At this year’s Autodesk University, Autodesk is running a series of Innovation Forums. There was one scheduled for Tuesday November 29 at 10:00 (Las Vegas time) called The Promise of the Cloud – The Implications of Virtually Infinite Computing for Your Industry. That’s about 12 hours ago as I type this. I was hoping [...]
 30 November 2011, 1:53 pm |  One comment | Tags: AU2011, Innovation Forum | Category: Autodesk, Autodesk University, Cloud, Web Stuff It’s probably worth pointing out that if you you have no problem emailing your designs around the place without some form of protection or encryption, there’s little point in getting all worked up about Cloud security. Email isn’t remotely secure. FTP isn’t exactly watertight, either. If you’re still interested in Cloud security issues, this [...] 18 November 2011, 12:02 pm |  4 comments | Tags: 123D, Amazon, Cloud, Security, Terms and Conditions | Category: Autodesk, Cloud, Legal, Other Autodesk Products, Other Blogs, Thoughts, Web Stuff In February 2010, I ran a poll to gauge your feelings about CAD in the Cloud and left it going until October 2010. Just over a month ago, I asked the same question again and ran an identical poll. I have closed that second poll, and here are the comparative results (new poll at [...] 17 November 2011, 8:45 am | Leave a comment | Tags: Cloud, Damn Lies, Polls, Statistics | Category: Autodesk, Cloud, Polls As I’ve already discussed, one of the areas where CAD on the Cloud shows potential is in handling specific tasks that require performing intensive calculations that are suitable for sharing among many processors. That sounds great in theory, and a lot of Cloud marketing (e.g. Virtually Infinite Computing) emphasises that point. OK, that sounds [...] 16 November 2011, 12:38 pm | 2 comments | Tags: Alex Bausk, Carl Bass, Cloud, Feedback, Hype, Labs, Project Storm | Category: Autodesk, Cloud, Fail, Other Autodesk Products, Other Blogs, Performance, Review, Spin, Web Stuff Using any software involves some degree of trust in the vendor. Using the Cloud requires a much higher level of trust. Autodesk boss Carl Bass is a maker of carefully crafted things, so I’ll use that as an analogy. Using standalone software requires the sort of trust that a maker has in a tool [...] I have closed the Which of these is most evil? poll, which had been running from 20 February 2009. It attracted 2,351 voters, each of whom could distribute up to three votes among thirteen (yes, that number was deliberate) candidates. Here are the ranked results: Satan (36%, 846 Votes) Microsoft (31%, 721 Votes) Apple (26%, 614 Votes) [...] 14 November 2011, 1:53 pm | One comment | Tags: Apple, Autodesk, Big Content, Brown list, Dell, Disney, Evil, Gaahl, Google, Microsoft, Miley Cyrus, RIAA/IFPI/MPAA, Satan, Sony, Spam, The Pirate Bay | Category: Apple, Autodesk, Fail, Fun, Hardware, Microsoft, Music, Polls, Rant, Thoughts Steve: Another issue I have with Cloud-based environments is the lack of customisation. One of the things that makes AutoCAD so efficient for people is that they can get it exactly the way they want it. With a browser-based environment, we’re pretty much stuck with what you guys decide to give us. Can you [...] 11 November 2011, 10:08 am | Leave a comment | Tags: Autodesk, Cloud, Interview, Labs | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD WS, Autodesk, Cloud, Interview, Other Autodesk Products, Web Stuff In all of the Cad on the Cloud discussion so far, both here and elsewhere, there have been a lot of anti-Cloud comments and very little in the way of response from the pro-Cloud crowd. Participation in the debate from Autodesk people has been minimal. In one way I can understand that, because given [...] 10 November 2011, 10:15 am | 4 comments | Category: Autodesk, Cloud, Other Blogs, Other Sites, Thoughts, Web Stuff Steve: Autodesk is currently giving away these Cloud-based services, Butterfly for example. Presumably you’re not going to keep doing that for ever. Are you going to start charging for these services eventually? Guri: Again, you’re pushing us to talk about future. Currently, for as long as this is in a Labs environment, we’re encouraging [...] 8 November 2011, 1:05 pm | 2 comments | Tags: Autodesk, Cloud, Interview, Labs | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD WS, Autodesk, Cloud, Interview, Other Autodesk Products, Web Stuff On 26 May 2010, I had the opportunity to ask Autodesk some questions about the Cloud in general and what was then Project Butterfly (now AutoCAD WS) in particular. The Autodesk people were: Guri Stark,Vice President, AutoCAD & Platform Products Tal Weiss, R&D Center Manager (Israel) Noah Cole, Corporate Media Relations The interview was [...] 