Autodesk discontinued many products before, and more products are disappearing from their product list.
Autodesk Advanced Concrete was discontinued earlier this year. Then followed by Showcase, 123D apps, and Homestyler. Four products, all in 2017. I’m pretty sure I miss a few more. And I believe there will be more before 2017 ends.
I know Autodesk has been doing this for years, but the cycle seems to get shorter. Switching from one software to another software is not easy. But it seems that we need to be prepared.
I had an interesting conversation with Steve Johnson earlier about Autodesk discontinued products. He tried to create a graveyard page on his blog, but he eventually gave up. Wikipedia lists discontinued Autodesk products, but I quickly notice that many products are not listed.
I understand that a product can fail or becomes outdated. It doesn’t meet Autodesk’s or Customer’s expectation so it eventually has to go away. However, I also see some discontinued products actually have many users.
Autodesk “recommends” us to switch to another product
At the announcements, we can see Autodesk recommends us to use another product. I rarely see the recommended software is a suitable replacement. Not to mention that we often need to purchase the alternative. There are also standards to implement, training for the users and several more reason why switching is not easy.
Do you use a discontinued product?
As Autodesk now doesn’t sell the perpetual license, it’s probably not a big problem now. If the product goes away, you can subscribe to the alternative. Or you can try the competitor’s product. If you have the perpetual license, you can use the product until your computer doesn’t support it anymore. But you will have to move on.
I am curious if you ever experienced this, your product is discontinued. What did you do when it happened? Did you find the transition to an alternative product is easy?
Share your experience with us!
