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Autodesk to end perpetual licensing

Last Updated 17 December 2015, 18:24 IST

Autodesk, the $2.5-billion, Nasdaq-listed, US-based 3D design, engineering, and entertainment software development company, has announced the gradual transition of its flagship product, AutoCAD, and a few others, to subscription-only from its existing licensing model.

The company will cease selling its perpetual licences for all its standalone products including AutoCAD, Autodesk 3DS Max and Autodesk Maya from January 31, 2016. New licences for these products will be available for multiyear, annual, quarterly, or monthly terms.

“The yearly subscription will cost about one-third of the perpetual licence fee and annual management fee, while a three year amount will be equivalent to the perpetual licence,” said Pankaj Gauba, Country Manager, Channels (India and SAARC), Autodesk.  Autodesk charges 15 per cent of licence fee as annual management fee, in case of perpetual licences. But there would be no management fee in case of the subscription model.

Active maintenance subscription agreements on previously purchased perpetual licences will continue to be renewable, he added. In the first phase of this transition, new seats of most standalone desktop software products will generally be available only as a desktop subscription beginning February 1, 2016.

The company has also decided to entirely shift to the subscription model by August 1, 2016, by covering its balanced (suite) products also, said Gauba. “This will have significant benefits for all stakeholders, including the channel partners and customers as they now have the flexibility in using our products,” added Gauba.

“We are not shifting to the cloud. We are just shifting to the subscription model. The software would be pretty much on-premise for the customer. The only thing that our subscribers will receive from the cloud are update messages,” said Gauba, when asked about the rumoured shift towards cloud technology.

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(Published 17 December 2015, 18:24 IST)

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