4 November 2011, 10:12 am | Leave a comment | Tags: Autodesk, Cloud, Interview, Labs | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD WS, Autodesk, Cloud, Interview, Other Autodesk Products, Web Stuff Akamai is an Internet/Cloud infrastructure company, used extensively by Autodesk. To be polite, my experiences using its services over several years have been somewhat negative. Back in March, when trying to download the AutoCAD 2012 trial, I went through the usual Akamai download manager struggles before being informed of the wonderful Opera workaround (thanks [...] 3 November 2011, 10:19 am | 4 comments | Tags: Akamai, Cloud | Category: Autodesk, Cloud, Customer Service, Fail, Rant, Web Stuff As reported by multiple on-line news outlets, Autodesk just announced that it is increasing its research and development budget (having slashed it last year), and increasing the percentage of that budget on the Cloud. Carl Bass: When there are technology transitions in place, you better be more mindful of that, or you become roadkill. [...] 2 November 2011, 10:17 am | 7 comments | Tags: Budget, Cloud, Development, Financial, Research | Category: AutoCAD, Autodesk, Cloud, Other Autodesk Products, Other Sites, Web Stuff One of the major attractions of the Cloud for vendors is that it ties in customers, providing a reasonably consistent revenue stream. It is an effective anti-competitive strategy. There are various technical and other methods that can be used to ensure that it’s difficult or even impossible for customers to jump ship. While that’s all [...] 31 October 2011, 12:44 pm | 4 comments | Tags: CAD Management, Tie-in | Category: Autodesk, Cloud, Interoperability, Subscription, Thoughts, Web Stuff A few days ago, John McCarthy died at the age of 84. He didn’t make a fortune selling gadgets, he just profoundly affected the world of computing. He will be remembered mainly as the father of LISP, without which it is quite possible that AutoCAD and Autodesk would not have survived beyond the 80s. [...] 27 October 2011, 9:37 am | One comment | Tags: John McCarthy, Vale | Category: Announcement, AutoCAD, Autodesk, Cloud, Development, LISP, Nostalgia, Thoughts, Web Stuff, Win In May 2010 I took part in a phone conference with several Autodesk people about the Cloud. Part of that discussion was in the form of an interview, which I will publish in later posts. Another part was in the form of a verbal presentation from Autodesk’s Tal Weiss, concentrating on what was then [...] 27 October 2011, 8:47 am | Leave a comment | Tags: Cloud, Collaboration, Interview, Tal Weiss | Category: AutoCAD WS, Autodesk, Cloud, Web Stuff A frequently stated advantage of CAD on the Cloud is the access to large amounts of processing power. Instead of relying on your lowly local processor to perform complex tasks, you can instead zap the job up to the Cloud where vast numbers of processors churn away in massively parallel fashion and then zap the [...] 21 October 2011, 6:24 pm | Leave a comment | Tags: Cloud, Performance, Ribbon | Category: AutoCAD 2012, Autodesk, Cloud, Subscription, Web Stuff One concern with any SaaS (Software as a Service) product is the potential for downtime. Is this really an issue? After all, big Cloud vendors have multiple server farms as part of their huge infrastructure investment. This provides redundancy to keep things going even in the event of a major local disaster or two. [...] The “other” C word – collaboration – was super-trendy in a mildly amusing way a couple of years ago, so I hesitate to use it here. But it seems to me that it represents a real potential benefit of CAD on the Cloud. Not just potential, because it’s already here, free for anyone, thanks [...] 18 October 2011, 9:51 am | 4 comments | Tags: Collaboration | Category: AutoCAD WS, Autodesk, Cloud, Web Stuff I just used Autodesk Cloud Documents for the first time, and was asked to confirm my acceptance of the Terms of Service. Fair enough. But just what is in those terms, and what do they mean to you if you are dubious about using the Cloud? Will you be reassured by what you find [...] 14 October 2011, 9:57 pm | 21 comments | Tags: Cloud, Terms and Conditions | Category: Autodesk, Cloud, Legal, Other Autodesk Products |
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How good is Autodesk at the Internet?
It goes without saying that any company that intends to win at CAD on the Cloud had better be pretty darn good at doing Internet stuff. So, does Autodesk qualify?
There’s a poll on the right and your comments are welcome.