Interview with autodesk vp

EVENT REVIEW

Ideas

Autodesk Solution Day:

d e s i l a Re nto its 3rd year, similar Autodesk Solution Day events were also held in Malaysia, Thailand and Philippines in the ASEAN region.

Some 600 industry professionals and engineers participated in the Singapore event, which also included a range of sponsors.

Autodesk’s solutions are designed to help customers create, manage and share their digital assets more effectively. At the Autodesk Solution Day event, Autodesk demonstrated how its products can help customers turn ideas into competitive advantage by becoming more productive, streamlining project efficiency and maximising profits.

André Pravaz, Vice President, Autodesk South Asia Pacific kick started the event by driving up to the stage in shades and a black Ducati ST4 bike before giving the opening address. Themed ‘Ideas Realised’, Autodesk Solution Day is a showcase for the new Autodesk 2006 portfolio of products.

Autodesk’s approach to product design is simple: help customers realise their ideas – and realise them quickly and easily.

The event featured a keynote speech by Nirmalo Wilkes, Managing Partner for TBWA Singapore, who spoke on the ‘Disruption’ philosophy and framework, which is rapidly becoming the leading agent for change globally. ‘Disruption’ is a philosophy and methodology for challenging conventional wisdom and overturning assumptions and prejudices that get in the way of 56

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nference annual co ’s k s e d to Au Solution Autodesk platform, une 24 held on J Day, was s City the Raffle 2005 at ingapore.

Centre, S n o ti n ve nce n Co al confere The annu ies g s technolo showcase ivil c building, which help ri ctu ng g, manufa engineerin dustries ainment in and entert and win. compete

Denis Bra nthonne provided presenta a tion on so m e of the n features ew of AutoCA D 2006.

ts ready to rev André Pravaz ge re. up the atmosphe

Han Jit Kwan g explained th e Autodesk Su bscription pr ogramme.

imagining new possibilities and visionary ideas that help create a larger share of the future.

Denis Branthonne, Solutions Director, PTD Division, Asia Pacific and Ho Chow Jin, Pre-Sales Manager, South Asia Pacific, provided an AutoCAD 2006 presentation and demonstration of the features that advance core drafting functions for more intuitive and faster design.

Han Jit Kwang, Subscription Sales Manager, Asia Pacific, explained Autodesk Subscription which is a technology, support and training programme that provides the most current design technology, self-paced training and simplified license management.

Featuring the latest release of AutoCAD and other products in the 2006 family, the Autodesk Solution Day conference consisted of a series of technical sessions tailored for the manufacturing, building, construction and infrastructure industries. Each industry breakout track focused on helping engineers and designers leverage technology in turning great ideas into physical reality in their respective industries.

Autodesk 2006 includes best-inclass solutions for 2D design, basic conceptual design to advanced 3D modelling, animation, visualisation, data management and collaboration.

These products enable customers in the manufacturing, building, infrastructure and media and entertainment industries to turn ideas into reality faster than ever before.

EVENT REVIEW IN CONTROL

Q

Autodesk’s fiscal 2005 revenues increased 30 percent, what would you attribute to this sterling performance?

I think it is a sterling performance A because we broke through the US$1 billion dollar mark, well not just US$1 billion but US$1.234 billion, so it is a significant increase year-on-year. I guess what happened last year is a lot of things came into alignment. First of all, all of our business segments did well, and when I talk about business segments, I talk really about our manufacturing design segment, building & construction products, infrastructure solutions products, and we also talk about the generic CAD products like AutoCAD which we also call our Platform Technology Division and our Media & Entertainment Solutions division which used to be called Discreet.

Its not often that in a business, everything you do happens to work. On top of that, we have been very conscious of introducing our customers to our subscription program, and the last couple of years in Asia and in the last four to five years in America and Europe, we have been offering our customers a subscription program which for a small annual fee, keeps their software current, gives them access to some websupport and e-learning online, so they can download training and tutorial materials.

What is the take up on the Q Autodesk Subscription Program and how much did it contribute to last year’s results?

The take up on the subscription A has been very good. As a matter of fact, last year’s subscription increased 57 percent year-onyear. What it means for us as a business is that we have a solid base of business to work from and to start the year already. We already know we have so many

Turning Ideas Into Reality André Pravaz, Vice President, Autodesk South Asia Pacific talks to Goh Tz’en Long about some of the factors behind Autodesk’s success. customer subscriptions and a certain amount of revenue so it is changing the dynamics of the business in many ways.

The other thing is, we have still very strong sales of new products or new seats sales and that combined with the accumulative subscription gets tremendous here. We are on a yearly release cycle for most of our products.

Some are even faster cycle releases

for newer products such as Revit.

But on the whole, you will get a new product from us once a year.

Now it takes a lot to coordinate that and to bring that to market but our customers are saying that they want these features and these benefits because they want to be competitive. By releasing products year after year, we are giving our customers certain knowledge that the products are evolving and it is Aug | Sep 05 IndustrialAutomationAsia

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EVENT REVIEW

and AutoCAD Electrical grew 56 percent basically, that is quarter-toquarter (Q1-to-Q1). We are seeing a very strong adoption, especially on mechanical products. Inventor, as a product is five years old… we went up to release 10 of Inventor, that product has matured enormously and the reality is that we outsell any of our competitors every single quarter. We sell more Inventor seats per quarter than any other competitor. We have done so now for nine quarters in a row. It is really coming into its own and I think Autodesk Inventor has really made a reputation as a tremendous mechanical design and 3D modelling product. seeing really that they are getting benefits from those products. So a combination of all these things has meant for a tremendous year last year.

Based on last quarter’s performance, AutoCAD Mechanical

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Q. What is the growth forecast for Q the Southeast Asian region?

A

A. Let’s talk about the company as a whole first and then we can talk about the Southeast Asian region

in generic terms. The company and the guidance from our CEO, Carol Bartz at the last Wall Street briefing was net revenues of about US$1.45 billion to US$1.5 billion.

So the company is predicting to have a good year.

Now if you look specifically at Asia, Asia tends to be growing a bit quicker than the company overall typically. Mainly because we have new markets which are very high growth economies such as China, India, and in Southeast Asia, places like Thailand are doing very well. Singapore of course has had its share of issues, especially quite a lot of manufacturers moving out of Southeast Asia to India and China. Having said that, our business in Singapore and Southeast Asia is doing well.

As a matter of fact, our business in this region has doubled in the last three years, and we expect to continue doing very well.