Fusion 360: a Q&A with Kevin Schneider
Last November, Autodesk introduced Fusion 360, the industry's first cloud-based CAD platform that provides surfacing, sculpting, and direct modeling features to users for a monthly subscription price of $25. We spoke with Kevin Schneider, director for Fusion 360at Autodesk, about how Fusion 360 was conceived and how he sees the technology evolving in the future.
Q: How did the idea of moving a CAD solution to the cloud come about?
A: After talking to many customers, we started thinking about how to develop new technology to address some of the common problems that they were having and that would match up well to emerging trends we were seeing. As manufacturing became more distributed, one of the common problems was not having a safe and effective way to collaborate across multiple geographically disparate sites. Many of them were using tools, such as Powerpoint and FTP sites, to do redlining and markup. We knew we could do better.
Q: What emerging trends did you identify?
A: If you think back 20 years there was a big transition from expensive UNIX workstations to more affordable Windows PCs, which were providing near enterprise workstation-level performance at a much lower cost. We saw pervasive cloud or infinite computing collaboration using new types of sharing services as sort of representing that same type of OS-level platform shift. It was clear that these customer problems mapped really well to what that platform change could offer.
Q: Did customers ask for CAD in the cloud?
A: No. I don't think anyone would say that customers asked for the cloud. Customers have business challenges; they have everyday needs. We saw the cloud as a platform that could be a really good fit to deliver some new solutions to solve those problems and that's what we set out to do.
Q: What do you see as the primary benefits to customers of CAD in the cloud?
A: Collaboration is a big benefit, but so is the ability to work just about anywhere, whether it's on a mobile device, a desktop device, or a browser. Anyplace you have connectivity, you should have access to keep working and keep collaborating.
Another big benefit is the low IT complexity and expense of cloud solutions. As users, you're not installing or administering, upgrading or updating them. You simply turn them on and use them.
Q: What was the thought process around offering Fusion 360 on a monthly basis?
A: We wanted to reduce the entry price for people to get into CAD. If you look back two or three years ago, if someone wanted to get into the design profession, it didn't matter what software they were looking at, it was going to be a $5,000 initial expenditure to get started, just to buy a seat of software.
Q: How does offering Fusion 360 software-as-a-service (SaaS) change the dynamics of your relationships with customers?
A: It allows us to engage with customers in real-time and involve them every step of the way with a customer driven development process. We update our service about every 6 weeks. Customers are asking for the things you expect from design tools and in our most recent update, we addressed 8 of the user's top 10 requests.
In addition, the common procedure for all software vendors was you'd work with one of their resellers or a direct salesperson and they would be very interested in your problems and they would be engaged with you. They would help you understand the benefits, you'd buy the software and typically you'd go to training. The investment for getting you to buy is all up-front. Once that's done, the risk to make it successful was largely your own.
Q: So by offering your software as a service, you're sharing the risk?
A: Absolutely. The customer has to renew and the renewal is an expression that the customer has gotten value from using your product or service. They are willing to continue paying for it. It really incents us as provider of these services to make sure we earn that renewal each month from the customer. If they don't renew, we're not doing our job. In our opinion, it's a much better relationship between the customer and the service provider because the customer is paying for a benefit while they get it and the vendor has incentive to stay engaged and make sure the customer is really successful on a long-term basis.
From the Autodesk Gallery, created by Theirry Dalet as a personal modeling exercise of a concept car.
A: It's a great solution for companies that work on a contract basis. They don't use it everyday and their work is cyclical so this allows them to move from a capital expense to an operating expense, allowing them to turn it off and turn it on, add or move seats really flexibly, which was something that customers we spoke with saw as a huge benefit. We're also laser focused on very small businesses, 50 people or less. That's the sweet spot for what we're trying to do and what we are offering and where the best fit to customers' needs is.
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