Autodesk 2008 Annual Report Download - page 6

12 percent of total revenue. Within this
division, the animation products generated
strong growth of 22 percent year over year.
Autodesk 3ds max and Autodesk Maya
animation products are moving across
disciplines and are now being used by
today’s cutting-edge design engineers as
well as leading animation studios. Revenue
growth of this division was somewhat
slowed by the continued migration of
our Advanced Systems solutions from
SGI hardware to mainstream systems.
This change, however, has substantially
improved the Advanced Systems gross
margin, which is a better measure of the
health of our systems business.
Thought Leadership
Autodesk’s growth over the past 25 years falls
into three distinct stages. Stage one was when we
changed the future of design with the introduction
of AutoCAD software. This represented a truly
disruptive, and democratizing, technology. In
stage two we made the move to 3D digital models
and developed a portfolio of industry-specific
products to address the needs of particular market
segments. Today, we’re in stage three, where
our 3D modeling technologies help customers
understand, and improve, the performance of
their designs before they build them, so they
can experience them before they are real. This
capability is one of the reasons that design has
become such an exciting field, enabling customers
to do things that were not possible a few years ago.
Looking Ahead
Over time our technologies have become more
and more sophisticated. We are facilitating the
evolution of the way design is done all over the
world—and are committed to democratizing
those technologies by making them available
to the widest range of customers possible. This
commitment means continuing to invest in
research and development as well as acquiring
technology and businesses that we believe will
complement or integrate with our current portfolio
of products.
Throughout our history, we’ve focused on helping
customers meet the challenges they face. We strive
to anticipate, and respond to, customers’ changing
needs, looking ahead to see where they’re going
so that we can use our technologies to remove any
roadblocks they may encounter.
Our business is diversified on many levels. Our
revenue base is geographically diversified. We are
diversified across the major industrial segments in
the economy, including building, manufacturing,
infrastructure, and media. In addition, we serve
customers of all sizes, from Fortune 100 companies
to small post-production facilities. We believe such
diversification helps to moderate the impact on our
business from large swings in external factors.
And finally, we are mindful of the mixed
economic indicators in the market today. While
this mixed data requires us to be more cautious,
we believe we have the right strategy, the right