Todays Melbourne AGE article. Altium CIO Alan Perkins quoted on Cloud future

[wilfred]

/.

[EEVblog]

This piece (excerpt) was in an article in today's Melbourne AGE. Titled SUNCORP appoints Oracle,

It doesn't say much but here it is,

Altium CIO Alan Perkins said the cloud subscription model means customers are demanding more than just regular software updates but also content delivery services.

Absolute bullshit. Altium's customers are demanding no such thing. Just the usual rhetoric designed to sell their new vision, which will almost certainly fail, just like most of their other visions. But no doubt they'll be able to find one or two customers who will say that stuff is imporatnt too them, and then they use that for justification that's what everyone wants.
The only thing the customers are demanding is a better PCB tool.

The company is developing a cloud app store for electronics components where engineers can download libraries, and designs, he said. The software will plug into the wider electronics supply chain.

"As we move inexorably away from a packaged perpetual licensing model to a subscription-based content-driven service model where people pay for renewed services every year, the product will increase its content delivery services," he said.

He said the flexible nature of paying for cloud computing services means the company is more agile in deciding its IT priorities, like a fisherman with a scalable net.

"If you see a big school of fish you can instantaneously expand the size of the net when you're on the boat, and once you have caught all the fish, you can shrink the net back down again."

Makes absolutely no difference in Altium's market, except to convolute and confuse installation, updating, licensing, and library downloads etc.
All the (nice) stuff they are doing with the vendor integration and library updates can be done without all this cloud rubbish.

Dave.

[Rufus]

Altium CIO Alan Perkins said the cloud subscription model means customers are demanding more than just regular software updates but also content delivery services.

The delusional drivel from Altium continues. They didn't need the cloud to provide updates.

Their 'content' is going to be library components which people won't pay much if anything for. A lot of places won't use library components without thoroughly checking them which takes almost as long as it does to create them. I suppose their other content is going to be FPGA IP and firmware support for their failed 'one day all electronics will be systems on FPGAs' vision and that vision is going to continue to fail.

IMO Alan Perkins is a complete dickhead (who now describes himself as a Cloud Computing Pioneer), of all the people Altium should have ditched to avoid going bust he should have been top of the list. You can find a video of him on youtube waxing lyrical about salesforce.com. "Altium uses salesforce.com as a complete business platform" he says, hey Alan, check your head count and stock price recently? Your business is up shit creek with a small Chinese paddle, the 'platform' didn't work too well did it.

[mobbarley]

sounds like an attempt to just get more and more people locked in to a subscription plan.

[amspire]

Lots of other companies are trying to go to subscription option, but I really hate any design package that does not give you a perpetual right to open your designs.

I love seeing design documents from projects done 50 years ago, and the thought that in fifty years, probably none of the current design files will be useable sickens me a bit. Good designs are a work of art, and they shouldn't be thrown away like junk.

All these companies have a big problem in that they need to get money from customers every year. If they have produced a good piece of software, then customers don't really need to update it at all. If it does a good job today, it will do the same job in ten years. I understand the situation that companies like Altium see themselves in, but I think the solution is pricing at a price where anyone can afford the package, and an upgrade price that makes it a no-brainer.

I also avoid activated software as much as possible for the same reason - I want to be able to load software from 10 years ago so I can open an old project. I do not want to find that a company no longer activates that 10 year old piece of software.

My current solution is to use KiCad, and I will have a go at gEDA. It is a bit raw, but I had a quick play with the PCB package and I quite liked it.

Richard.

[EEVblog]

sounds like an attempt to just get more and more people locked in to a subscription plan.

Yes. You no longer get bug fixes or updates unless you are on subscription.
So if you buy the "perpetual license" (i.e. buy it outright, to use forever) and DON'T pay for subscription, then you are stuck with whatever crap version you get when you buy it. And it really is a crap-shoot as to what version you get. Some are stable and work well, others are just horrible and almost unusable.

It is no way to do business and keep your customers happy.

Altium are without a doubt, the most foolish business I have ever known, lost in pursuit of this years fantasy. They could OWN the entire PCB design market, from hobbist/student/maker through to professional. Yet they refuse to do the simple stuff required to do that, because they don't want to be just a PCB tool company, yet everything they do outside of the core PCB stuff fails, and fails miserably.
Not through lack of trying and good ideas though, some of their solutions outside of core PCB are excellent. They are just not practical to maintain and focus on for a PCB tool company.
Then they get into ridiculous stuff like rolling their own forum software which does not work, and all the Altium Live social media rubbish.
And they just continue to piss off almost every customer they have loyally built up over 25 years, including me. And I'm still one of their biggest supporters!

Dave.

[EEVblog]

All these companies have a big problem in that they need to get money from customers every year. If they have produced a good piece of software, then customers don't really need to update it at all. If it does a good job today, it will do the same job in ten years. I understand the situation that companies like Altium see themselves in, but I think the solution is pricing at a price where anyone can afford the package, and an upgrade price that makes it a no-brainer.

Yes, and that is a realistic fear. But countless companies make it work by doing as you say. Have affordable pricing structures for the tool people want, and affordable upgrade prices that make it no-brainer. Companies have budgets every year for upgrades, so most will be happy to continue to upgrade every year and get the latest big features.
Altium did the right thing by slashing their prices by 70% a few years back, but then persisted with the ridiculous "PCB is optional extra" rubbish - you have to pay top dollar to get a basic PCB tool to flash a LED.

