting that even with the above adjustments entered into the spreadsheet, the conclusions made above still appear to hold true. Here’s the resultant average cost graph:

I’ll run another post later with more detail when I’ve collated as much information as I can. I have yet again invited Autodesk to provide information with which to replace the assumptions.

Autodesk license costs options 6 to 10 – abandon maintenance or Autodesk

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Note: due to new information from Autodesk, an updated summary has been posted.

In this series of posts, I’ll examine various payment options for CAD software and compare them with the cost of staying on your Autodesk maintenance contract long-term.

In this third post, I examine what happens if you do something out of the box. Something Autodesk didn’t plan on you doing, and something it won’t like. What if you don’t renew your maintenance and then maybe hop on the subscription gravy train later? What if you don’t renew your maintenance and switch to a non-Autodesk product?

As stated in my first post, staying on maintenance is the baseline with which I’m comparing these options:

Option 1 – stay on maintenance
Assumptions: maintenance cost 20% compound rise annually from 2020
Pros: keep your perpetual license, keep it up to date, retain previous version & home use rights
Cons: increasing costs, expect more unpleasant “persuasive” surprises from Autodesk

3 year cost $1957 (average $652)
5 year cost $3951 (average $790)
10 year cost $13665 (average $1366)

Let’s say your maintenance renewal turns up this year and you ignore it. Keep using your AutoCAD 2018 perpetual license. Do the same in 2018 and 2019. In 2020, you assess the situation and decide if you really need to keep up to date. Let’s say you are convinced of the need to keep current by all the brilliant improvements Autodesk made to AutoCAD in the meantime. At that stage, become a new renter by signing up for subscription. You still retain your AutoCAD 2018 license and can revert to using it if Autodesk really screws up AutoCAD 2021. Best of all, Autodesk doesn’t get a cent from you for three years.

Option 6 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2020
Assumptions: subscription cost 10% compound rise annually from 2020
Pros: permanently retain your perpetual license, zero cost in the short term
Cons: lose previous version & home use rights for 3 years, expensive from 2020

3 year cost $0 (average $0)
5 year cost $3881 (average $776)
10 year cost $17532 (average $1753)

Or you could leave it another couple of years, in which case it looks like this:

Option 7 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022
Assumptions: subscription cost 10% compound rise annually from 2020
Pros: permanently retain your perpetual license, zero cost in the short/medium term
Cons: lose previous version & home use rights for five years, expensive from 2022

3 year cost $0 (average $0)
5 year cost $0 (average $0)
10 year cost $13651 (average $1365)

It’s very possible that in 2022 or thereabouts, Autodesk will try to invite recalcitrant customers like you to the rental party with special offers (such as we have seen over the last year or so). For example, trade in your perpetual license and get 50% off subscription if you sign up for 3 years.

Choose the next option at this stage and you’re pretty much tossing a coin hoping that the offer will be made, but you can sit happily in zero-cost land, waiting for the opportune moment and that improves your chances of getting what you want. If that happens, the numbers pan out like this:

Option 8 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022 (3-year 50% discount)
Assumptions: subscription cost 10% compound rise annually from 2020, 3-year 50% discount
Pros: retain your perpetual license until 2022, zero cost in the medium term, long-term average costs not too bad
Cons: lose previous version & home use rights for five years, lose your perpetual license eventually, expensive from 2025

3 year cost $0 (average $0)
5 year cost $0 (average $0)
10 year cost $9951 (average $995)

Not too terrible an option, then. Plus you have lots of options depending on how things pan out in the next five years. Here’s a graph that shows how the average annual costs compare over time for these three options:

Here’s how the annual costs look:

What if you’re determined to never rent, never pay Autodesk another cent and never give up your perpetual license, but you still want to keep up to date? Then you need to look to Autodesk’s competition. I’m aware that there are a lot of non-AutoCAD users now reading this blog, so you’re going to have to forgive me while I get AutoCAD-specific. You’ll have to research your own Autodesk product replacements and run your own numbers.

For the purpose of the exercise, I’m going to use BricsCAD Pro as the AutoCAD replacement. You should also consider others such as DraftSight, ZWCAD, progeCAD, etc.

I’ve chosen BricsCAD because I know from personal experience it is a capable product with a very high level of AutoCAD compatibility including commands, CUIs, LISP, etc, AutoCAD-beating performance and a long-standing trustworthy parent company committed to the perpetual license model. It’s so close to AutoCAD that training requirements will be close to zero and you can run the applications in parallel using a common set of custom files, even in a very complex custom environment.

It’s also ridiculously cheap compared with AutoCAD: US$880 including maintenance ($680 without), with both ongoing maintenance ($235/year) and upgrades ($265 V16 to V17) available.* Putting those numbers into the equation gives us this:

Option 9 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance
Assumptions: BricsCAD maintenance cost 10% compound rise annually
Pros: permanently retain your AutoCAD perpetual license, gain an BricsCAD perpetual license, very low cost
Cons: lose AutoCAD previous version & home use rights, possible future compatibility issues if Autodesk throws a spanner in the DWG works

3 year cost $1423 (average $474)
5 year cost $2080 (average $416)
10 year cost $4390 (average $439)

Or you could combine options 6 and 9: do nothing for three years and then buy into BricsCAD when you’re sure that’s the right thing to do.

