We wanted an engineering team? I don’t think that as a secret we said so at the time
Maurice Patel Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134 From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Paul Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2014 3:22 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: An Open Letter to Carl Bass I think every softimage user would concede to the arguments given by autodesk if we had all witnessed them try their utmost in the marketing of softimage in the past 5 years. However, it's been obvious from the outset of their plan and I believe that the fact this has occurred 5 years post acquisition us no coincidence. It was on the cards all along. Making excuses about sales is a nonsense considering the effort to drive those sales. And if softimage was doing so badly why buy it? Nothing adds up in autodesks favour. On 25 Mar 2014, at 19:13, Perry Harovas <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Hi Maurice, I appreciate the detailed answer. It does help to know the details, and of course, you certainly know your own business better than we do. One thing that just seems odd, why did I never see ads for Softimage? I understand that percentage wise, it was getting more ad dollars than Max or Maya (which in and of itself is weird, because they seemingly don't need advertising as much as Softimage did, but anyway). I would expect that I am more likely to notice a Softimage ad than a Maya user, because it already is something that I like and accept. Maybe that assumption is incorrect, but it seems to make some sense. I don't recall ever seeing an ad for Softimage. Ever. I don't doubt they existed, just that I never saw one. I have an almost insatiable thirst for CG news/content. It has been that way for 25 years now. Every day (multiple times per day) I scour the internet for information on 3D, Softimage, new CG innovations, software, articles, reviews. I read all the magazines I have time for, and even if I don't have time to read them, I flip through all the major ones, putting aside what I want to read later. With all of that, I would have thought I would have seen SOME advertising about Softimage. But I didn't! The only things I ever saw were articles about Lagoa (not ads, but articles), or articles about the acquisition. Why was that (I am honestly asking, I am not being snarky)? Also (and this has been asked so many times I feel that the answer to it is being withheld because it includes the location of Jimmy Hoffa's corpse), WHY WASN'T SOFTIMAGE PROMOTED ON YOUR HOMEPAGE? Seems like free advertising might be the best advertising when you are trying to bring up the sales numbers of a fledgling product, no? Thank you (and Chris) for answering these questions. We don't always like the answers you give, we may not always believe the answers you give, but that does not mean that I don't appreciate that you and Chris are trying to answer them anyway. Perry On Tue, Mar 25, 2014 at 1:07 PM, Maurice Patel <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Hi Perry, Softimage was marketed. It was marketed in ways that have, in most cases, actually proved successful for other Autodesk products but there are many factors at stake here. Hindsight is 20-20 but we used a model that actually worked extremely well for the Alias integration. We had one rapidly growing product (3ds max) added Maya and because of Autodesk's sales and distribution channel we were able to scale the Maya business dramatically without cannibalizing 3ds Max. Was it unreasonable not to expect the same results with Softimage? At the time of the acquisition all three product lines were growing fast and so it was assumed so - not that we did not know that it would not have its own set of problems - but we felt we could tackle them. When that did not work out we changed strategies to focus on Suites. Marketing is a mix of things: product, price, promotion, place. As mentioned above 'place' is critical. It is the means of distributing your product - it requires all kinds of investment to do probably including a lot of systems integration. We invested in making it available in every EDU bundle, through student downloads, Suites etc to get it into the hands of as many people as possible. Another is price. We kept the lower price and that initially was to see if this would broaden adoption - it did not. The third is product and the product is a great product. For promotion, we invested in integrating it into Autodesk systems and we actually invested more than other Autodesk products typically get given the revenue tier Softimage was in. What we did not do was maintain a separate web site for the product (we don't do that for any of our products). People often ask us why there were no campaigns to try and get Maya or 3ds Max users to switch to Softimage but the answer to that should be self-evident - and it was certainly never going to be a serious option for us. The main purpose of marketing campaigns is to generate revenue and so they tend to focus on the where there is a revenue opportunity such as getting Maya or 3ds max users current (upgrades). Once we introduced Suites, the best revenue opportunity for Softimage was to get customers to upgrade to Suites and that was the focus. >From a business (and therefore marketing) perspective the question was always: >could Softimage bring