Autodesk announces new “Pay-as-you-go” rental model

This morning Autodesk announced a pay-as-you-go model for all the company’s desktop software including the latest Design and Creation Suites, Autodesk 3ds Max, Autodesk Maya and Autodesk Maya LT. A “hangout” was held this morning on Google this morning where Andrew Anagnost, SVP, Industry Strategy & Marketing for Autodesk and other industry specialists, discussed this new offering.

Businesses are increasingly adopting this type of model for consuming services and products as opposed to owning software. Options generally include renting, sharing or purchasing subscriptions such as this “pay-as-you-go” model. This way designers, engineers and architects no longer will have to be concerned about purchasing the next version of the software. New comers will also be able to get up and running on the software with few up-front costs, and get projects started with this software.

Options include quarterly and monthly or annual rental plans for customers who want to stay current with product updates, use of Autodesk 360 cloud services and support. This is a similar option to what Autodesk Subscription customers already enjoy. The rental plan will be available beginning September 2013 and applies to Autodesk AutoCAD Design Suite, AutoCAD Inventor LT Suite, AutoCAD Revit LT Suite, Building Design Suite, Entertainment Creation Suite, Factory Design Suite, Infrastructure Design Suite, Plant Design Suite, Product Design Suite, Autodesk Maya, Autodesk 3ds Max and Maya LT.

For those who have perpetual desktop licenses, nothing will happen to that option, rather, the pay-as-you-go option will offer them more choices.  The traditional desktop software comes out of the main budget for most companies, and occasionally the company may want to use another Autodesk product but not want to buy the software. This way they can apply the pay-as-you-go option to a project budget and use for the duration of a special project, not worrying about ownership.

Some companies farm out work and don’t want to buy software because it’s expensive. This option gives them the capability they can count on for limited amounts of time.

Anagnost said that rental plans are half of what it would cost to buy software up front, and in some cases it’s less. “If you keep for a year, then it’s a lower cost of entry.”

For small businesses who don’t always have the funds for software, this will make a lot of sense. “They can use the pay-as-you-go software for the time period they need it for. The Film industry is undergoing changes, and can no longer afford to buy large amounts of software and wait for business. They need to buy, use software, ramp down and buy again. These will be significant offerings for them.”

Tags: "Pay-as-you-go", Autodesk, Autodesk 360 cloud, Autodesk Subscription, Google, Revit

Categories: AutoCAD, Autodesk, Autodesk Infrastructure Design Suite 2013

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 10th, 2013 at 7:46 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.