Option 10 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance in 2020
Assumptions: BricsCAD purchase and maintenance costs 10% compound rise annually
Pros: permanently retain your AutoCAD perpetual license, eventually gain an BricsCAD perpetual license, zero cost in short term, very low cost overall
Cons: lose AutoCAD previous version & home use rights, possible future compatibility issues if Autodesk throws a spanner in the DWG works

3 year cost $0 (average $0)
5 year cost $1515 (average $303)
10 year cost $3826 (average $383)

Obviously, switching to BricsCAD is a way, way cheaper option than any method of keeping current with Autodesk, even allowing for the BricsCAD initial purchase price. Let’s see how those options look for average annual costs:

Nice low, flat lines there for the BricsCAD options. It doesn’t make a great deal of difference whether you hop in right away or wait a few years. Here are the annual costs so you can see where the cash requirements get lumpy:

It’s worth mentioning that in some markets, Bricsys offers an annual rental option at 40% of the perpetual-with-maintenance price. It’s not offered in the USA, and given the low cost of purchase I don’t think there would be much demand for it anyway. I wouldn’t bother with it; it’s not as if you want to encourage that sort of thing among CAD companies, is it?

That concludes the options I intend examining at this stage. Next, the summary.

Posts in this series:
1. Autodesk license costs options 1 & 2 – stay on maintenance, subscription now
2. Autodesk license costs options 3, 4 & 5 – bait and switch
3. Autodesk license costs options 6 to 10 – abandon maintenance or Autodesk
4. Autodesk license costs options – summary
5. Autodesk license costs options – summary 2

* Thanks to Malcolm Davies of Techevate for providing the Bricsys US price list. Yes, that  Malcolm Davies, former Autodesk 2IC.

Autodesk license costs options 3, 4 & 5 – bait and switch

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Note: due to new information from Autodesk, an updated summary has been posted.

In this series of posts, I’ll examine various payment options for CAD software and compare them with the cost of staying on your Autodesk maintenance contract long-term.

In this second post, I examine what happens if you switch from maintenance to subscription (rental) once the recently-announced offers kick in from June 2017. As stated in my first post, staying on maintenance is the baseline with which I’m comparing these options:

Option 1 – stay on maintenance
Assumptions: maintenance cost 20% compound rise annually from 2020
Pros: keep your perpetual license, keep it up to date, retain previous version & home use rights
Cons: increasing costs, expect more unpleasant “persuasive” surprises from Autodesk

3 year cost $1957 (average $652)
5 year cost $3951 (average $790)
10 year cost $13665 (average $1366)

If you switch from maintenance to subscription in late 2017, the cost of subscription is discounted by 60%, and that discount is locked in for three years. Autodesk isn’t telling customers exactly what happens after that, other than a discount will apply thereafter. Let’s assume Autodesk is going to maintain that 60% discount permanently. How do the resultant costs compare?

Option 3f – subscription in 2017 (60%)
Assumptions: 60% discount is maintained permanently, subscription cost 10% compound rise annually from 2020
Pros: keep it up to date, retain previous version & home use rights
Cons: lose your perpetual license

3 year cost $2016 (average $672)
5 year cost $3568 (average $714)
10 year cost $9029 (average $903)

I’ll explain why it’s option 3f and not just option 3 in due course. If you switch over in 2018, the numbers differ slightly because Autodesk reduces the discount to 55% and the subscription covers a different period:

Option 4f – subscription in 2018 (55%)
Assumptions: 55% discount is maintained permanently, subscription cost 10% compound rise annually from 2020
Pros: keep it up to date, retain previous version & home use rights
Cons: lose your perpetual license

3 year cost $2084 (average $695)
5 year cost $3831 (average $766)
10 year cost $9974 (average $997)

If you switch over in 2019, the discount falls to 50% and the numbers differ again:

Option 5f – subscription in 2019 (50%)
Assumptions: 50% discount is maintained permanently, subscription cost 10% compound rise annually from 2020
Pros: keep it up to date, retain previous version & home use rights
Cons: lose your perpetual license

3 year cost $2042 (average $681)
5 year cost $3982 (average $796)
10 year cost $10808 (average $1081)

These options are unattractive because you’re throwing away your perpetual license and still paying more for the first few years, after which things are less certain. That’s assuming Autodesk permanently maintains the same discount. But Autodesk won’t.

I’m sure Autodesk would like you to assume that the same discount will continue. But that’s a fantasy, which is why these options are suffixed with f. It’s f for fantasy, and f for forget it (that’s the polite version). It won’t happen.

Autodesk is setting you up for a bait and switch.

We know this because current temporary co-CEO Amar Hanspal has said so. Autodesk doesn’t want to tell its customers how much they will pay, but is happy to tell the stock market. Thanks to Ralph Grabowski for pointing out what Amar said:

So there’s a different price for each year, when that three-year lock in expires that customer immediately goes up to the terminal loyalty price a little over – roughly 60% more in their maintenance price, and then they’re kind of subject to ongoing price increases that will affect with our long-term pricing strategy.

OK, let’s factor in a price of 60% more than the current-at-the-time maintenance cost after the 3-year discount period is over. I’ll assume that this price will never be allowed to exceed the subscription cost. I’ll even assume that some kind of discount applies permanently – I’ve allowed a dollar. Maybe I’m being generous there.

Now how does it look?

