Autodesk 2016 Annual Report Download - page 102

2016 Form 10-K 30
consistent with the tax laws in the jurisdictions in which we conduct our business. It is possible that these positions may
be overturned by jurisdictional tax authorities and may have a significant impact on our effective tax rate.
We rely on third party technologies and if we are unable to use or integrate these technologies, our product and service
development may be delayed and our financial results negatively impacted.
We rely on certain software that we license from third parties, including software that is integrated with internally
developed software and used in our products to perform key functions. These third-party software licenses may not
continue to be available on commercially reasonable terms, and the software may not be appropriately supported,
maintained or enhanced by the licensors. The loss of licenses to, or inability to support, maintain and enhance any such
software could result in increased costs, or in delays or reductions in product shipments until equivalent software can be
developed, identified, licensed and integrated, which would likely harm our business.
Disruptions with licensing relationships and third party developers could adversely impact our business.
We license certain key technologies from third parties. Licenses may be restricted in the term or the use of such
technology in ways that negatively affect our business. Similarly, we may not be able to obtain or renew license
agreements for key technology on favorable terms, if at all, and any failure to do so could harm our business.
Our business strategy has historically depended in part on our relationships with third-party developers who provide
products that expand the functionality of our design software. Some developers may elect to support other products or
may experience disruption in product development and delivery cycles or financial pressure during periods of economic
downturn. In particular markets, such disruptions have in the past, and would likely in the future, negatively impact these
third-party developers and end users, which could harm our business.
Additionally, technology created by outsourced product development, whether outsourced to third parties or
developed externally and transferred to us through business or technology acquisitions, have certain additional risks such
as effective integration into existing products, adequate transfer of technology know-how and ownership and protection of
transferred intellectual property.
As a result of our strategy of partnering with other companies for product development, our product delivery schedules
could be adversely affected if we experience difficulties with our product development partners.
We partner with certain independent firms and contractors to perform some of our product development activities.
We 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.
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.
2016 Annual Report