Open Letter To Carl Bass, President and CEO of Autodesk

[perryharovas]

Today I received a response from Carl Bass, President and CEO of Autodesk.

It was pretty much what everyone thought would happen.
He basically stated that Softimage users are 1/20th the number of
those of Maya or Max.
So, as expected, it all comes down to money.

Not that I fault them for that. I want to make that perfectly clear.
They are a public corporation, and I understand that making money
is highest on the list of priorities (even for non-public companies, this is
important, and not inherently "evil").

That there was no acknowledgement, especially from the highest level,
of the pain that
this inflicted upon Softimage users, I suppose, is not entirely
surprising, but thoroughly disappointing.

My father owned more than 30 restaurants in his lifetime, and the
number one edict he lived his life
and ran his businesses by was this:

The customer is the most important part of a business.
They may not always be right, they may not know the difficulty of meeting
their exact demands 100% of the time, but if they are treated with
respect, care and given every benefit
of the doubt, they will appreciate it, they will return and they may
even tell others about it.
He knew that the negatives that resulted from bad word of mouth
(especially in the pre-internet and pre-social media days),
would hurt his business financially much harder than whatever money he
might have to lose to make those customers happy.

Certainly far more importantly, he ran his business (and his family)
the same way. He taught my sister and I,
as well as his employees to do what was required to make people happy,
to be willing to admit mistakes were made,
or at least to acknowledge that someone had a bad experience, and to
make it as right as possible. This attitude moved from the top all the
way down.
My father made the customer know that HIS success, was because of
THEIR business.

That is not what Autodesk exudes (but to be fair, it never has), and
few large multi-billion dollar companies have this attitude.
Some do, and those are the companies where I will choose to spend my money now.

One of the hardest pills to swallow in all this debacle, though, is
the lying (especially by omission) regarding Softimage's
future, especially with regards to the comments Chris Vienneau made 17
months ago.

Softimage had already been planned to be relegated to few if any
updates. This is clear, and admitted
by Maurice. We should all have been told this. Making us guess, but
never knowing, and telling us that
they told us about the move to Singapore is NOT the same thing as
coming right out and telling us
that they status of Softimage had changed.

Look, assume we are stupid, tell us outright, but don't insult us and
expect us to
just think "Oh, they are right, they told us the team was being
outsourced to Singapore, we really should have known
that meant little to no real feature updates."

Is that how Autodesk treats their shareholders, by giving them some
information, but letting them guess the
real intent on their own? I hope not. Makes me really happy to not be
an Autodesk shareholder.

Well, while I appreciate a response from Mr. Bass (if indeed it
actually was written by him), it just proves that
the treatment of a company's customers starts from the top and works
its way down the latter.

By this letter, and certainly by the way everything was handled within
Autodesk during this EOL, I would say we are the lowest rungs on that
latter.

I am OK with that now. At least I know, and happily jump off the
latter, to make room for anyone who wants to climb on.
Be my guest, but watch your back, because Autodesk certainly isn't going to.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
BELOW IS THE RESPONSE FROM MR. BASS
----------------------------------------------------------------------------


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Carl Bass <carl.bass@autodesk.com>
Date: Sun, Mar 23, 2014 at 6:21 PM
Subject: RE: An Open Letter to Carl Bass
To: Perry Harovas <perryharovas@gmail.com>
Cc: Chris Bradshaw <chris.bradshaw@autodesk.com>


Dear Mr. Harovas,


Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts on the Softimage
retirement and I appreciate that you have choices. Our decision to
retire Softimage was not taken lightly. We recognize that there are
loyal Softimage users doing award winning work, but the fact is there
are just not enough Softimage users to justify continuing support
beyond the next two years. Today there are many times more users of
Maya and 3ds Max creating award winning work in new and innovative
ways. Our focus is to accelerate new capabilities in Maya and 3ds
Max, including incorporating capabilities that many admire in
Softimage, and brand new features that are critical to media and
entertainment artists' success today and tomorrow.