Option 3 – subscription in 2017
Assumptions: 60% discount is maintained for three years before changing to 60% more than maintenance, subscription cost 10% compound rise annually from 2020, maintenance cost 20% compound rise annually from 2020, cost always at least $1 below standard subscription price
Pros: keep it up to date, retain previous version & home use rights
Cons: lose your perpetual license, very high cost in long term

3 year cost $2016 (average $672)
5 year cost $5207 (average $1041)
10 year cost $18707 (average $1871)

Option 4 – subscription in 2018
Assumptions: 55% discount is maintained for three years before changing to 60% more than maintenance, subscription cost 10% compound rise annually from 2020, maintenance cost 20% compound rise annually from 2020, cost always at least $1 below standard subscription price
Pros: keep it up to date, retain previous version & home use rights
Cons: lose your perpetual license, very high cost in long term

3 year cost $2084 (average $695)
5 year cost $4656 (average $931)
10 year cost $18156 (average $1816)

Option 5 – subscription in 2019
Assumptions: 50% discount is maintained for three years before changing to 60% more than maintenance, subscription cost 10% compound rise annually from 2020, maintenance cost 20% compound rise annually from 2020, cost always at least $1 below standard subscription price
Pros: keep it up to date, retain previous version & home use rights
Cons: lose your perpetual license, very high cost in long term

3 year cost $2042 (average $681)
5 year cost $3982 (average $796)
10 year cost $17482 (average $1748)

Strangely, the later you switch, the less you pay overall. Even if you’re feeling tempted (why would you be?), holding off as long as possible looks the best option. I’m not sure that was the effect Autodesk was looking for, but it is what it is.

Here’s a graph that shows how the average annual costs compare over time.

You can see that after the 3-year lock-in expires, the average costs take a huge leap up towards where Autodesk wants them: up there in the stratosphere with the full-price subscription option. The step-up is even more obvious if we examine the individual annual costs, rather than the averages over time. Imagine the shock you’ll get when your 3-year lock-in period ends!

So no matter when you move from maintenance to subscription, you simply throw away your perpetual license and pay way more for the privilege. Attractive proposition!

As a bait and switch scheme, this is pretty terrible. The bait is unpalatable and the switch is diabolical.

Autodesk is aiming to prosper by finding dumber customers who like paying a lot more. If you’re smart enough to read this blog, you’re way too smart to be one of those customers.

It seems whatever you do, if you want to keep up to date with your CAD software, you’re going to have to continue paying Autodesk huge and ever-increasing amounts of money. Or are you? In the next post, I’ll examine some ideas from outside the box. In the fourth and final post in the series, I’ll sum up, examine the validity of the assumptions I’ve made and lay out all the data.

Posts in this series:
1. Autodesk license costs options 1 & 2 – stay on maintenance, subscription now
2. Autodesk license costs options 3, 4 & 5 – bait and switch
3. Autodesk license costs options 6 to 10 – abandon maintenance or Autodesk
4. Autodesk license costs options – summary
5. Autodesk license costs options – summary 2

Autodesk customers are revolting

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I don’t know what kind of reception Autodesk thought it was going to get to its less-than-fully-frank announcement that it was hiking up the price of maintenance to push perpetual license owners onto subscription (rental).

I suppose some negative feedback was expected, but I’m not sure the marketing mavens would have anticipated such a degree of near-universal outright hostility. I suspect they may have overestimated their ability to pull the wool over the eyes of a community that is generally technically smart and, thanks to Autodesk’s history in recent years, somewhat lacking in trust.

The Autodesk Community forum moderators are busily vacuuming up threads from all over the place and moving them to the near-invisible new Moving to Subscription forum, which in due course will no doubt be made read-only and merged into semi-oblivion, just like the last one.

Despite the obscurity and the futility of it all, people are still finding that forum and posting on it (over 300 in a few days) and they’re not happy. Many other complaints can be found on CG Press, CG Talk, NewTek, with countless smaller moan sessions popping up all over the place, such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, 3DVF (French), C4D Cafe, etc.

Then there’s the most powerful but least easily measured marketing communication medium of all; word of mouth. Out in the real world, Autodesk’s name is mud. Talk of abandoning the maintenance/subscription revenue stream altogether is common, as is switching from Autodesk to competitors’ products.

Why get so worked up? I mean, it’s only 5%, right? At first glance. Actually, the price will rise 38.6% by 2019, with worse undoubtedly to come. But for many complainers, while the excess cost and the nonsense used to justify it are condemned, those are not the main issues.

What is the main issue? Loyal Autodesk customers, people who have paid good money for perpetual licenses and kept them current with ongoing maintenance for many years, really don’t want to give them up. They resent being strong-armed into doing so and feel betrayed and deceived by Autodesk. “You can pry my perpetual license from my cold dead fingers. Screw you, Autodesk!” is a paraphrase of the views expressed. Generally it’s more polite than that, but sometimes less.

It has been quite educational for me to read the comments from customers of other Autodesk products who have experienced the same kind of product neglect familiar to AutoCAD customers. They feel they’ve been taken for a ride by a company that is happy to take their money but not that interested in spending it on improving the product they use. Attempting to gouge such customers to the extreme that has just been announced was never going to end well.

Given that Autodesk thinks very highly of its own image and spends literally a billion dollars every year on marketing and sales, I wonder how much this publicity is worth as a negative asset? Enough for me to retire on in ex-CEO-style comfort, I bet. As for the free marketing that Autodesk is providing for its competitors, I’m sure that is very much appreciated.

None of this will cause a change of path at Autodesk, of course. A few thousand dissatisfied customers with pitchforks and torches will not be considered noteworthy at board level. They might not even notice, and if they do they certainly won’t care.

Autodesk only listens to our dollars. We have them, Autodesk wants them. Only voting with our wallets will get the message across. Do it.

Autodesk license costs options 1 & 2 – stay on maintenance, subscription now

15 Replies

Note: due to new information from Autodesk, an updated summary has been posted.

In this series of posts, I’ll examine various payment options for CAD software and compare them with the cost of staying on your Autodesk maintenance contract long-term. Once I’ve gone through all the options, I’ll do a summary post that compares everything, but there are so many variables that a single post that covers all the options in adequate detail would be very long and complex.

