Autodesk will follow the lead of Adobe, offering more options to rent its software rather than buying it outright.
CEO Carl Bass promised that by the end of the year an array of new rental options would be available, which he believed would give customers more subsciprtion options and increase the predictability of the company's revenue over time.
Bass stressed that Autodesk wasn't upending its existing model, but augmenting it. 'Recall that, just 10 years ago, we added subscription maintenance to our revenue stream,' he said. 'That was a big change at the time, and there was no shortage of skeptics. Today, that's a billion-dollar business and represents over 40% of our revenue. Suffice it to say that transition was a huge success.'
Analysts on the call immediately started drawing comparisons with Adobe's move earlier this year to a subscription-only pricing model for its Creative Cloud software.