in net new business and how? Not how could it replace >Maya or 3ds Max revenue. Given that it was actually cheaper, replacing 3ds Max >or Maya would actually have meant a revenue decline not just a swap. >Ultimately the hope was always that ICE would offer enough value to 3ds Max >and Maya users drive Suite adoption. That was very much the product strategy >and where the development team focused and so that is what we marketed. And >yes I know that Softimage is more than just ICE and that it is a very capable >all round animation solution - as did Marc Petit and the other execs in charge >- but the strategy was to build, market and sell a suite of interoperable >products (which we spent a lot of money doing). As a percentage of revenue >Softimage got more investment than other products. In total dollar amounts a >lot less (because it was a higher percentage of a much, much smaller base) . >So whether we invested or not is relative to what point of view you take. Maurice Patel Autodesk : Tél: 514 954-7134<tel:514%20954-7134> From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> [mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] On Behalf Of Perry Harovas Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2014 10:39 AM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: Re: An Open Letter to Carl Bass Hi Chris, My appreciation of the effort you took to write all that, and the thought that must have went into it is considerable. I truly and honestly appreciate that you did that, and I look forward (more than before) to your second part where you explain why Autodesk can't just keep Softimage around (and perhaps why doing that is diffeent than doing that with Toxik and MatchMover). Does this solve everything? Does this make me a renewed Autodesk customer? No, but your email really helped a lot with regards to understanding the lay of the land as it has been leading up to now. One other thing that would be helpful is: Why Softimage was not marketed. Yes, you can blame (or partially hold as culpable) Microsoft and Avid as to the small sales numbers for Softimage, but after Autodesk acquired it, in many ways the marketing was FURTHER reduced. This, I believe, leads mostly towards the mindset people have that either Autodesk was trying to kill it, or Autodesk didn't care if it died, or Autodesk only bought it for the technology and if it sold that was icing, but that it wasn't a goal. Those things directly come from a couple things: Lack of Softimage appearing on the home page, lack of advertising, lack of features while under Autodesk. I would be interested in knowing how you respond to that. Again, much appreciated, Chris. Perry On Tue, Mar 25, 2014 at 10:28 AM, Emilio Hernandez <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]><mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>> wrote: Thank you for taking the time to response Chris. This is all clear to me as I bought a couple of Digital Studio stations at version 2.0 while it was still Microsoft. If it wasn't because they were dependable on the Intergraph video board that eventually got fried after 15 years, and they lacked of HD support, I will still be using them. Those turnkey systems were the ones that kept me out of the Inferno, Smoke, etc. solutions more expensive by far than the DS solution. I agree that Avid did not a lousy but a terrible job with the Softimage asset as they were running like headless chickens towards anywhere but where the useres needed, and that is when Final Cut got in. I understand where Autodesk is going, nothing I can do about it, even though I tried far beyond this list in ways that this is not the arena to talk about it. Still in your response I can't read the answer of: Why Autodesk is not willing to continue ship Softimage 2015, unsupported with an open SDK along Maya/MAX 2020? Maurice said because the inherent costs. You answered because of Autodesk wants to focuse in developing Bifrost or whatever new technology Autodesk is bringing. What is that inherent cost? Thinking of some... 1. Packaging Softimage into the Maya/MAX download, self extract for each new year release. 2. Server space for holding a larger file. 3. Keep the SI online help file In which way Softimage will drive your development resources away from focusing into the new tools if there is no one that moves a single line of code? I not doing so, you started to loose clients already... So what is costing more? At this moment seeing several users of Softimage becoming ex-clients of Autodesk at a faster pace, even faster than I think Autodesk expected. I seriously would reconsider the no Softimage policy after April 2016. Two years of uncertainty of what will be Autodesk decision... It is a long time. By then, I don't think that you will be able to get back what you are loosing now. But anyway, this is thing how they are now. And that is the decision of Autodesk on Softimage for now. To bad to end in an "Only time will tell..." statement. Thank you again. -- Perry Harovas Animation and Visual Effects http://www.TheAfterImage.com<http://www.theafterimage.com/> -25 Years Experience -Member of the Visual Effects Society (VES) -- Perry Harovas Animation and Visual Effects http://www.TheAfterImage.com<http://www.theafterimage.com/> -25 Years Experience -Member of the Visual Effects Society (VES)
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