First, I need to describe what I’m using as the basis of my comparison. Prior to Autodesk’s recent announcement, the annual maintenence cost to keep one copy of AutoCAD up to date was US$540 and the equivalent subscription (rental) cost was US$1680. I’ll call this the 2016 cost.

Autodesk has announced that maintenance costs will rise by 5% in 2017, 10% in 2018 and 20% in 2019. The rises are compound, so the actual rises from the 2016 cost are 5%, 15.5% and 38.6%.

No announcements have been made regarding the cost of maintenance from 2020 onwards, but it’s safe to say that Autodesk won’t be making life easy for its maintenance customers. In order to compare costs beyond the short term, an assumption must be made about future maintenance price rises. I’ve made the assumption that these will be 20% a year, compound. That may be generous to Autodesk, but time will tell.

It would be remiss of me to mention an even lower baseline that could be used:

Option 0 – drop maintenance, keep using AutoCAD
Pros: zero costs, keep your perpetual license
Cons: don’t keep up to date, previous version & home use rights, reduced support

3 year cost $0 (average $0)
5 year cost $0 (average $0)
10 year cost $0 (average $0)

For some of you, that option will seem suddenly quite attractive. If it works for you, go ahead and you may as well stop reading now.

Others will want or need to keep their software up to date. Option 1 below is what I am using as my baseline for comparison. Assuming you’re a perpetual license holder who has been paying annual maintenance, just keep doing what you have been doing, as long as you can.

Option 1 – stay on maintenance
Assumptions: maintenance cost 20% compound rise annually from 2020
Pros: keep your perpetual license, keep it up to date, retain previous version & home use rights
Cons: increasing costs, expect more unpleasant “persuasive” surprises from Autodesk

3 year cost $1957 (average $652)
5 year cost $3951 (average $790)
10 year cost $13665 (average $1366)

There’s always the possibility that Autodesk could get really nasty and bump up maintenance costs even more, say 30% a year from 2020. That looks like this:

Option 1a – stay on maintenance (30%)
Assumptions: 30% compound rise annually from 2020
Pros: keep your perpetual license, keep it up to date, retain previous version & home use rights
Cons: increasing costs, expect more unpleasant “persuasive” surprises from Autodesk

3 year cost $1957 (average $652)
5 year cost $4216 (average $843)
10 year cost $19223 (average $1922)

A curious aspect of Autodesk’s announcement is that the offer associated with switching from maintenance to subscription doesn’t kick in until June. If your renewal date falls between now and then, and assuming no other special offers apply, the cost is huge. I’ve had to make assumptions here too. Again, being generous to Autodesk, I’ve assumed there will be no subscription price rises until 2020, at which point Autodesk will start bumping things up 10% a year. Here’s how that pans out.

Option 2 – subscription now
Assumptions: 10% compound rise annually from 2020
Pros: keep it up to date, retain previous version & home use rights
Cons: lose your perpetual license, ridiculously high costs

3 year cost $5040 (average $1680)
5 year cost $8921 (average $1784)
10 year cost $22572 (average $2257)

At this stage, it’s easy to dismiss option 2. You would need rocks in your head to switch to subscription right now before the special offer kicks in. The options that will be available from June will be examined in the next post.

There are a number of ways these options can be compared graphically. For example, here’s a bar chart showing the cost incurred in each year:

Here’s a line graph showing the same thing. I think this is clearer.

Although this graph is useful in showing what budget you would need each year in each scenario, it’s not ideal when comparing the total expenditure. Here’s a line graph of the cumulative total expenditure for each of the options:

However, the graph type I find most useful in comparing options shows the average annual cost for each option, and how that average cost varies over time.

With this format, you can do a direct comparison between options at any point in time. You can say, “Option A has the lowest cost per year for the first 6 years, then option B gets cheaper. If we’re going to be using the software for 6 years or longer, we should choose option B.” I’m going to be using this graph format from now on.

Posts in this series:
1. Autodesk license costs options 1 & 2 – stay on maintenance, subscription now
2. Autodesk license costs options 3, 4 & 5 – bait and switch
3. Autodesk license costs options 6 to 10 – abandon maintenance or Autodesk
4. Autodesk license costs options – summary
5. Autodesk license costs options – summary 2

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.

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.

Another series of Autodesk statements

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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.

A series of Autodesk statements

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Here are some statements from Autodesk about not having any plans to do some things. Things that the more paranoid among us suspected were always in the pipeline. Things that seemed to be just joining the dots along a predictable path Autodesk appeared to be taking. Things that later ended up happening. But nevertheless things that were, apparently, unplanned.

Simplified Upgrade Pricing FAQ, July 2009:

Autodesk does not currently have any plans to eliminate upgrades or cross-grades or make Autodesk Subscription* mandatory.

 
Callan Carpenter, May 2010:

…we are still perpetual, plus Subscription* or maintenance. I don’t see that changing. It’s hard to predict 50 years into the future, but we have no plans for that.

 
Carl Bass, August 2013:

Because we’re starting in a different place than Adobe, we don’t feel the need to force people, as they did, to go to these new license models and end perpetual licenses.

 
It is a matter of record that Autodesk subsequently eliminated upgrades and cross-grades, went to the new license model (rental only) and ended the sale of perpetual licenses.

It’s refreshing to see that Autodesk isn’t too big into that old-fashioned planning thing. It fills me with joy to see that there is still room for such spontaneity in executive decision-making.

* Subscription was the name then used for what is currently called maintenance.

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.

