Last year Autodesk made the move to transition to a subscription model in their Entertainment Creative Suites. This is a major move for a software company that has historically been completely perpetual. But as other software companies have found, their entire customer base does not move wholesale to the new model. And the decisions made about upgrades, transition pricing, and perpetual versus subscription price levels can accelerate or slow-down that revenue shift. They chose to price their annual subscription fee at approximately ½ the price of the perpetual fee. This is a pretty conservative price point, and will allow them to make this transition slowly. My prediction is that after they see the rate of growth on subscription, and assess what new market penetration they have gained, they may reduce that subscription rate or offer some bundled discounts to accelerate subscription adoption.
Despite the increasing demand and pressure for subscription models, it isn’t easy to make this kind of transition in a large established software company. Kudos to the team and the executives that made it happen. The link below attests to the success they are having and the analyst reception to this move.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/2068303-autodesk-perfectly-manages-its-business-model-shift?isDirectRoadblock=false&source=email_rt_article_readmore&uprof=45