When these products were originally conceived, most everything was
done on the workstation or desktop and artists were working with
scenes of millions of polygons. Today we still have the desktops but
they are being used in conjunction with a world of cloud-based
collaboration and rendering, rapidly evolving touch and mobile
devices, and users who are working with scenes of billions of
polygons. We are very excited about this future and are making the
investments to be able to deliver great products and services to meet
the demands of the most talented artists and technical teams in the
world.

However, given the magnitude of the change in the industry, we have to
choose where we focus. Today there is only one user of Softimage for
every 20 users of Maya and 3ds Max. This does not diminish the
creativity of Softimage users nor the incredible work done in
Softimage. It does however influence the choice we have to make to
continue to innovate and advance our offerings in 3D visual effects
and animation sphere. We have decided that the best path is for us to
focus future development on Maya, 3ds Max, and new cloud and mobile
offerings while incorporating the best that Softimage has to offer. We
are providing support for all Softimage subscribers for two years and
a migration path to either Maya or 3ds Max with continued access to
Softimage for as long as users need it.

We are not choosing which products are better but we are choosing to
invest in the products that the vast, vast majority of our media and
entertainment customers use as we go forward. We realize that you and
all of our users also have the right to choose. We hope you choose
Autodesk and we will work hard to ease the transition from Softimage
to Maya or 3ds Max. I invite you and anyone to provide suggestions to
ease the transition and for future features that you would like to see
in our products.


Best,

Carl

[angelous4x]

Thanks for sharing this letter. and business is i guess just that. but I am sure. that things would have been different if Soft was marketed currently, and even promoted on there website. not hidden in some css/html corner of there website. Its been said a thousand million times. over and over. and if its a business decision its one thing. but if its a Shady business practice.

[angelous4x]

Thanks for sharing this letter. and business is i guess just that. but I am sure. that things would have been different if Soft was marketed currently, and even promoted on there website. not hidden in some css/html corner of there website. Its been said a thousand million times. over and over. and if its a business decision its one thing. but if its a Shady business practice.

[luceric]

Today there is only one user of Softimage for
every 20 users of Maya and 3ds Max.

I had suggested that in this forum a year or two ago, but I could not reveal the numbers. I kind of bursts that "Softimage is part of the big three" bubble. It's been "the big two" all along.

[perryharovas]

...and was destined to stay that way with no marketing.

[luceric]

...and was destined to stay that way with no marketing.

Playing devil's advocate here: hasn't Softimage had 25 years of marketing before Autodesk bought it?

[jamination]

why does it matter if it was number one in sales. that certainly wasn't the reason I bought it, on the contrary I was using the number one product at the time (Max) then switched to use the tools I thought had the best character animation package, and found it had much much more. Knowing the numbers now really shows how hard the XSI team was working to compete with Maya, if Maya had that much more income coming in then they should really have had a much, much better product, instead for agruments sake let's say they were on par with each other. Also, look at all the other products out there that are surviving without the Max and Maya sales numbers(probably more on par with Softimage), there are a lot, the most likely the only reason Softimage gets killed, is in the Autodesk world those sales are insulting compared to their other packages, and its more worth it to them to not keep it around.

[xsi_fanatic]

...and was destined to stay that way with no marketing.

Playing devil's advocate here: hasn't Softimage had 25 years of marketing before Autodesk bought it?

Even with Avid, it was still marketed poorly and the marketing became worse after autodesk acquired it.

[angus_davidson]

I think given the circumstances 20 to 1 was pretty good.

The pricing could have been made more competitive. When Modo 701 came out at $1500. Put Soft at that price and you would have seen a big difference.

Actually Market the product properly. It was getting to the point that Softimage was mentioned only after AD had been embarrassed into it.

Not actively dissuade users from buying it. This is my big bugbear. AD not only managed their best product like crap from a marketing point of view but they went out of their way to try and move people off of it and onto Maya.(note never max only maya) Anyone who has dealt with a re-seller will attest to this,. It normally gets to the point of you threatening to take your business elsewhere before they will even sell you anything Softimage related. Even then they will try and sell you a suite so it doesnt really count as a softimage sale.

