The Dawn of Pay-As-You-Go CAD

摘要

Earlier this year, just a week shy of Valentine's Day, Autodesk signaled the perpetual license's twilight: "New commercial seats of most standalone desktop software products will be available only by desktop subscription beginning February 1, 2016," the company declared. In doing so, it publicly crossed the point of no return. In enterprise, consumer and product lifecycle management (PLM) software sectors, brands like Salesforce, Norton Antivirus and Arena Solutions have proven subscription licensing to be a viable, sustainable model. But in the design and engineering software market, the status quo is perpetual licensing. Here, "subscription" remains a touchy subject; it still raises eyebrows and blood pressure.