Martyn Day: The Alias acquisition has provided Autodesk with a lot of technology and a seat in nearly every major automotive firm. Isn’t there a gap between the capabilities of a product like Inventor and the users of Alias?

	With the acquisition of Alias, Autodesk users will be able to go from concept design right through to manufacturing.

MD: Will it be sold through the existing Alias channel or will Autodesk’s also be selling the Alias products?

RK: Alias has a pretty diverse product set and it will go through the Alias direct channel, as well as our own, with others going through our dealers. The higher-end Automotive sales will go direct through Autodesk. Alias already has a relatively small direct channel and we intend to grow the direct channel – but that’s a pretty small part of their business.

MD: Do you intend to focus on Automotive and increase your technical capability in this market?

RK: We intend to grow our Automotive distribution. We already do drivetrain but it’s not my intent to try and displace Catia. With Alias you can design a car, as it is done in many automotive companies today, but Alias is a design tool not an engineering tool. I think it would be a mistake to try and get it to do both, we need to keep it as a design tool because it’s solving a different problem.

MD: So what are your aspirations in Automotive?

RK: I would say I don’t know yet. We have lots of opportunities there to grow that business, but I don’t intend to go and compete with Dassault for door panel design. I think we can grow our automotive business greatly. Facing facts, Dassault’s Catia has the body design part pretty much wrapped up. There are other opportunities in automotive that we are much better at; we can grow our automotive.

MD: What were the key benefits of getting Alias?

RK: The key is what I could do with my overall coverage; I can now go from concept design to manufacturing. We have been on a path of buildling a very competent mechanical solution and so I think Alias has given us a very new part of the design facet. There are lots of things you can do in what’s called the PLM market but we are focused at the heart of the process: Concept design, Engineering and Detail design, Release Management, Sourcing and supplier Collaboration.

MD: You recently bought an analysis company?

RK: We purchased Solid Dynamics and this has a number of different angles and applies to every single market we are in, because Dynamic Motion analysis is useful everywhere and it fits in with our Automotive initiatives, some of the most extensive users are applying this technology to car simulation. Our product can handle some pretty sophisticated dynamic suspension systems. While it’s a big automotive play, I think that product will go absolutely everywhere. If you think about industrial machinery, industrial products, most users have this need, even consumer products, all want to be able to virtually simulate. It hooks in very well with Inventor Professional, so we can hook stress and motion together to create real virtual prototypes.

MD: The analysis part is still being handled by Ansys? You don’t own Ansys, while SolidWorks owns Cosmos. Any aspirations there?

RK: We have embedded Ansys into Inventor Professional and we intend to keep working that way. We like the Ansys product. I think CosmosWorks is a much weaker product. I think that you cannot do everything well and I would much rather work with Ansys than buy Cosmos. That’s a personal opinion.

MD: You also recently announced that you bought a company called Engineering Intent. What does that bring to Autodesk’s Mechanical solution?

RK: This technology also applies to the concept piece. The product allows you to embed engineering rules into designs, so you can create multiple products quickly. Based on these rules, you can design on the fly.

MD: You have made many purchases this year and on the face of it they are very disparate technologies.

RK: Yes they are disparate, but they all build into our strategy though. It’s a bid development task but they vary in size. With Engineer to Order much of the development work had already been done, and Solid Dynamics already works in Inventor. The Alias work we haven’t started yet.

MD: With all these acquisitions the Autodesk MCAD team must be growing rapidly? How many people are there in the organisation now?

RK: Well, we have hired 100 extra people this year on top of those that have come with the acquisitions. In terms of business, we grew 43% last year, while the market grew at 11%. We had really fantastic growth and we know to keep this up we have to greatly grow our R&D side. In fact we are still behind in terms of hiring staff but in this market it’s not easy to hire. We have to continue to expand.

While there’s a lot of news about acquisitions, and we have done a lot of acquisitions that are really great and interesting. There is more that comes out of the development teams, in terms of new product functionality and new features for the customers, by what we develop, rather than what we buy.

MD: Are you still keeping to the normal version and professional version of Inventor, or will there now be extra modules?

RK: Professional is the all-in product, so it’s everything, you’d get Solid Dynamics etc. We haven’t changed our strategy. We know that the number one request in terms of new features sets for Inventor Professional is a motion simulator.

MD: We have talked about PTC in the past and would Autodesk buy them?

RK: Well, I am really sceptical about how well you could really acquire a user base. Even if it was Pro/Engineer and we didn’t have Windchill, even then, what a tough situation you would have inherited, it’s an old, hard to maintain product that we would have to make up for all the sins they have committed. I think it would be a very hard acquisition, it would be very de-focussing. I think there’s a load of technology there and a user base that are unhappy, but loyal. But the company culture will ensure it would not work.

MD: You don’t feel that you have a technology gap, you think you can get there with Inventor?

RK: I don’t think there is any kind of gap. Inventor has huge advantages.

MD: What do you think of UGS and the Velocity Series bundle for the market? Are you losing sleep over it?

RK: No I am not. It’s like all of a sudden, announcing that they are in this market. They have been in this market for eight years. It would be like Autodesk saying we are now in the draughting business, eight years in.

MD: UGS is trying to re-invigorate itself around the mid-range, which is your core market. Dassault is already there with SolidWorks and now will be hitting the SMB market with a low-cost Catia bundle

RK: To me SolidWorks is still the competition. It’s a daily fight, we are outselling them but it’s a battle. It’s a new seat battle, it’s not about upgrades.

MD: What do you think about the sub $1,000 3D market? There are rumours that perhaps Adobe could be a brand to create the entry-level here.

RK: The Adobe brand would make some sense in that market but it’s unproven if there is a market there. It’s tough to tell. A lot of people have tried. We have a $700 product in that market, LT, but it’s a 2D draughting product. It’s an interesting debate, if there’s a design product there. I think that there is but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a 3D product, maybe some very smart sketching. It’s more about how things work, or will work, than form. I don’t think it’s a small 3D modeller. That market needs a real design tool, for design proofing, maybe some basic kinematics.

MD: Are you happy with the size of the Autodesk MCAD channel at the moment?

RK: It varies per country. There are places I am very satisfied, there are places that I am not. In the UK I am not satisfied, but I don’t think we need more dealers, we just need many more feet on the street.

I think our dealers have never been more profitable, they are growing their businesses. It doesn’t make sense if they try to sell to three markets, the trick is to stay focussed and those that have, have grown very, very well. We grew 43% last year and we didn’t grow the number of dealers.

MD: Obviously more acquisitions are on the way? What areas can we expect to see you buy into?

RK: Yes, but it’s not new areas per se, it’s better technology, deeper better products. The acquisitions I would like to do are more low-level technology stuff, just to make the applications work better.