Today, February 24, 2020, Autodesk announced new changes to their subscription model. They are retiring the serial number model, both single user and multi-user licenses, in favor of a named user model.
In order to get ahead of the confusion this will cause, Autodesk set up a new forum section to use for discussion.
I’m not going to go into the specifics of it, as both of those links will cover a good amount of it. I’m honestly still trying to wrap my own head around the change and how it’s likely going to affect my company.
Just know that they do have a plan in place to attempt to keep the price change neutral. They introduced a 1:2 trade in of your current licenses to the named user, so if you have 60 users sharing 30 licenses, you’ll be fine. They will give you 60 named license subscriptions, but if you have 90 users sharing 30 licenses, you will need to buy 30 new licenses.
I’m a little torn by this decision. I’ve been an advocate for named user licensing for a while. It simplifies handling the licenses by pushing it all on Autodesk to manage what software each user has access to. As the administrator, I just have to link an account to a subscription. No more managing a license server (on-site or in the cloud). But the flip side is having to manage all the user accounts that most users don’t create. I’ve had to setup an account for 3 new-hires in the past 6 months. I would like to see a better way to do this.
From the business side of things, this could be an expensive move for many companies. If you’re small, you’re not likely to see an issue. But, larger firms with CAD users in the double and triple digit count are going to take a significant yearly hit with those additional license requirements.
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