Autodesk CEO

Autodesk’s new CEO

Martyn Day caught up with Andrew Anagnost to hear the new Autodesk CEO’s vision for the company, including subscription, enterprise licensing, 3D printing and the future of Revit

In February, after being at Autodesk Autodesk with two acting co-CEOs, longon and off for over 24 years, compa- time Autodeskers Andrew Anagnost ny CEO, Carl Bass, stepped down. who pretty much ran the move to the Having run Autodesk since 2006, company’s business model and Amar Bass changed the company culture to Hanspal, who was in charge of all prodfocus on product innovation, developing uct development. Meanwhile the board new code streams, addressing new design pondered internal and external candiareas, with a focus on manufacturing. dates for the role. The company’s business model also In June, Autodesk announced that changed towards delivering services on Anagnost had won the job and on that the cloud with a move from perpetual news Hanspal decided to immediately licensing to subscription. leave the company. In just a

While Bass was planning few weeks the company had to leave his role after 11 lost two of its most experiyears, he also fell foul to enced product development active investors, Sachem champions but was now free Head Capital and Eminence of the direct interference of Capital, which bought the active investors. enough stock to join the Anagnost is certainly a safe board of directors and pair of hands, he has been demanded changes to the responsible driving the new company’s business to make business model, and over it more profitable, quicker to reward shareholders – something which Autodesk ‘‘ I am super the decades has held various roles within Autodesk, product managing in the used to be focussed on under excited about manufacturing division, and previous CEO, Carol Bartz. the industrial- he had been Chief Bass offered a refreshing change by investing more in product diversity and isation of construction, Marketing Officer and SVP of Business Development. Anagnost was one of the attempting to drive value in that presents a original driving forces its tool suites. The active investors wanted more profit now and went on record lot of problems which need to behind the development of Inventor in the company, Autodesk’s first serious new saying they wanted to be solved code stream after AutoCAD, replace Bass as CEO. With the transition to subscription creating a ‘trough’ as income and prior to joining Autodesk, he worked at Lockheed Aeronautical Systems and ’’ changed from big perpetual acquisitions NASA Ames Research Center. to long term payments, as investors love Anagnost inherits a company with a more regular subscription more than buoyant share price and gets to continue ‘joining fees’, eventually Autodesk share with his model of moving the $2.14 bilprice rose by 70-80% on the prospect of lion company to Subscription and the higher income in the future with new cloud, but he can now obviously control subscription model. A deal was reached all aspects of the company, including with Bass stepping down if the investors product development direction. At also left the board in February. This left Autodesk University in London, AEC Magazine had a Skype call with Anagnost to find out a little more of his vision for the company and to hear his views on some key areas.

AEC Magazine: Historically you have come from the manufacturing side of the business, so which of Autodesk’s divisions is your natural passion?

Anagnost: I have a passion for solving really big problems. There’s no doubt about my background being in manufacturing but there are two areas I’m really excited about. One is that I am super excited about construction — and I guess I am cheating a little bit here, as it’s industrialising and we have the opportunity to bring the BIM model into construction. Here I think it’s exciting for our customers and for Autodesk, I think we have a really big value which we can add, as we have a lot of knowledge as how models progressing in manufacturing as models become more important in driving that process.

And the other area that I am excited about is getting us to push button manufacture. I know it sounds whacky at the moment but five years from now we are going to be really close to automate the process of having a really complicated 3D model, pushing a button and getting a part come out the other side from a multipurpose factory. I am super energised about that.

So I am super excited about the industrialisation of construction, that presents a lot of problems which need to be solved and we have these push button manufacturing issues that we are monitoring. So that’s what I’m looking at in the long-term.

In the short-term, I have more customer based objectives. I’m excited about subscriptions and collections; we aren’t there yet, and I’m going to make sure that they get there.

