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Issue #594 : : March 2, 2009 |
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In this issue:
Autodesk's Q4 Propped Up by Maintenance
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The Cloud Disappoints People believe in the cloud, but the cloud does not believe in us. Last week's 4-hour GMail and Google Apps authenitification outage is not the first, but was one of the most visible, press-wise. A blogger wrote: "When events like this happen, it brings up the scariest point when depending on the cloud: if it goes down, all of our services will also go." [Sorry, no attribution, the link is gone.] Robert Scoble put it succinctly < scobleizer.com/2009/02/17/ownership_facebook/ >: "They can go out of business. They can delete your account. They can make money off of your content. They probably all have wacky stuff in their terms of services. This is true for Flickr. For YouTube. For Twitter. For Facebook. For all of them."
Those of us who grew up in the mainframe era understand this well. When the 1970s mainframe went down, all our terminals went down. We felt helpless for we did not know when we could continue working. This is the reason we voraciously embraced the 1980s PC, because it gave us two strengths: 1. We gained control of our own computing. (Plus, PCs fail less often than terminal connections to mainframe computers, in my experience.) 2. We gained redundancy. (I have multiple computers, along with backups on external drives. If one computer fails, it takes moments to switch to the drive to the next computer, and resume working.)
The cloud is convenient; I use it on a casual basis. But I cannot rely on it. Autodesk's Q4 Propped Up By Maintenance With Q4 revenues falling 18% from a year ago, Autodesk ceo Carl Bass summed up his company's financial situation thusly: "The results that Sue [Pirri, vp of finance] and I will outline today are not what we’ve been accustomed to over the past several years and we are disappointed by them. The global economic downturn is now significantly impacting each of our major geographies and all of our business segments." (Bass is also interim chief financial officer.) But the picture is worse than indicated by the 18% drop in revenue, for revenues from new seats declined 33%. It is primarily deferred revenue from subscriptions (maintenance) that is masking the extent of the financial severity; subscriptions were up 17%. When any company collect a subscription payment, they must delay recognizing the revenue until the service is delivered. For magazines, subscription fees are typically split into 12 parts; in the case of Autodesk and other CAD vendors, the fee is split into 4 parts. In Q4, the company recognized revenue it received from customers some 9-12 months ago. With $569 million in deferred revenue (and unshipped product orders), recession hasn't affected recognized subscriptions revenues -- yet. Although deferred subscription was up 9%, Autodesk expects the numbers to fall as customers lay off employees, and no longer maintain software licenses for empty seats. "I think there is some potential going forward that things could get so bad that people start stop paying for maintenance," added Mr Bass. Revenue fell in all of Autodesk's lines of software: 3D modeling software: -1%.
"AEC industries have been hit much harder thus far than manufacturing," noted Ms Pirri. Revenue fell in all of Autodesk's sales regions: Europe, Middle East, Asia: -16%
"I think the Antarctica has been relatively immune, maybe Greenland as well, although not Iceland, as we all found out," joked Mr Bass. The only other positive notes were that government sales are "on the upswing," and direct sales suffered less than sales through dealers. Autodesk has a Partner Assistance Program that helps resellers. Heather Bellini of UBS wondered if Autodesk would cut its operating expenses back to 2006-7 levels, now that their revenues were at the level of a couple years ago. Mr Bass: "You're saying if we were able to do this level of business with this kind of cost structure, we should be able to do it again." Ms Pirri agreed: "But as we look at the cost base [operating expenses], there is reason for us to think that if it continued to change, we will have to take further action and we are currently assessing what those actions might be." The company has already announced $130 million in cuts. Richard Davis of Needham wanted to know if Autodesk could get more money from companies using unlicensed software. That's not so easy, Mr Bass responded. "Some of the small-medium companies that we would go after don't actually have the money to pay [fines and license fees]." Are there any signs the economy bottomed out yet? Mr Bass's gloomy assessment: "No. I don't really see any signs and what I'm really looking at are the broad economic indicators." He expects, however, that Autodesk will benefit from the huge stimulus spending in the United States and China. Even if the projects don't make sense: "There is a lot of ways to build building bridges to nowhere, I would say in the US, 535 [congress + senate] people get involved in it, it becomes more likely." He hopes government will instead spend infrastructure money intelligently. Finally, a requiem for financial analysts no longer with us: "Half the analysts that used to be on the call, the institutions no longer exist. So stranger things have happened." The company expects Q1 revenues to continue the downward trend, ranging between $400-$440 million.