When is a subscription-only update not a subscription-only update?

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Before I get started, I want to clarify the meaning of the word ‘subscription’. For about 15 years, the word Subscription (note the initial capital) meant something specific for Autodesk customers. It meant you had bought a perpetual license and instead of paying for periodical updates, you paid for a year’s Subscription in advance. In allowed access to any new release that appeared during that year plus various other benefits.

That thing that was once called ‘Subscription’ has now been renamed ‘maintenance’ (no initial capital) in Autodeskspeak. So what does ‘subscription’ (no initial capital) mean? Rental. You pay in advance for use of the product for a period and when you stop paying, you stop using the product. This is now the only way to obtain Autodesk software you don’t already own. In addition to access to any new release that appears during the subscription period, it provides other benefits similar to what is now called maintenance.

To confuse matters further, Autodesk briefly called rental ‘Desktop Subscription’ (note the initial capitals) and it’s still possible to find remnants of that terminology in current Autodesk documents. It’s also possible to find ‘Subscription’ and ‘subscription’ used interchangeably on the same Autodesk web page:

autodeskisitsubscriptionorsubscription

Minor quibbles aside, the important thing to note is that the term ‘subscription’ as currently used by Autodesk means something very specific. It means rental. When something is described as ‘subscription-only’ it specifically excludes ‘maintenance’ and other perpetual license customers. And that’s how the AutoCAD 2017.1 update was described:

autocad2017-1subscriptiononly

That subscription-only status of this update is what set me off. Preventing paying customers from accessing something that includes bug fixes is most unpleasant, and I felt obliged to say so. But it doesn’t appear to be the case. That subscription-only status is getting rubberier by the minute.

  • Autodesk states 2017.1 is “the first subscription-only update”. In addition to using the term ‘subscription’, being the first of something implies that it’s different to what happened before. That can’t mean that it’s available to all customers, because that’s what has happened with updates in the past. It also can’t mean maintenance customers can also access it, because that has happened for years for various enhancements, add-ins, productivity packs, etc.
  • Somebody as smart as Jimmy Bergmark (and that’s very smart indeed) is convinced that “even security enhancements and bug fixes are only available for subscription customers”.
  • There is no sign of 2017.1 on the public AutoCAD Downloads page.
  • As a maintenance customer, I didn’t receive notification of the update. However, I can see it in my Autodesk Account portal. It was apparently released quietly on 15 September 2016 for most languages, with French and German lagging behind for whatever reason.
  • The download is not restricted; anybody with the URL can download it (e.g. English 64-bit exe). I have no idea how Autodesk intends to restrict this update to certain customers.
  • I have been informed privately by an Autodesk person who should know that customers on both subscription and maintenance will get the update.

This confusion can be traced to Autodesk’s decision to call rental ‘subscription’, a name that already had a significant, long-established and totally different meaning in the Autodesk lexicon. Because I can’t think of a logical reason for Autodesk to do this, I strongly suspect the idea was to obfuscate the changes to licensing by deliberately confusing customers. If so, congratulations, it worked. I’m baffled.

Edit: Heidi Hewett has updated her post:

autocad2017-1notsubscriptiononly

Although the Preview Guide still only mentions Subscription (which shouldn’t have a capital these days, but does here), I think that’s pretty much cleared up the confusion now.

On a positive note, I’d like to point out that Heidi has done these sorts of guides for years and always does an excellent job. Based on past experience, I would say it would be likely that she was simply passing on in good faith what she had been told, rather than being the origin of the incorrect information.

Last chance to buy Autodesk software – should you take it?

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If, like me, you’ve been receiving increasingly eager Autodesk emails urging you to action, you’ll already be aware that Autodesk will end the sale of its last remaining perpetual license software lines on 31 July 2016. The End Time has already arrived for AutoCAD, so the only way you can now buy any form of AutoCAD perpetual license is as part of a Suite, and you must also commit to a maintenance plan. Of course, any Suite is substantially more expensive than AutoCAD, both in terms of initial cost and ongoing maintenance fees. However, if you only buy software and aren’t interested in renting it, this is your last chance to do so. (Or is it? There’s always the possibility that Autodesk will abandon its all-rental strategy in order to stave off its losses, in which case all bets are off).

In sales, this is known as the impending event closing technique. You can see it in action at car yards around the world. The idea is to encourage you to buy something while you still have the opportunity to do so, preferably without thinking too hard about whether it’s a good idea. In this case, is it a good idea? Let’s examine the pros and cons.

Pros

  • Last chance to buy a perpetual license. Maybe.
  • Cheaper long-term than renting. Maybe.

Cons

  • Very expensive unless you are likely to make use of multiple large components of the Suite.
  • Mandatory commitment to a maintenance plan, at least initially.
  • Unknown price vector for that maintenance plan. However, it’s safe to assume it’s not going to get cheaper over time.
  • Immediate obsolescence of Suites has already been announced.
  • The long-term value of any Autodesk permanent license is a big unknown.

Only you can make the call about whether a last-minute Suite purchase makes sense for you or your business, and that call can only be an educated guess at best. Nobody has any idea how well Autodesk intends to look after perpetual-only Suite customers when it would clearly prefer them to be rental-only industry collection customers instead. Based on Autodesk’s recent history, I would expect strong pressure to be applied to all perpetual license owners to persuade you to switch to rental. The experience is unlikely to be pleasant, particularly if you just stumped up big to buy Suite software.

Are you planning to take this last chance to buy Autodesk software?

Suites to be replaced by Autodesk industry collections

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I just got this email. Maybe you did too:

Dear Christopher [sic],
 
I have some important information to share with you.
 