AEC Magazine: Autodesk has divested ing a small fortune — all of those things suspicious about what’s going on, but itself of its 3D printer (Ember) and seems will be super valuable. I think when all these new guys are emailing us saying to be getting out of hardware, although you that is stitched in customers will start to you just put food on my family’s table. still have Pier 9 manufacturing facility, and feel differently. You probably don’t see both sides of this. I replicating that in Portland and Boston Wall Street kind of co-opted our sub- see the difficult side and recognise all the offices. What’s the view on hardware now? scription transition, but that’s not how we work Autodesk needs to do to solve this started this. Our goal is to become a cloud and build trust. And then there’s the Anagnost: You remember the rise of company, which means our goal is to other side where we created a pool of desktop publishing? The world changed change the complete value chain with a trust… and if I can bring those two togethwhen Adobe came out with PostScript different set of price points. I think in all er then it’s a home run for everybody. because what you saw is what you got the rough-and-tumble of people talking coming out of the printer. Our goal is to about the “bad” thing we were doing, peo- AEC Magazine: Will you be a hands-on make sure what you see is what you ple had forgotten the good thing we were CEO like Carl Bass was? make and it’s much more important and doing. When Wall Street gets involved valuable that we played the PostScript and people start paying attention, the Anagnost: I’m pretty deep into everyrole in manufacturing, than play a hard- maintenance base feels like we’re raising thing that this company does, which is a ware vendor role. So if we’ve got a dollar prices but as a whole bunch of customers curse and a blessing for people that work to spend we’re going to spend a dollar on who [due to their purchasing experience here. Carl went deep a lot in product, I’m the development of PostScript and the of Autodesk products] think we’ve low- probably going to go deep in multiple new types of automation from manufac- ered prices. It’s the whole Yin Yang of all things. Things I am passionate about – turing rather than building hardware. of this. The original goal was to become a construction and push-button manufacEmber was a test bed of the technology so cloud company, with cloud price points all turing but also with the sales force and we can see how it worked and get experi- the way through our value chain. customers. So yes, I’m going to be pretty ence with that. It was never going to be hands-on. our mainline business. AEC Magazine: We have yet to meet anyone who signed an ELA Agreement AEC Magazine: What’s your vision for AEC Magazine: On Autodesk subscrip- [Enterprise Licence Agreement – lasts for route to market and resellers, changes to tions, there is an issue. Products like 3 years for biggest Autodesk customers] margins are reducing the number of VARs? Revit have not met the expectation of companies that have invested in them. Yes, Revit’s a mature product so there’s a velocity issue ‘‘ In the pre-construction side, construction planning, 4D and 5D, there’s still a lot of Anagnost: There’s no doubt, it’s already happening. We will have a larger, smaller partner channel, there’s no but customers are concerned value to mature in Revit that we haven’t given doubt about that. The numas to the value they are get- to the customers yet, and we know what it is ber of channel partners we ting. Having gone from yearly release to bi-annual the ‘value’ is also spread out and possibly less recognisable. because they complain about it ’’ have has dramatically decreased over the last three years. When you look at our business three years out and But at the moment you are asking cus- in the AEC space who is happy and we then five years out, we are going to be tomers to move from perpetual licences have talked to a lot. The price hikes have doing at least 50% of our business to subscription to pay more for some- been so big that they can’t quite believe it. through channel partners. So we are still a thing they were already unhappy with Subscription is asking firms how much channel company five years out – and by the value of. they want to pay for their tools. It’s not the way that half our business is bigger business as usual. than the size of business we have today. So Anagnost: There are a couple of things that means there is a huge role for VARs in we can do. First off, there’s still a long way Anagnost: I agree with you. I don’t think our business. We do not sell word processto go for Revit in two constituencies. If it’s business as usual. I think some cus- ing software. We sell complicated stuff. you talk to architects there’s still a long tomers are struggling with the pricing, The future of our partners falls into list of features that they would like to see but here’s the dichotomy I have put in three segments. They’re going to be a coland we have made progress with them front of me. Yes, the maintenance base is lections channel, they’re going to be a but there’s a long way to go. And second- struggling with this, asking “what’s consumption channel (which is going to ly, in the pre-construction side, construc- going on?” and “where is the value?” I be an increasing part of our portfolio, tion planning, 4D and 5D, there’s still a lot talk to them and I even call the one-man pushing buttons for one time value add is of value to mature in Revit that we haven’t shops, as well as the big guys, and I say going to be huge), and third they’re going given to the customers yet and we know this consistently: I understand and I to become third-party developers all over what it is because they complain about it. want you to give us a year to prove to you again. They’re going to get back to where

We also have to effectively blend new that we are delivering value, don’t leave they were 30 years ago, customising types of capabilities into the product and us. I have this conversation over and over what we do, but that will be on the Forge a lot of those are going to be cloud-based. again but I have to juxtapose this with platform, not on the desktop. There’s Looking at Collaboration for Revit and the hundreds of thousands of new seats really no future any more for a partner Quantum which is on the same continu- that are coming in from people who have that just sells AutoCAD or LT. It’s not um, when we get some of that stuff work- never bought from us before. where the business is going. ing in a mainstream way, without it cost- So our existing customers are deeply ■ autodesk.com