Bentley Systems announces ProjectWise PDx Dynamic Review Service for visualizing, querying, analyzing, and annotating complete PDS [plant data systems] models extracted from PDS project databases. Later this year, the company plans to ship OpenPlant Modeler V8i as the first 3D plant modeling software based on the open ISO 15926 data model. www.bentley.com/en-US/Promo/OpenPlant/default In related news, Bentley launches Be Employable help outplaced architectural, engineering, construction, and geospatial professionals update and upgrade their technology skills. You get free access to Bentley’s software and training, plus hiring tips. www.bentley.com/beemployable - - - SketchUp can tag models in and under the oceans of Google Earth. More info here: sketchupdate.blogspot.com/2009/02/modeling-for-ocean-layer-in-google.html CCE add PMI [product manufacturing information] and ShrinkWrap (detail reduction) capability to EnSuite v2.2, its software for sharing product info among non-CAD users within corporations. www.cadcam-e.com/EnSuite2 Graphisoft's Virtual Building Explorer lets you wander through virtual building projects in a video game-like manner, and with graphical renderings such as hidden line, shaded Open-GL, or global illumination. Seven-day demo version available from www.graphisoft.com/products/archicad-solutions/virtual-building-explorer/ Lattice Technology is imminently releasing its most lightweight 3D format ever: XVL v10 has 2x more compression than previous formats. www.lattice3d.com/company/xvlv10_1.html Geometric release NestLib 2009 R1 with multi-core support, end-to-end inclined guillotine cuts for non-rectangular part, and parts of different materials and thickness. nestlib.geometricglobal.com Bricsys offers a Volume Licensing Agreement that allows customers to install Bricscad with a single license key on every computer within a defined user base. www.bricsys.com/volumelic Autodesk plans to launch Inventor, AutoCAD Mechanical, AutoCAD Electrical, Alias, Autodesk Moldflow, Navisworks, Showcase, 3ds Max Design and Vault software -- all numbered 2010 -- in late March. [Interesting that the link in the press release is to a purchasing page, rather than an informational one: www.autodesk.com/purchaseoptions .] And Apex Computer Training has video tutorials for Revit and AutoCAD; first three chapters are no-charge. After that, it's just $30 for the entire library. www.computer-training-software.com/revit-building.htm - - - These were some of the news items that were posted during the last week at the WorldCAD Access blog < worldcadaccess.typepad.com >:
Seminars & Conferences SPAR 2009: 3D Imaging and Positioning for Engineering, Construction and Manufacturing is Mar 30-Apr 1 in Denver CO USA. wwww.sparllc.com CIMdata 2009 Vendor Forums: First ODA World Conference by The Open Design Alliance is Apr 27–29 in Leiden, The Netherlands. www.opendwg.org/conference (I'll be at this conference.) Creaform's Handyscan 3D Rendez-vous 2009 is May 20-22 in Quebec City, Canada. www.creaform3d.com/rendez-vous
Magazine/eZine/Weblog Updates CADalyst magazine will continue to publish its print edition through Longitude Media. Dr Walt updates his Web site at www.docwalt.com
People/Companies on the Move Intergraph celebrates its 40th anniversary (its name is short for "interactive graphics," a radical concept in the 1970s.) www.al.com/business/huntsvilletimes/index.ssf?/base/business/1235902588316220.xml&coll=1 (h.t. Adena Schutzberg) Surfware opens its Surfware Demo and Training Center in Camarillo CA USA. Virtalis expands into the US by launching its Virtalis Inc subsidiary. "Surprisingly," says Guy LaBelle, "the US lacks a 3D visualisation company that does both hardware and software." JETCAM International opens JETCAM ITALIA Srl as its distributor in Italy. think3 signs a Master Distributor Agreement with thinkUSA to distribute CAD and PLM software in North America. nVidia names David White as exec vp and cfo. Mr White is the former cfo of Sanmina-SCI Corp.
Market News Cimatron reports Q4 revenues of $10.4 million, up 1% from a year earlier; FY08 revenues were $41 million, up 43.1%. Net income for Q4 was $0.7 million, while net income for the year was the same.
Letters to the Editor Re: Dennis Manning's World's Fastest Motorcycle "We have a mutual connection; a friend of mine holds the worlds record in his class at 182.540 mph on a '69 Triumph Trident that he trailers behind a 1950 Rolls-Royce. "Anyway, Dennis said that the shape of his motorcycle is not based on an airplane, but is modeled after a Pacific coho salmon. Water is much denser than air, and the coho expends the least amount of energy on its long upriver swim to spawn. He refers to the 0.08 number as the "drag coho-fish-ient".
Re: Really Secure Software "I am having a discussion with [a national defense department] about Bricscad as a replacement for AutoCAD. They run AutoCAD out of the box, so I think compatibility is no problem, other than a few drawings from Mechanical 2006. "But they keep on talking about some kind of security certification. I have searched at public certification authority for IT security, and I cannot find AutoCAD or any other CAD program on the list of certified products. "It seems like CAD programs are not relevant, as they list firewalls, operating systems, access control systems, etc. Maybe some of your readers know?" The editor replies: "It could be the security certification applies to the software, rather than the drawing files. When Microsoft did its pre-launch marketing for Windows NT, it claimed that NT had C2 security; only years later did we find out that C2 referred to a computer that ran software in a locked room with no outside connection. So, C2 applied to ANY software that does not rely on an outside connection. "If software requires an Internet connection, such as to activate it, then it would fail C2. So, Windows Vista would fail C2."
Re: Voice Technology "I started to get sore wrists a couple years back and have been using the below since: www.nuance.com/naturallyspeaking/ "It is fantastic, especially for those longer, more detailed writings. If you need to bang off 20 quick messages, the keyboard is easier but this stuff is good enough now that you could do computer programming via voice." - - - "Your articles are as good as ever."
"I never was really mainstream full time CAD. My background is construction of retail gasoline facilities and I bought and taught myself AutoCAD LT V1 in 1995 or so. I took several local classes but did not really get much out of them. The instructor always had to teach at the pace of the slowest student. I remember an hour and a half of trim: 'No you can’t trim that, you have to use erase.' "I really got the knack of the program by studying a book on LT. I went through the entire book, drew every lesson, over approximately three months. I upgraded through LT 2007 and have a working understanding of paper space and layouts. I use the program for shop drawings, environmental hydrology studies, as-builts, simple stuff really. Array is my favorite command. "Thank you very much for your column. I have always enjoyed it and learned the pulse of the industry from it. I first read your work in Cadalyst."
Spin Doctor of the Moment "We're Making Charter Stronger"
Notable Quotable "For me, Microsoft is so last century. They are not the problem."
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