As we continue our transition to a fully subscription-based business, we remain committed to providing you greater value, more flexibility, and a simpler way to access the Autodesk software you need.
 
On August 1, 2016, we will introduce Autodesk industry collections and end the sale of Autodesk Design & Creation Suites.
 
Industry collections will provide you access to a wide selection of the essential Autodesk software for your profession. They will offer immediate access to new technology, cloud services, and several licensing options. In short, industry collections will give you the freedom to access the software products you want, when you want them. Learn more about the industry collections here.
 
To make way for industry collections, we will end the sale of new Design & Creation Suite subscriptions and perpetual licenses after July 31, 2016.
 
If you wish to purchase more Design & Creation Suites before August 1, 2016, we encourage you to subscribe now and rest assured that we will provide you with a simple way to switch to an industry collection in the future, if you so choose. If you prefer, you can purchase perpetual licenses of a Design & Creation Suite with a maintenance plan before August 1.
 
If you wish to continue receiving updates, support, and other benefits for your Design & Creation Suites, you can do so for as long as you continue your existing subscription or maintenance plan.
 
To learn more about Autodesk industry collections and options for switching your subscription (if you choose to do so) please read our Frequently Asked Questions. [I fixed the email’s URL which didn’t point to the FAQ].
 
I want to thank you for being an Autodesk customer, and I hope you share my excitement about these important enhancements to our offerings.
 
Yours sincerely,
Jeff Wright
Vice President, Customer Engagement
Autodesk, Inc.

No, I have no idea why I’m Christopher. No, I have no idea why Autodesk is so averse to using initial capitals for its product names. It’s confusing and silly.

As far as I can tell, industry collections are just renamed/combined Suites with a few things shuffled around a bit. If Autodesk were still in the business of selling software I might be interested in examining the pros and cons of moving to industry collections. Autodesk isn’t (or very soon won’t be), so I’m not interested. As it is, the annual cost is out of the question (unless I were actually going to use a decent number of the included products, which I wouldn’t). That’s to be expected, because the whole point of trying to push people onto desktop subscription (Autodeskspeak for rental) is to extract much larger amounts of cash over a given period of time.

Sorry Jeff, I don’t share your excitement. Thanks, but no thanks.

Autodesk edges towards taking money for Cloud services

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In an email to Subscription customers, Autodesk made several announcements about its Autodesk 360 Cloud services.

  1. Subscription users now get 25 GB per seat of Cloud storage, up from 3 GB. Non-Subscription users who create an Autodesk 360 account get 3 GB. The intent here, as with the trebling of upgrade costs, is to get you hooked on Subscription so you become a permanent revenue stream.
  2. More services are now available, apparently, but the list of services looks about the same to me. The table that lists which services are available for which products can be found here. If you’re an AutoCAD user, the only service available is Autodesk 360 Rendering.
  3. The services are now metered. You get a certain number of “cloud units”, and these are eaten up as you use the services. A standard AutoCAD user (with Subscription) gets 100 units. Each render costs you 5 units, so effectively you get 20 on-line renders per seat. That’s enough for a taster, but if Cloud rendering is as brilliant as Autodesk says it is, you’ll soon use that allocation up.
  4. The metering doesn’t mean anything – yet. If you use up all your units, it doesn’t matter. You can go on using more of them as long as you’re on Subscription.
  5. This free lunch will end as soon as Autodesk says so, or as soon as it puts a mechanism in place to charge you for units. No news yet on when that might be, but as parting you from your money is obviously the whole point of the exercise, I can’t imagine it will be too far in the future.

Autodesk reserves the right to change all of this without notice, and to terminate access to Autodesk 360 services at any time and for any reason.

Not answering the question

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Here in Australia, we’re in election mode, so I have even more reasons to avoid watching TV. On those occasions when I do watch it, I am often annoyed by what I see. This is not a novel observation, but one of the things that annoys me about many politicians is their habit of sidestepping questions when interviewed. It also annoys me when interviewers fail to follow up these non-answers and let them slide. Depending on the circumstances (e.g. limited timeframe, more important questions to ask, etc.), there may be valid reasons for journalists failing to chase after legitimate answers in a live interview situation. But I would much prefer to see a non-answering interviewee tied down and not allowed to wriggle free. Squirm, baby, squirm!

For on-line journalists and bloggers, there are few excuses for letting non-answers go unchallenged. There is virtually unlimited time, opportunity and column space in which things can be chased down. With that in mind, this post is an analysis of the response Callan Carpenter gave to the four specific questions I raised, and three points of dispute raised by others and passed on by me for a response. I have marked each response (or non-response) out of 10.

Questions

Please clarify in as much detail as possible exactly how you arrive at your figures.

Answer: none given. 0/10

A percentage is derived by dividing one number by another; what exactly are you dividing by what to come up with 1.5%?

Answer: none given. 0/10

Please explain why your statements appear to contradict Autodesk’s own published figures.

Answer: Callan explained that he did not intend to suggest what it seemed he was implying, but didn’t clearly explain exactly what it was that he actually was suggesting. 5/10

How large is Autodesk’s total installed base?

Answer: none given. 0/10

Points of dispute

Because Autodesk made Subscription cheaper than upgrading, it is no surprise that upgrading became less popular. This doesn’t indicate that customers prefer doing business in that way, merely that Autodesk made it the cheapest alternative.

Response: this statement was pretty much repeated back as if it were an answer: “the majority of customers buying over the past few years have opted to leverage the Subscription program…the most cost effective way possible”. 1/10

If the idea of Subscription is such an attractive proposition, why do you need to sweeten the deal with tools that you don’t allow upgraders to have?

