Technical issues cannot be put aside, that is part of my point. Although we upgraded to 2013 SP1 earlier this year, 80% of our inventory is still in 7.5 format and many of those scenes and models contain references to old RTS2 realtime shaders which are no longer supported in the current versions - softimage crashes on load. 6 versions back of support is not far enough back for a project like I am currently working on. We have assets that were last touched in XSI v3.5 or XSI v4.0 but haven't touched them largely because of the lack of migration path available. The old SI Particle system was ripped out in v7.x, so any file that used those particles are kind of orphaned. We either rebuild it from scratch or leave it as is and hope it lasts. We haven't had the time/resources available to update those assets, so we're crossing our fingers really tight we don't have to touch them.
Value is defined by the customer, not the seller. For us in particular, subscription provides no additional benefits than the older annual upgrade model, but costs more per our needs. When I hear the word 'subscription', I think of magazine subscription where content is provided on a regular and continuing basis like a stream and it's the customer's prerogative to jump into the stream or bail out. Applied to the case of software, I would intuitively expect builds and point releases provided on a regular intervals throughout the year. A download manager would be able to 'diff' what you have with what's available and patch your install appropriately. New builds should be available weekly or bi-weekly or monthly at worst case, and perhaps a point release every 8-10 weeks, with a major release once per year. The current model of getting one release per year and maybe a service pack or two later does not qualify as a subscription in my book. Service packs are "damn, we screwed up. Here are the fixes to our mistakes and the things we didn't finish". The fact I have to download a service pack should be viewed as an inconvenience to the customer and avoided at all costs, not the customer pining for relief saying, "thank god I can now get work done and go home at a decent hour". Yes, as stated in earlier posts, the logic and business mindset has been conditioned to be topsy-turvy. Matt From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Graham Bell Sent: Wednesday, October 16, 2013 2:13 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Autodesk´s Sales model Point taken, but I would kinda dispute, your dispute :-) Your technical issues aside for a moment, just purely from the financial point of view, it really does make more sense. Prior to this year, I think you could get away with dropping off subs for maybe a year or two, because the upgrade price (for 3 versions back) was only 50% of the price of a new seat. Some were prepared to swallow that cost. Now that has changed and all upgrades are currently 70%, it's a far bigger hit. The trick is to do your sums. Of course it's peoples prerogative as to whether they want to be on Subscription, or feel it's worth it. But if you always want to be current, then being on Subs is a better option. Plus you get previous versions rights. G From: Matt Lind <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Reply-To: "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2013 17:35:52 +0000 To: "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: RE: Autodesk´s Sales model I dispute it's better to stay on subscription. Case in point being the fact we were stuck on Softimage 7.5 for nearly 5 years, not because we didn't want to upgrade, but because there were no releases without technical issues preventing our upgrade. Being forced into subscription would be more expensive than the perpetual license model as we'd have to continue paying AD with no return to show for it. Under the perpetual license model we wouldn't be obligated to pay anything. Matt From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Graham Bell Sent: Wednesday, October 16, 2013 4:22 AM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: RE: Autodesk´s Sales model Regarding the announcements made at the investor day, I posted this on another forum as part of an ongoing thread.... I think there's a lot of crossed wires here over his news and just assuming that Autodesk are following Adobe literally to the letter. Yes, there are Suites and now we have rental options (you can still buy perpetual), but this news is really just about Autodesk discontinuing their upgrade model. As of Feb 1st 2015 (still over a year away), users will be unable to upgrade old versions to the current version. Regarding upgrades and what the term actually means, this is the ability to upgrade an Autodesk product from a previous version to the current version. So for example, someone has purchased a product and they may have stopped their subscription (if they bought it) for a period of time, and they then wish to upgrade to the most current version of their software. Autodesk currently allow customer to upgrade their software to the current version, for a fee. Until this year, there were different upgrade pricing depending on how old the software version was, that someone wanted to upgrade from. Also, (if I recall) there was no limit to how old a version of software was, that someone wanted to upgrade. As of this year, the upgrade policy was changed and basically simplified. Only the previous 6 versions will remain upgradeable. Owners of older software versions who wanted the current version would need to purchase entirely new licenses. If you did have a version eligible for upgrading, a single pricing structure was put in place. User upgrading to the current version, would have to pay 70% of the new license price for an upgrade. Essentially, the idea of staying on an old version of software and then just paying to upgrade to the current version when you thought it was necessary, becomes detrimental to actually just keeping on subscription. To keep up to date and have previous version usage, it actually makes more sense to remain on subscription. G From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Sebastien Sterling Sent: 16 October 2013 00:06 To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: Re: Autodesk´s Sales model is this it for maya ? http://www.autodesk.com/products/autodesk-maya/buy On 15 October 2013 23:48, Sergio Mucino <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Autodesk is for some reason following Adobe's footsteps quite accurately. Adobe started selling suites... Adesk did. Adobe goes rental... Adesk follows. I really can't tell how positive or not the change will be, and what it will mean for the future of the tools... I guess we'll have to wait and see. The reactions to these decisions have been varied (some people are not happy at all, some are quite happy). [cid:[email protected]] On 15/10/2013 4:52 PM, Sven Constable wrote: Of course I meant one third of the costs for every tool, not three. And I used "thirds" as a term incorrectly. It was lost in translation. Sorry about that. sven From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Sven Constable Sent: Tuesday, October 15, 2013 10:33 PM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: RE: Autodesk´s Sales model uhm, isn't he idea behind this model to cut any development costs by three thirds in particular and sell all three as one package for a higher price? And make it sound a good deal because costumers will get three tools instead of one even they don't need one or two of them? Maybe I do not comprehend here. From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Daniel Brassard Sent: Tuesday, October 15, 2013 9:16 PM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: Re: Autodesk´s Sales model It is this article and the current Softimage cross-grade offer that make me decide to take the jump to the Ultimate Suite. I am glad I did, I can now test plugins and shaders on the three platforms and do other things as well. And enough money left for some nice plugins or apps too. AD may have a smart thing going here, let's see what the future bring. On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 2:12 PM, Alan Fregtman <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Did you read the whole thing? >From the article: "The plan is to shift customers away from single product purchases toward suites, and to move from buying perpetual licenses to acquiring software on long-term subscription or short-term rental." On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 1:56 PM, David Rivera <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: I came across this link: http://gfxspeak.com/2013/10/02/autodesk-sales-strategy-includes-discontinuing-upgrade-purchases/ So what happened to the "rental" sales model? David R.
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