I am sorry but this was willful on AD management part. There are just too many factors that point to it.

[Mathaeus]

...and was destined to stay that way with no marketing.

Playing devil's advocate here: hasn't Softimage had 25 years of marketing before Autodesk bought it?

Yeah it has, but AD is last owner, for a long time - about six years. For everyone who is not that much involved in Softimage story, perception became short, short as a telegraph message, and that is : AD stopped Softimage. Long story about past, nobody will listen such things.
So, nothing else than negative for that last owner. But corporation already expected the collateral damage, I'd believe.
Let's say that usual reaction, from what I've heard, is something like 'so what, AD is crisis, they have no money anymore'.

[Hirazi Blue]

The response coming from Carl Bass doesn’t change anything IMHO. It’s merely a confirmation of a stance we already knew AD took. A stance we already knew realistically we wouldn’t be able to change. Personally I didn’t even expect any kind of response, so someone (presumable not mr. Bass himself, though) taking some time to write this letter frankly is somewhat surprising. But I have learned nothing new from it. I think it’s probably best to shelve and archive it under “curiosities”. This doesn’t mean, I am not angry, BTW, it just means this letter does nothing to increase (or decrease) that anger.

As to the marketing: it doesn't really matter what happened before Autodesk took over. Autodesk was well-equipped to push the product more and they didn't. End of story, in more ways than one...

[grendizer]

Luc Eric, was it 20 to 1 in 2008 when AD aquired Softimage?
In France in 2008, there were many companies using Softimage.
Also when XSI Base was still active, there were a lot of job offers for Softimage works.
XSI Foundation made many new users, ICE was making colossal buzz... I'm not sure these 25 years of efforts gave no result.

[luceric]

Luc Eric, was it 20 to 1 in 2008 when AD aquired Softimage? In France in 2008, there were many companies using Softimage. Also when XSI Base was still active, there were a lot of job offers for Softimage works.

Define "a lot". Some north american clients have more than one thousand seats of Maya. Yes the proportions have always been a factor of ten like that

That's what my comment was about, not the quality of the product (obviously). There has a been a lot of people I've read speculate that there were fewer books or DT tuturials, or plug-ins because of some global conspiracy.

XSI Foundation made many new users, ICE was making colossal buzz... I'm not sure these 25 years of efforts gave no result.

In my opinion, ICE is not really making a colossal buzz, actually, and things were not "picking up steam" (as I've read elsewhere) That's confirmation bias. (Confirmation bias is seeking and giving undue weight to anything that confirm what we already believe, and blocking out the rest).

Foundation did bring a lot of new users who bought one copy. (I can't recall the number.. a couple of thousands maybe? I'd have to ask) These users would not be counted in that number, because the only thing Autodesk (or any company) can use is the number of paying users right now.

[Eugen]

Luc-Eric,
do you think Softimage, would it have been owned by any separate company as their sole flagship product, could have been maintained cost-effectively, including the initial investment?


Regarding the letter from Carl Bass: I started to write another rant on the mailing list, but ditched it again, because in the meantime I really got tired of the whole affair, and the bitter vibes.
True, it revealed nothing, just more of the same vague blurb we have heard already. It was an arbitrary decision in favor of the Maya lobby, and we have to go with that.

Be it as it may, let's look ahead and open our horizons and hone our skillset even further.

[Bullit]

Eugen

Autodesk would have killed Houdini, luceric stated a couple months ago that it doesn't rate Houdini successful putting it below Softimage.

Definitions of success vary.

[grendizer]

It's not "confirmation bias", it's just lack of information. When you don't have enough information, you rely on perception. My perception was that Softimage was in a good shape before the AD aquisition.
Are you implying XSI was already doomed before the AD aquisition? If yes, the pill would be easier to swallow... I guess