Response: this statement was also pretty much repeated back as if it were an answer: “…there is much more to the program than cost savings…just some of the value-added aspects of the program”. 1/10

Your assertion that the 12-month cycle is driven by the product teams is incorrect. It was chosen for business reasons and the product cycle was forced to fit the Subscription model.

Response: none given. 0/10

Overall “answering the question” mark: 7/70 or 10%.

Callan, thanks for taking some time out of your busy schedule to provide some kind of a response. If you want to have another bite at the cherry and actually answer what you’ve been asked this time, you are welcome to do so. You know where to find me.

Readers, am I being too harsh here?

Autodesk’s Callan Carpenter responds to Subscription follow-up

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You may remember a month ago I raised the question What proportion of Autodesk customers really are on Subscription? Shortly after that, I sent Autodesk Subscription VP Callan Carpenter these questions following up on the interview:

I have a request for follow-up information arising from this interview. I hope you can find the time to provide some answers.

Preamble: Several people have called into doubt your assertion that the simplified upgrade policy affects only a tiny minority of your customers (you seemed to imply a figure of around 3% non-Subscription customers, with 1.5% who upgrade within a year or two). My own calculations based on Autodesk’s latest published financial results indicate that of upgrades represent 21% of the combined income from Subscription and upgrades, which is 7 times greater than the impression you gave in your answer. Please see this post for more discussion.

Questions:

  • Please clarify in as much detail as possible exactly how you arrive at your figures.
  • A percentage is derived by dividing one number by another; what exactly are you dividing by what to come up with 1.5%?
  • Please explain why your statements appear to contradict Autodesk’s own published figures.
  • How large is Autodesk’s total installed base?

Other points of dispute have been raised by various commenters, which I have paraphrased here. I invite your response.

  • Because Autodesk made Subscription cheaper than upgrading, it is no surprise that upgrading became less popular. This doesn’t indicate that customers prefer doing business in that way, merely that Autodesk made it the cheapest alternative.
  • If the idea of Subscription is such an attractive proposition, why do you need to sweeten the deal with tools that you don’t allow upgraders to have?
  • Your assertion that the 12-month cycle is driven by the product teams is incorrect. It was chosen for business reasons and the product cycle was forced to fit the Subscription model.

After a few follow-ups, I received a response yesterday. I reproduce that response here verbatim and without comment:

My sincere apologies for the delay. I have been travelling quite extensively, and this response has been sitting in my drafts email folder, and I just kept getting sidetracked with customer matters.
 
Nonetheless, I appreciate the opportunity to respond to some of the feedback you received after our discussion last month. During that first interview we discussed, among other things, the rationale behind the Simplified Upgrade Pricing program. I argued that SUP impacts only a small subset of our customers, and quoted figures to support the case. It appears those figures have been challenged by a few of your readers who feel their experience is different. Is it possible that both points of view are right? I believe it is.
 
By my prior statements I do not mean to suggest that the vast majority of all customers are on Subscription. Autodesk has a very large base of customers that has grown over the past 28 years. The subscription program as it exists today is only about 8 years old, so we had 20 years to develop a large base of customers, many of whom are not on Subscription. (Yes, there were forerunner programs like VIP, but they were structured quite differently and never generated an appreciable amount of business.) This is important because the SUP program only really impacts those customers upgrading from one and two versions back, which is a very small percentage of the already small upgrade revenue. Subscribers and customers upgrading from four or more versions back see no change to their pricing, and customers upgrading from 3 versions back see either no change or a very nominal one (up or down) depending on their specific product or country.
 
Most of the non-subscribing customer base does not purchase upgrades one or two versions back. In other words, most of these customers either haven’t bought anything from us in a long time, or when they do, they fall into the 98.5% of the revenue that includes upgrades from three or more versions back.
 
History is one thing, but the current trend line is another. For 8 years the Subscription program has coexisted with the Upgrade program. During that time our customers have been free to chose either strategy for keeping their technology current. Based on the results, their choice was clear: the majority of customers buying over the past few years have opted to leverage the Subscription program to stay on the latest technology in the most cost effective way possible. Only a few have elected to stay current through one and two version upgrades. The rest upgraded from older versions – three or more back. Of course Autodesk still offers all those choices going forward, albeit with a slimmed down price sheet.
 
There is one last point that I would like to make: While we believe Subscription is the most cost effective way to stay on the latest design technology, there is much more to the program than cost savings. Direct access to Autodesk product support specialists, Advantage Pack© bonus features, and free software for home use are just some of the value-added aspects of the program. In short, we are committed to an ongoing, continuous reevaluation of both the cost and benefit components of the Subscription value equation in order to make it an attractive option for as many customers as possible.
 
Thanks, again Steve for allowing me the time to speak with your readers.

What proportion of Autodesk customers really are on Subscription?

7 Replies

In my recent interview of Autodesk Subscription VP Callan Carpenter, he made these statements:

…there is a very small fraction of our revenue that comes from upgrades at this point in time.

We’re down to very low single digits of customers who upgrade, and of those only half of those upgrade 1 or 2 years back. So we’re talking about approximately 1.5% of our revenue that comes from customers upgrading 1 and 2 versions back.

…[customers who upgrade] 1 or 2 [releases] back, a very small percentage of our customer base, less than 2% of our customer base that was buying those upgrades.

Others are calling those numbers into doubt. Deelip Menezes (SYCODE, Print 3D) estimated the numbers of AutoCAD users not on Subscription at 66% (or 43%, depending on which bit of the post you read), by counting the AutoCAD releases used by his customers and making assumptions about their Subscription status from that. That’s an extremely suspect methodology, as I pointed out:

Your numbers don’t really tell us anything about Subscription v. upgrade proportions. All they tell us is that large numbers of people wait a while before installing a new release. We all knew that, surely.

