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AutoCAD AEC

    This product line, which we acquired from Archsoft and have been steadily expanding our commitment to ever since, including acquiring a second product from them and then reimplementing it as well, is now seen, despite market share leadership, as falling behind the market in both functionality and performance terms. Why should it? This is a product which has generated revenue in excess of $100,000 per month for each of the last 18 months, and has recently contributed sales in the $200,000 per month range. We have an entire sub-department dedicated to development and maintenance of this product line with at least five people exclusively assigned to this product. This development team exceeds in size that devoted to AutoCAD during the period when its sales were comparable, a time during which AutoCAD clearly established itself as the technology leader in its market.

If the people working on the AEC product line are not the right people, why have they not been replaced with the right people? If AutoCAD AEC cannot deliver better performance without modifications to AutoCAD, why have these modifications not been requested, designed, and implemented? If we have achieved market leadership with this product but now believe it impossible to maintain, why are setting the same group that turned in that performance to the task of creating an ``infrastructure'' product which we now believe central to competing with Intergraph in the AEC market?[Footnote]


Editor: John Walker