My opinion is… The writing on the wall has been around for over a decade and folks chose to ignore it. DSS bet the farm on the cloud based stuff over a decade ago with Catia/Enovia V6 and has been having trouble getting traction with customers to adopt it. They also announced over a decade ago that their intention was to kill desktop SolidWorks and replace it with a cloud version based on the V6 technology (https://develop3d.com/cad/the-death-of-solidworks/). After a decade of investment and little to no income to show for it, I think the “nice” is about over with DSS and soon customers won’t have a choice other than not to be a customer.
Killing DesktopWorks is a no go for us. We are going to Windchill for PLM…that doesn’t work with CloudWorks. They will have to support DesktopWorks or lose a lot of large customers using other PLMs like Windchill, Teamcenter, Agile, Aras, SAP, etc.
They ARE loosing big customers (aka Mercedes, Hyundai, Volvo…)
I am not sure the current management cares. I guess they figure they will win all of those customers back once we open our eyes to the beauty of their online collaboration suite.
It’s easy and cheap to go back!
Your comment was uber sarcastic but this may hold an element of truth. If the new platform turns into a train wreck…ditching it and going to a working system is easier and cheaper than going forth.
True. But I was talking about making a change like Mercedes did:
Going from D’assault to Siemens. Changing the backbone of a system is no small feat in such a large company and they did it in only 1.5 years. Which is actually really fast! I cannot imagine the amount of money they spent and it’s unlikely that they go back in the next 5-10 years.
Once you’re that invested there is only one direction: Forward.
I think they’ve shown they don’t go for the cheap and easy route. It appears they prefer the overly complicated approach.
Function is not even a consideration.