However, Deelip’s post did prompt me to point out this:

…there is a fair point to be made about people on earlier releases who have hopped off the upgrade train altogether, or at least for a significant number of years. How would they be counted in Callan’s figures? They wouldn’t exist at all, as far as his income percentages are concerned.

Owen Wengerd (ManuSoft, CADLock) asked a random sample of his customers and came up with 82% of them as non-Subscription customers. He also noted that he could come up with a 3% non-Subscription figure if he cooked the books by selectively choosing a convenient time slice. Owen doesn’t state the numbers in his sample, or indicate (or know) how many of the non-Subscribers are also non-upgraders.

I’ve added my own poll (see right) just to add to the mix.

Nothing we can hang a conclusion on yet, then. But Ralph Grabowski (WorldCAD Access, upFront.eZine) uses Autodesk’s own figures to point out that upgrade revenue has increased 18% and Subscription revenue only 7% in the last year. I’m not qualified to perform an analysis of the 2011 Q1 fiscal results, but I can find the figures listed as Maintenance revenue ($195 M) and Upgrade revenue ($51 M). That looks to me like about 21% of the Subscription/upgrade income is coming from upgrades.

Also, according to the published figures, Autodesk has 2,383,000 customers on Subscription. If that represents about 97% of customers, does that really mean Autodesk has only about 2.5 M customers? If I’m looking at these figures in the wrong way, feel free to put me right.

So, what’s the truth? What proportion of Autodesk customers really are on Subscription? 3%? 21%? 43%? 66%? 82%? I’m going to ask Callan a follow-up question about this and will report back on what he has to say. In the spirit of this post, I’ll be asking him for a lot more detail. Watch this space.

Callan Carpenter interview 5 – the 12 month cycle

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This 5th post concludes the Callan Carpenter interview series. For the record, this interview was done in real time over the phone, with no prior notice of the questions.

SJ: The 12-month cycle that you have for most of your software has come under some criticism from all sorts of people, especially me. Once you have your customer base practically all on Subscription, what’s the incentive for the 12-month cycle to persist?

CC: In what way have you criticised the 12 month cycle?

SJ: In that it damages the product. In that there’s not enough time to release a properly developed product within that 12-month cycle. This is an observation that many people have made going back many years. That’s the basis of the criticism; not that, “Oh no, you’re giving me more software”. Well, there are people who complain about that but I don’t think that’s a valid criticism. I think the valid criticism is that it damages the product. A poll that I ran on my blog asked that question: is the 12-month cycle damaging the product? The answer was a very emphatic yes from the readers of my blog. I know that’s not a scientific survey but it fits in with other viewpoints I’ve seen expressed in various places.

CC: The question was, do we intend to continue to do that?

SJ: Yes. Once you have effectively have your customers on the Subscription model, so that you’re no longer internally competing with the upgrade model, do you really have to have a 12-month release cycle?

CC: Well, I think it’s a very interesting and valid question, do we need to have a 12-month upgrade cycle? I know there are customers who simply cannot absorb technology at that rate. But it’s a bit of a two-edged sword, in that if we go to a 24-month cycle, for example, do we get criticism for not providing enough value for the Subscription dollar or is it going to be viewed as a positive because it’s improved overall software quality? If we stay at the 12 months, we get the reverse argument. Maybe we’re providing the value that customers are paying for with Subscription, but what are we doing to software quality? I think that one of the things we have to look at over time is alternative delivery mechanisms. You’re going to start to see, for example, software delivered (as we have started to) with things available as Software as a Service. That obviates a lot of the issues associated with those release cycles you’re talking about. Your quality can go up, it’s a lot more controlled environment, and the customer doesn’t have to deal with an install, then another install and another install. So I would imagine you would see augmentation of our desktop products with products like that, that sort of move away from the complexities of the constant need to try and absorb new technology.

I think that it would be a very interesting thing to do on a scientific basis to understand whether customers prefer us to go a 24-month or an 18-month, or you-pick-the cycle. I think internally, your question about is it motivated by some kind of internal competition with upgrades, absolutely not. Upgrades, just look at the numbers, that battle’s over, so there’s no internal competition in that regard. The thing that we do have to deal with, which I think is endemic to any engineering creative group, is software engineers like to write software. They’re not motivated by issues of Subscription, or upgrade, or anything else. What they do is create product. We would literally have to rein those guys back if we wanted to go to a longer cycle. They’re the ones leading the charge on that, not the Subscription program.

SJ: So you’re saying that the development teams like the 12-month cycle?

CC: They do. It brings a certain discipline to them on the one hand; on the other hand, it’s kind of what software writers do, they write software.

SJ: Right, but they can write software that takes 12 months and isn’t finished or they can write software that takes 18 months and is finished. If I were a developer I know which I’d prefer.

CC: I hear your point. I think something we have to always look at is what’s the right balance between functionality and trying to build a bridge too far and to get it released. That’s something I know the product division managers are looking at constantly. Again, it’s absolutely not motivated by Subscription. Like you, I’ve heard customers say, “Would you go to 24 months?”, so I’d be happy to deliver that for them in some cases. But it’s really up to the product divisions.

See also
Callan Carpenter interview 1 – Autodesk and social media
Callan Carpenter interview 2 – upgrades a tiny minority
Callan Carpenter interview 3 – the cost of complexity
Callan Carpenter interview 4 – enhancing the program