Hi Perry, The article was a transcript of a verbal discussion so things are a bit rambling and maybe not always as clear as I intended. However I don't recall ever mentioning that we put Softimage on life support. What we were trying to do was see if we could keep developing it more efficiently. Yes we were not planning on increasing investment in it and we never stated that we were. However we were trying to find solutions to continue development.
I understand your frustration, but what we are doing now is exactly what you are asking for: telling you our plans (just as we have done in the past); which is that we have decided, now, to do no more than maintain Softimage for the next two years. And we are telling everyone that that is our intent. Sure we could have made that decision earlier - and then we a would have told you earlier - but when we spun up development in Singapore it was because we were looking for alternatives to continue developing Softimage not for ways to piss off Softimage customers. It is not true that we do not care about keeping customers productive and minimizing disruption to their pipelines and business. Every year we spend significant resources maintaining legacy capabilities for just that reason. A lot of people ask why there are 6 ways to do the same thing in Maya - well because we continue to support the ability to open previous projects and integrate into existing pipelines to the best of our ability. It is incorrect to think that Autodesk invests millions of dollars into the M&E business to do exactly this because we do not care about our customers - though it is quite understandable that at this point in time you feel we do not care about Softimage customers. For all our products, Autodesk never states publicly what its plans are because we cannot (other than in very general high level terms). We cannot talk publicly about specific future product releases or features and inevitably those are the only questions people want answered when they talk about a product's future. We can only guarantee what the status of a software is at the present moment. We can talk about goals - such as our goal to integrate artist-friendly aspects of Softimage into Maya but not talk about exactly what or when. Not because we don't want to - it would make all our lives a whole lot easier. We don't enjoy being vague However if we broke the rules we would go out of business very quickly. We would have to defer all our revenue which means not being able to pay our employees, suppliers and partners. To do so would be completely irresponsible and impact hundreds of thousands of customers in M&E, millions if Autodesk did this across its industries. This is a very real challenge because the feedback from all our customers is consistently - how can we trust you when you do not? But you cannot ask us to break rules which were put in place for good measure - to stop companies selling vaporware to both customers and investors. Sure if you are a privately held company you can say what you want but not if you are publicly traded. Now we can all have our opinion of whether public trading as a means of securing investment is good or bad for society, but none of us can change the fact that Autodesk is publicly traded and therefore accountable to the SEC. This is a huge challenge. We have acquired products in the past from small start-ups where they had promised all kinds of future features. We have then had to defer all revenue on those products until we could actually build everything they promised which can take years. Years of development with no revenue. And we have done it because we felt it was the right and responsible thing to do. So these things are not trivial. Finally, my comment on the 2-year mark was not meant as an insult. First we are here listening to feedback, dialoguing and responding. Changes in our plans reflect this so it is incorrect to assume that we don't care and are not trying - just because we cannot give you everything you are asking for. Secondly we actually are not experts at discontinuing products so we make mistakes - and then we try to fix them. Fixing things is not a bad thing. Third the reason we had a problem is because we created a special offering for Softimage users that was non-standard. From day one customers always had the option to continue to use their license in perpetuity. They even had an option to transition to Maya or 3ds Max and continue to use both licenses in perpetuity. Were we had a SNAFU was what happened on the licensing side if you stayed on subscription. There were some incorrect assumptions on our end and we fixed them. Maurice Maurice Patel Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134 From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Perry Harovas Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2014 2:53 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: new Q&A with AD Regarding the new article/interview with Maurice: Maurice, I do appreciate you answering some of our questions. One thing that really has us (Softimage users) angry about is that your company had plans in September of 2012 (and most likely earlier) to not invest further in Softimage and to keep it going on a maintenance level, to not significantly invest in Softimage. Your company must have known this would anger people, and while yes, we were told that the team was moving to