After the Keynote and a quick lunch, was the media event where Autodesk summarized the year, took a high-level look at the next year, and made a couple announcements. The overall theme was the Cloud Changes Everything.

The Cloud Changes Everything

The session started with Scott Reese VP Cloud Platforms. He talked about how the Autodesk vision is to help people imagine, design, and create a better world. He echoed Carl’s statement about the convergence of industries and how the “Cloud Changes Everything”

AU Media People Will Design

How is the cloud impacting us? Production, Demand, and Product. We’re not patient, we want it now, and we want it fully customized… and everything is connected. The traditional concept to design to produce to operate and finally retire is gone. We no longer need to mass produce to make money and no longer need to wait until the end to find value in what we produce. The “new” method of making things is to personalize, collaborate, it’s flexible and aims to provide a truly great customer experience. Consumers want to buy your product, but they want it tailored for their needs. Collaboration is happening at the point of innovation. The manufacturing process is becoming flexible with the advancements in advanced manufacturing, including 3D Printing.

Autodesk is now Design | Make | Use and working to blur the lines between the “silos” Scott talked briefly about Fusion 360, PLM 360, and Autodesk 123D Circuits

The Cloud Changes Everything - Design Make Use

The customer example was Flare who is building smart home products, for example, vents connected to your home thermostat so that the temperature of your house manages the opening and closing of the vents. They are a Fusion 360  customer

AU Media Flare

We are entering the Era of connection where we are all instrumented and connected to others who are instrumented (for example Fitbit). Think about Smart Homes where all he things we are connected are connected to other things… also, think about smart cars that are aware of the things around them. This has and will lead to an overwhelming amount of data that a human cannot begin to comprehend…. drum roll please… lead to the introduction of Autodesk SeeControl for the Internet of Things. [Note: I was fortunate to be a VIP for the AU IoT event and plan to cover SeeControl in more depth later]. The SeeControl acquisition was “soft” announced a few months back, but this was the official introduction to the Autodesk portfolio.

SeeControl fits into Autodesk’s ecosystem as it is completely cloud-based and can be connected to sensors to collect data almost instantly. The example usage case was industrial where traditional maintenace was scheduled “just-in-case” replacement, but with sensors transmitting data SeeControl predicts wear and problems and schedules maintenance when its actually going to fail. Autodesk has over 60 customers already using it in production.

People will design, make, and use the connected future with Autodesk

Design Re-imagined and Project Wingman

Amy Bunszel, VP of AutoCAD Products, discussed “Design Re-imagined”. How the platform transition drives opportunity and she talked about the initial switch from mainframe to PC lead to AutoCAD and now the move is to the Cloud & Mobile. Again, the Cloud Changes Everything. Autodesk has already or will be shortly moving to continuous updates, pay-as-you-go subscription, making sure that data is always available, and providing an experience optimized for mobile. All Product Managers within Autodesk have been given a mission to change the customer experience.

This includes

  • Simplified…. Continual upgrades with “bite-sized” updates meaning you are always on latest version with none of the uninstall / reinstall pains
  • Personalized… based on the user-level of experience or how they like to work the product will adapt. The products will also provide better interoperability, customizations migrate easily, and use-based skill-building tips 
  • Connected… collaboration anywhere, anytime, with anyone and a coherent experience on desktop, web, mobile across any platform

Amy finished with the Project Wingman announcement which is a new application that runs along side the product providing support, tips, and suggestions based on your requirements. The project started about 6-months ago with AutoCAD / LT users and is available for testing now with the new beta. Scott and Gavin get an early opportunity as Australia and New Zealand will get Wingman very soon.