Autodesk 2012 Annual Report Download - page 90

believe our partnering strategy allows us to, among other things, achieve efficiencies in developing new products and
maintaining and enhancing existing product offerings. Our partnering strategy creates a dependency on such independent
developers. Independent developers, including those who currently develop products for us in the U.S. and throughout the
world, may not be able or willing to provide development support to us in the future. In addition, use of development resources
through consulting relationships, particularly in non-U.S. jurisdictions with developing legal systems, may be adversely
impacted by, and expose us to risks relating to, evolving employment, export and intellectual property laws. These risks could,
among other things, expose our intellectual property to misappropriation and result in disruptions to product delivery schedules.
We rely on third-parties to provide us with a number of operational services, including hosting and delivery, certain of our
customer services operations as well as some of our operations; any interruption or delay in service from these third parties,
breaches of security or privacy, or failures in data collection could expose us to liability, harm our reputation and adversely
impact our financial performance.
We rely on hosted computer services from third parties for services that we provide our customers and computer
operations for our internal use. As we gather customer data and host certain customer data in third-party facilities, a security
breach could compromise the integrity or availability of customer data. In addition, our operations could be negatively affected
in the event of a security breach, and we could be subject to the loss or theft of confidential or proprietary information,
including source code.
Unauthorized access to this data may be obtained through break-ins, breach of our secure network by an unauthorized
party, employee theft or misuse, or other misconduct. We rely on a number of third party suppliers in the operation of our
business for the provision of various services and materials that we use in the operation of our business and production of our
products. Although we seek to diversify our third party suppliers, we may from time to time rely on a single or limited number
of suppliers, or upon suppliers in a single country, for these services or materials. The inability of such third parties to satisfy
our requirements could disrupt our business operations or make it more difficult for us to implement our business strategy. If
any of these situations were to occur, our reputation could be harmed, we could be subject to third party liability, including
under data protection and privacy laws in certain jurisdictions and our financial performance could be negatively impacted.
We regularly invest resources to update and improve our internal information technology systems. Should our investments not
succeed, or if delays or other issues with new or existing internal technology systems disrupt our operations, our business
could be harmed.
We rely on our network and data center infrastructure, internal technology systems and our websites for our development,
marketing, operational, support, sales, accounting and financial reporting activities. We are continually investing resources to
update and improve these systems and environments in order to meet the growing requirements of our business and customers.
Such improvements are often complex, costly and time consuming. In addition, such improvements can be challenging to
integrate with our existing technology systems, or uncover problems with our existing technology systems. Unsuccessful
implementation of hardware or software updates and improvements could result in disruption in our business operations, loss of
revenue, errors in our accounting and financial reporting or damage to our reputation.
Our business may be significantly disrupted upon the occurrence of a catastrophic event.
Our business is highly automated and relies extensively on the availability of our network and data center infrastructure,
our internal technology systems and our websites. We also rely on hosted computer services from third parties for services that
we provide to our customers and computer operations for our internal use. The failure of our systems or hosted computer
services due to a catastrophic event, such as an earthquake, fire, flood, tsunami, weather event, telecommunications failure,
power failure, cyber attack or war, could adversely impact our business, financial results and financial condition. We have
developed disaster recovery plans and maintain backup systems in order to reduce the potential impact of a catastrophic event,
however there can be no assurance that these plans and systems would enable us to return to normal business operations. In
addition, any such event could negatively impact a country or region in which we sell our products. This could in turn decrease
that country's or region's demand for our products, thereby negatively impacting our financial results.
ITEM 1B. UNRESOLVED STAFF COMMENTS
We have received no written comments regarding our periodic or current reports from the staff of the SEC that were
issued 180 days or more preceding the end of our 2012 fiscal year that remain unresolved.
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