Singapore, we were NEVER told that it was because the investment in Softimage was going to be diminished and it was going to basically be done to keep it on life support. Had we known that, we could have made the (to us, very logical) assumption that Softimage was going to be EOL'd at some point. I asked on the forums, I asked in beta programs if Softimage was not a real priority to Autodesk, and got no replies. This, among other things, really shows a very deep lack of respect for your Softimage customers, who were paying subscription or support fees to (ultimately) fund the development of Maya. How does that sound like a good thing to do to your customers? If we were told what Autodesk's real plans were for Softimage, we would have been to blame for not seeing the future (because it would have been laid out for us already). Being a public company does not mean you cannot give your customers an idea of your intentions. I am NOT referring to EOL for Softimage, because if we take yo at your word that it wasn't the plan for that product until end of 2013, then it wouldn't be on anyone's radar as a plan. What I am talking about is that Autodesk assumed that it could tell a half-truth (or essentially not tell the entire story) to keep customers placated with regards to the future of Softimage. This not only speaks of the apparent view by Autodesk that it's customers are stupid, but also seems to point out that Autodesk is not able to see that those same customers would be angry when/if Softimage failed to survive on 'Life Support'. It seems obvious to me, and should have to Autodesk, that basically maintaining Softimage would not be enough, and would be a self-realized death sentence for the software, especially when the ROI was calculated. If customers got angry and stopped paying subscription and froze their version of it because of a lack of innovation, one would think that someone with a reasonable amount of business experience could see that the situation was only going to get worse with the clear lack of innovation and advancement continuing with regards to Softimage. This would HAVE to lead to an EOL decision. Autodesk is a corporation, decisions are made based on money. We should have seen that, but Autodesk should have, too. Our biggest mistake, as Softimage users (besides trusting Autodesk to know things like this) was to not go with our gut feeling that Softimage's days were numbered. We all knew it in our bones in 2008, but we really knew it when the team was reassigned and a new team offshore was contracted. However, had we known the plan to minimally invest in Softimage a year and a half ago, we would have been that much further along the path to learning new software to run our businesses. Yes, some of that software would have been other DCC apps not in the Autodesk sphere. It was just rudely assumed that we would want to make the switch to May or Max. Perhaps most of us would have if we knew ahead of time. Now, all that has happened is Autodesk has alienated and angered formally loyal customers and been given a non-choice of either Max or Maya. We even had to argue to be able to use the software past the 2 year mark, so commenting as you do in the article that we can always keep using Softimage is an insult, since that WASN'T always an option, until we argued for it. Had we been given an honest roadmap of the plans to minimally invest in Softimage, we would have more control over our own futures. We could have controlled the client perception of why we were using a new software application, but now we are in a defensive position and are forced to make excuses for why we are A) either still using EOL software, or B) changing to another DCC. In either of those cases, Autodesk just passed the buck to us and hung us out to dry. Does this sound, to anyone, like a good way to treat valued customers? Does this sound to anyone like a company to put your faith in for the future? On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 2:02 PM, Cristobal Infante <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: more innovation from autodesk: http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/19/autodesk-buys-creative-market-jumping-into-maker-marketplace/ On 20 March 2014 17:54, Doeke Wartena <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: 17 years? Softimage is from 1988 if i'm correct. 2014-03-20 18:43 GMT+01:00 Jordi Bares <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>: When you think they just threw 17 years worth of work of so many talented people... very sad Jordi Bares [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> On 20 Mar 2014, at 17:35, "rs3d" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: I don't know if this article was posted here before,it's been hard to keep up with the sheer number of posts on the list nowadays... anyways...Q&A with AD: http://www.creativebloq.com/3d/autodesk-answers-your-questions-demise-softimage-31411069 later, Rui www.ruisantos3d.com<http://www.ruisantos3d.com> ...ping? ________________________________ [http://static.avast.com/emails/avast-mail-stamp.png]<http://www.avast.com/> Este email está liivre de vírus e malware porque a proteção avast! Antivirus<http://www.avast.com/> está ativa. -- Perry Harovas Animation and Visual Effects http://www.TheAfterImage.com<http://www.theafterimage.com/>
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