Autodesk 2014 Annual Report Download - page 84

2013 Annual Report
2014 Form 10-K 10
EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS
We help students and educators imagine, design, and create a better world by granting them, for little or no fees, Autodesk
Software licenses, specialized learning content, education communities, and support networks.
We are committed to helping fuel a lifelong passion for design in students of all ages, and inspiring and supporting
educators. As such, we partner with education institutions and work to develop programs that can facilitate a passion for design
in students, and provide a good foundation for STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Digital Arts, and Math) growth in
the secondary school market. Within our secondary and postsecondary school markets, we are enabling future workforces to
graduate industry-ready and Autodesk-literate with marketable software skills that are in high demand. Whether future
professional designers or lifelong design hobbyists, our full portfolio of professional-grade and personal design products
introduce students and educators at all levels to design and the power of design technology.
DEVELOPER PROGRAMS
One of our key strategies is to maintain an open-architecture design of our software products to facilitate third-party
development of complementary products and industry-specific software solutions. This approach enables customers and third
parties to customize solutions for a wide variety of highly specific uses. We offer several programs that provide marketing,
sales, technical support and programming tools to developers who develop add-on applications for our products. Over 4,000
developers in the Autodesk Developer Network create interoperable products that further enhance the range of integrated
solutions available to our customers.
COMPETITION
The markets for our products are highly competitive and subject to rapid change. We strive to increase our competitive
separation by investing in research and development, allowing us to bring new products to market and create exciting new
versions of existing products that offer compelling efficiencies for our customers. We also compete through investments in
marketing and sales to more effectively reach new customers and better serve existing customers.
Our competitors include large, global, publicly traded companies; small, geographically focused firms; startup firms; and
solutions produced in-house by their users. Our primary global competitors in the PSEB, AEC and MFG segments include
Adobe Systems Incorporated, ANSYS, Inc., AVEVA Group plc, Bentley Systems, Incorporated, Dassault Systèmes S.A. and its
subsidiary Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp., Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. (ESRI), Intergraph
Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hexagon AB, MSC Software Corporation, Nemetschek AG, PTC, 3D Systems, and
Trimble Navigation Limited.
Our M&E segment also competes with a wide range of different companies from large, global, publicly-traded companies
to small private entities. Large organizations that produce products that compete in some or all of our markets include Adobe
Systems Incorporated, Apple Inc., Avid Technology, Inc., SONY Corporation and Technicolor, among others. The media and
entertainment market is highly fragmented with complex interdependencies between many of the larger businesses. As a result,
some of our competitors also own subsidiaries that are our customers or our partners in developing or bringing to market some
of our solutions. In addition to traditional competitors in developed economies, we encounter new competitors in emerging
economies.
The software industry has limited barriers to entry, and the availability of computing power with continually expanding
performance at progressively lower prices contributes to the ease of market entry. The industry is presently undergoing a
platform shift from the personal computer to cloud and mobile computing. This shift further lowers barriers to entry and poses a
disruptive challenge to established software companies. The design software market is characterized by vigorous competition in
each of the vertical markets in which we compete, both from existing competitors and by entry of new competitors with
innovative technologies. Competition is increasingly enhanced by consolidation of companies with complementary products
and technologies and the possibility that competitors in one vertical segment may enter other vertical segments that we serve. In
addition, some of our competitors in certain markets have greater financial, technical, sales and marketing and other resources
than we do. Because of these and other factors, competitive conditions in these industries are likely to continue to intensify in
the future. Increased competition could result in price reductions, reduced net revenue and profit margins and loss of market
share, any of which could harm our business. See Item 1A, “Risk Factors,” for further discussion of risks regarding
competition.