Autodesk 2000 Annual Report Download - page 5

4FY 00 Autodesk, Inc.
Strategic Accomplishment: Leveraging the Internet
We produced exciting initial results from our three-pronged Internet strategy.The following are just a few
samples of what we’ve introduced so far.
Web-enabled desktop products: We’re integrating our core desktop applications with the Web, enhancing the way
customers use them.
Autodesk® Product Extensions are web-deliverable feature sets,available in tight release cycles,that “extend”our
products’ capabilities in targeted ways.The first such extension, AutoCAD® 2000 iX, has been available since the
first quarter of FY01. It adds wizard-based publishing tools and enhanced capabilities for collaboration and
design sharing to AutoCAD 2000 and products based on AutoCAD 2000; it’s a great example of how we’re lever-
aging our desktop strength for the Internet. What’s more, this Internet extension provides a live connection to
Autodesk® Point A, our new design portal. Other extensions will follow.
The Point A portal provides rich online resources to the world’s largest community of designers, engineers,
partners, and suppliers. Point A is “always on” inside our web-ready software, so customers can extend their
knowledge and grab content without leaving their design environment. The portal automatically customizes
itself for a customer’s particular discipline, or customers can select a gateway to access the market-specific
content of their choice. Point A is also open to the millions of other designers and engineers using Microsoft
Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator. I invite you to take a look, at pointA.autodesk.com.
Browser-based products: We’re creating browser-based products that use the Web to interactively access, update,
and disseminate design or spatial information, in real time, to and from any point in the extended enterprise.
The best example here is the wireless technology platform that we’ve developed with cooperation from Oracle
Corporation and several telecommunications firms. The first implementation, Autodesk® OnSite software,
became available in the first quarter of FY01.It lets offsite customers tap into a central database,download fresh
data, modify it, and update the database on the fly. Such point-of-work solutions are essential for utility field
crews, construction or shop-floor workers, and others who increasingly rely on handheld digital assistants,
laptops, tablets, and cell phones.
Portals and marketplaces: We’re building design portals, such as Autodesk Point A, and business-to-business
marketplaces that complement and extend our core desktop business.
Buzzsaw.com is the first Internet business incubated internally and then spun off, in the fourth quarter, by the
Autodesk Ventures group. It attracted $75 million in its first two rounds of venture funding, and Autodesk
currently retains 40 percent ownership. Buzzsaw.com targets the huge but fragmented construction industry—
a $700 billion market in the United States alone.Today it’s the industry’s largest and fastest growing collabora-
tion workspace and online resource, having already hosted more than 6,500 projects with tens of thousands of
customers.The marketplace can also be directly accessed,through the Autodesk Point A portal, by the industry’s
largest customer base: ours. Please visit buzzsaw.com.
Autodesk Ventures is incubating a second business-to-business marketplace that will, like Buzzsaw.com,include
outside venture funding.The goal of RedSpark, Inc. is to provide the most accessible and complete supply chain
sourcing solutions to a targeted sector of the manufacturing industry—a $1.8 trillion market in the United States
alone. RedSpark will link manufacturers of custom engineered goods and catalog component vendors with
buyers and engineers in a collaborative, online environment. Its services, like Buzzsaw.com’s, can also be directly
accessed by our mechanical customers through the Autodesk Point A portal. Please take a look at redspark.com.