See below
License ownership is being phased out. Major changes by Autodesk may make your on-going costs much higher if you don’t act soon. Beginning 2/1/16 only Suites will be available for purchase AS PERPETUAL LICENSES. Single products will be sold as RENTALS ONLY (Desktop Subscriptions). In the future Autodesk plans to sell ONLY Desktop Subscriptions -- NO Perpetual Licenses.
INVEST FOR THE FUTURE – TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THESE PROMOTIONS:
• Rebates up to $1,500 for new perpetual licenses when you add 2 or 3-year Subscription
• Rebates up to $1,500 for crossgrades and up to $400 for network activations
• Rebates up to $600 for new Desktop Subscription (annual, 2 or 3-year) when you trade up old 2005-2015 licenses
Understand your choices and consider how the current promos may help you. . . . .
YOUR CHOICES:
• Maintenance Subscription – for Autodesk licenses you own (perpetual)
? Renew each year to stay current
? Take advantage of the benefits – free upgrade, home use copy, access to earlier versions (up to 3X back), cloud credits and more
• NEW Desktop Subscription
? Software available for rental period only
? Internet required for periodic access verification
? Limited benefits – free upgrade, access to earlier version (1X back)
? Lower initial cost
HOW ELSE CAN WE HELP YOU?
• Get $2000 back from HP when you buy a full color scanner/copier; HP onsite plotter repair http://www.varisys.com/vs2007/PDFs/HPOffers.pdf
• BIM and VDC Consulting Services – helping our clients from bid to final deliverable - www.consultvarisys.com
• DOT Product -- mobile 3D Capture on a tablet
What's that? Something going on over at Autodesk? Sorry, I was busy getting my work done with BricsCAD.
Please explain further.
Currently we purchased licenses (seats) of AutoCAD Map 3D AND we are on maintenance subscription. If we choose to drop the licenses, we could continue to utilize the latest upgrade software forever.
I'm assuming this change you are talking about is yearly rental of the software, whereas the software will expire if you are not on a maintenance agreement.
I wonder if this is something I should be watching for when they give us the next upgrade..?
Well I called my reseller and they said that we could continue paying subscription on our "perpetual license" for the time being.
However "stand alone" license products such as Civil 3D, AutoCAD, and AutoCAD Map 3D will soon only be offered as a rental.
Here are the estimated prices for this new scheme.
You will notice that the subscription price for plain AutoCAD will be a min. of $1650 a year vs. the $500 - $600 a year that a perpetual license subscription cost now.
Remember that free upgrade to Infrastructure Design Suite (that was nearly forced down your throat)...
Check out the yearly cost to be on subscription. For MAP3D users that were naïve enough to accept a "free" upgrade...$750/year to $2940/year!!!!
Hmm.... I wonder if there will be ramifications to these types of business decisions?
Looks like a really good time to switch over to Carlson. 😉
Correct me if I am wrong - but this appears to be an advertisenment?
$2520 per year for C3D or $310 per month on a desktop subscription.
Good for project based needs with ramp up/down concerns.
I think you are going to see this on most CAD design packages in 5 years.
Autodesk, better or worse, tends to provide market direction.
> Hmm.... I wonder if there will be ramifications to these types of business decisions?
$140 per month for vanilla AutoCAD? 5 months of that will buy a non-expiring seat of BricsCAD Pro, which is the rough equivalent.
It looks like I made the switch at the right time. I'm not exactly a typical customer: I'm a one-man shop, I don't produce large volumes of maps, and I do a lot of custom programming to make the application do the things I need it to do. Still, I think this will drive a lot of small-to-medium outfits to the likes of Carlson and Microsurvey.
Oh good grief. He copied the announcement.
Jim, my re-seller was able to confirm what is being said. He said they have been to Autodesk training sessions to prepare them for the change. Sounds to me like there are a lot of unanswered questions at this point.
Like it or not, this is the future business model of all software, not just design software. Autodesk is not the first corporation to head down this path. If you are not familiar with the terms SaaS, PaaS, or IaaS, then you should probably start learning about them.
My view of the future is that most software we use now will be SaaS within the next ten years. I don't see this as a bad thing. There are a lot of benefits to be gained by having this, along with cloud computing, available to us.
Whether it's Microsoft, Autodesk, Bentley, or Carlson, every software company has to be looking toward moving in this direction. Midwest Surveyor is exactly right.
10-Apr