Autodesk To Follow Adobe's 'Rent Our Software' Business Model?

dryriver writes "Autodesk will detail in October an 'evolution' of its business model that includes more options to rent its software, rather than buying it, CEO Carl Bass said in an earnings conference call yesterday. Bass promised an array of new rental options by the end of the year that he said will give customers more subscription options and increase the predictability of the company's revenue over time. Bass stressed that Autodesk wasn't upending its existing model, but augmenting it. 'Recall that, just 10 years ago, we added subscription maintenance to our revenue stream,' he said. 'That was a big change at the time, and there was no shortage of skeptics. Today, that's a billion-dollar business and represents over 40% of our revenue. Suffice it to say that transition was a huge success.' Analysts on the call immediately started drawing comparisons with Adobe's move earlier this year to a subscription-only pricing model for its Creative Cloud software. Bass said that Adobe's success made Autodesk more confident about the feasibility of rental pricing, but suggested that Autodesk's move wouldn't be quite as aggressive."

Comments

Autodesk is also forgetting about it's customers

[BulletMagnet]

I work for a Medium sized GC and we have the pleasure of using their Building Information Modeling (BIM) suite.

13K PER SEAT for the product (BDS Ultimate)
Crappy compatibility with previous versions (which are released yearly) - Everyone on the design and build teams basically all need to be on the same version.
Does not like running Side By Side older versions so it's not like you can plant them all together.
Holy Megabloat - Last year's installers came on Autodesk-monogramed 32GB USB3 sticks ... and the installer damn near filled UP the stick. This year, they decided that all of us Subscription having clients wanted to download 32GB - all to save the cost of sending media, even if we've historically requested media (That's what I pay for your cheap @#(*^(@&*^)
Frustrating at times - today I'm trying to install the 2014 version on a $6,000 Precision Workstation spec'd for Revit - I started at 10AM, it's still installing - very slowly, but moving along. Same on our M6700 workstations.

Not the least bit surprised that Autodesk software gets pirated ... they gouge the legitimate license holders outrageous fees for this stuff....I can't imaging how Ma & Pa Construction Company could afford this.