I can understand their thinking there too though, because they knew very well that very few people would buy the FPGA stuff. So if they persisted with just PCB/SCH as the basic package, and charged extra for FPGA/embedded, then few would buy it and it would be obvious to everyone (the shareholers, the board, the employees, the customers) that FPGA/embedded was not the success they had counted on, and a continued poor use of the companies money and resources that it had invested 10 years and the entire company fortune into building. And the pressure to abandon it all and go back to core PCB/SCH would have been huge.
So they forced everyone into bundling the FPGA/embedded solution along with the PCB solution.
Clever. Suicidal, but clever.

Dave.

[djsb]

I'm one of the fools that bought a perpetual license. I did get a summer 09 and Release 10 to 10.651.22821 and then my subscription ran out. I'm stuck with this for the forseeable future. It would have to be an earth shattering series of improvements made before I spend £2.5k to renew my subscription. I still have a very usefull PCB tool though and I'm glad I bought the software.
Are you still on subscription Dave?

P.S I also have 2 of their nanoboard 3000 boards. Paid full whack for the first one and then found a newer version on ebay for £90. I still play with them but there is just no help available on the forum for nanoboard newbies. Maybe I'll find some time over the summer to use them. In some ways the nanoboards are intended as loss leader vehicles made to entice people into using Altium designer. I do like the boards though and they have lots of useful features.

[harnon]

All these companies have a big problem in that they need to get money from customers every year. If they have produced a good piece of software, then customers don't really need to update it at all. If it does a good job today, it will do the same job in ten years. I understand the situation that companies like Altium see themselves in, but I think the solution is pricing at a price where anyone can afford the package, and an upgrade price that makes it a no-brainer.

Yes, and that is a realistic fear. But countless companies make it work by doing as you say. Have affordable pricing structures for the tool people want, and affordable upgrade prices that make it no-brainer. Companies have budgets every year for upgrades, so most will be happy to continue to upgrade every year and get the latest big features.

I've worked at several (ASX listed) companies that have 15+y.o. software in business critical functions... its too hard / too expensive to upgrade and instead they just employ more and more people to manually work around a dated system. 

Maybe its different for CAD/design software, but wouldn't the best way to get people to buy and upgrade to keep adding new RELEVANT features?

[EEVblog]

Maybe its different for CAD/design software, but wouldn't the best way to get people to buy and upgrade to keep adding new RELEVANT features?

Yep, you'd think so. But Altium do not think rationally.
Instead of adding relevant features like proper signal integrity, or making the autorouter actually work, they spend 15% of the company buying their buddies Morfik.

Dave.

[ChrisW]

It is also this type of foolishness that can lead to software piracy where they don't get paid at all.

-Chris

P.S. Stealing is not ok

[firewalker]

sounds like an attempt to just get more and more people locked in to a subscription plan.

Yes. You no longer get bug fixes or updates unless you are on subscription.
So if you buy the "perpetual license" (i.e. buy it outright, to use forever) and DON'T pay for subscription, then you are stuck with whatever crap version you get when you buy it. And it really is a crap-shoot as to what version you get. Some are stable and work well, others are just horrible and almost unusable.
Dave.

I am pretty sure that this is illegal in many countries. If I can prove that the product doesn't work as expected (easy enough) they are obliged to give me the fix (if present) or a full refund. I don't know what Altium's EULA specifies for this matter. If for example it say "We will not give you any future fix/patch" it is not valid.

Alexander.

[mikeselectricstuff]

I am pretty sure that this is illegal in many countries. If I can prove that the product doesn't work as expected (easy enough) they are obliged to give me the fix (if present) or a full refund.

This sort of legislation often only applies to consumer transactions, not business ones  - I'm sure this varies a lot by country though.

[DrGeoff]

Software subscription plans are almost as bad as those bloody mobile phone plans. Complete ripoff.
I have noticed several companies using the 'cloud' marketing term (really just another fancy word for a networked file server), as some utopian solution. Subscription services provide a nice predictable revenue stream for the bean counters, meaning they don't have to release some small enhancement as an 'upgrade' just to show some revenue growth for the year. Very tidy.
However if you are out in west woop-woop without a network connection for whatever reason it all becomes irrelevant. And in 20 years time, when many cloud operations have gone bust and the data scattered as far as toxic debt, who will be liable? Where do we go to open our design files in some proprietary format?

[Rufus]

Software subscription plans are almost as bad as those bloody mobile phone plans. Complete ripoff.

Long standing problem of the software business. Software has bugs, bugs ought to be fixed for free. If you don't have a subscription scheme you might get some fixed but they will be working on the next version to sell to retain revenue which detracts from fixing bugs in the current version. When the new version is ready you get to pay for new features, fixing some bugs and a new set of bugs for you to wait to be fixed.

With a subscription scheme you are more likely to get bugs fixed and sooner and they will still be working on the next version. In theory you are buying technical support as well. As long as they are doing the work for the money you pay them and producing new features you actually want I can live with subscriptions.

Altium's problem has been they spend most of your money working on stuff you don't want. At least this year the visible stuff they have been working on (well excepting the Altium Live web site crap) is what people want, there just hasn't been much of it for the money.

[alm]

With a subscription scheme you are more likely to get bugs fixed and sooner and they will still be working on the next version. In theory you are buying technical support as well. As long as they are doing the work for the money you pay them and producing new features you actually want I can live with subscriptions.

Or they just use the money to sit on their ass and work on the new version as usual. Then it just becomes the question if new versions are released regularly enough to be worth the subscription money. For example, Microsoft switched to a subscription model for business customers something like ten years ago. I don't believe the rate that service packs and hotfixes are released has increased, and with the current update schedule for many companies (2001 Windows XP, 2009 Windows 7), it's not much cheaper than OEM licenses.