Further to extending the timeline on Network licence trade-in by one year, Autodesk has finally extended the trade-in offer to match
Before the pandemic hit, Autodesk had big plans to migrate its users from perpetual licences to named user licences. This also included the ‘retirement’ of Autodesk network licences, sometimes called multi-user subscription or floating licences, with a mandate that in the future every user should have their own individual licence.
Obviously, the move to named user licences, is potentially an issue for customers. Floating licences allow a number of people to share a single licence, as there are occasional users and CAD software is not cheap. It’s an incentive to move away from Autodesk network licences, it offered a trading deal, where users would get 2 named user subscription licences but every single Autodesk network licence. Subscription fee was also discounted for the next eight years, leading to substantial savings had customers replaced network licences with individual subscription licences.
With the pandemic rolling on and a strongly worded open letter to Autodesk from hundreds of global architects, especially complaining of increased cost of ownership, the company extended the retirement of Autodesk network subscription licences by an extra year. However, at the time the company failed to extend the two-for-one offer to match this extension. This gave IT directors a quandary, if they should save money now and deal with the problems of rolling out 19 the licences during the pandemic, or if they should maximise their extension of their network licences and pay the cost of new name do use of subscription licences at the end of the period.
Jeff Kinder, Autodesk’s Chief Digital Officer explained, “In March, we moved the retirement of multi-user subscription renewals to August 7, 2021, and delayed the launch of the multi-user trade-in offer to August 7, 2020. We did not want to introduce change when business-as-usual was hard enough.
“Fast forward to today, and a majority of eligible customers have taken advantage of the trade-in offer. The benefits of a cloud-based licence have proven especially valuable during the pandemic. The shift to named users has made it easier for customers to work remotely, optimize costs based on usage data, and improve collaboration.
“That said, we are still in the throes of the pandemic, and some customers have told us change remains difficult. To support those customers, and anyone else who needs more time, we are extending multi-user subscription renewals by another year to August 7, 2022.
“In addition, starting February 25, 2021, we will also provide customers the option to take advantage of the multi-user trade-in offer at their first and all future renewals between August 7, 2020 and August 7, 2023.
“Our hope is the added time will help some customers, including governments and education institutions, manage through the next stage of coronavirus. We know many customers with multi-user subscriptions are governments and we want to ensure they have continued access to solutions that meet their unique needs.
“Meanwhile, in our ongoing drive to provide customers with flexible purchasing options that align value with usage, we are accelerating efforts to introduce a cloud-based licence solution for occasional users. Some customers have shared that they have users who only require access to products a few days per month. We’ve listened and have been offering early access to flexible licence models over the past year. We are building off the success of those pilots, and plan to introduce a flexible solution for occasional users in the second half of 2021.”
Kinder recorded a video to communicate the changes.
