Autodesk And Infinite Computing

Looks like Autodesk has cooked up a two letter acronym for cloud computing. They are referring to it as “Infinite Computing”. This morning Autodesk CEO Carl Bass and CTO Jeff Kowalski answered questions posed by the media. There were a few questions about infinite computing, the first one being about cost. Carl was candid in his reply, “Frankly, I don’t know, I have no idea. Why? There are two things going on simultaneously. There is a steep decline in cost of computing. And we are shifting some of the costs of our customers over to us”. He continued, “For years to come are going to have a hybrid computing model. We will continue to have local devices on which it makes sense to deploy software. We are not going to build our own cloud. Neither are we going to insist that our customer have to move to the cloud.”

Another question was whether there would be changes in pricing models. Carl replied, “There are a whole lot of business models that will become available with infinite computing. We are looking at our subscription program as the foundation. Users have always wanted to rent software.”

As regards security issues and how Autodesk planned on addressing them when it came to large customers, Carl said, “The sweet spot in infinite computing is not in the large enterprise customers. Some are interested. But I don’t see large customers moving to the cloud quickly”.