DWG to Play Nice with WAN Guys

I’m shocked, shocked I tell you. In what can only be seen a a complete refusal of Autodesk to listen to my completely narrow and unfounded business advice, they’re changing the dwg format to play along with the WAN guys. You can read the InfoWorld article here. (Exclusive? Come on, Eric, we’ve had cocktails at AU! Hook a brother up!)

It makes sense in light of the upcoming format change, but I wonder if this means that Autodesk will now kowtow to the graphic card and plotter vendors when the new versions break something in those systems. In my opinion, it’s a slippery slope, and generally says that the WAN accelerator market (or at least the big fat subscription customers running them,) is more powerful than many considered. Good for them I guess.

Considering this is still a year away, anyone taking bets that Riverbed and Silver Peak put the kibosh on sales to AEC firms? Me neither.

We’ll be watching this story continue to develop, it’s a good one.

Many thanks to Rizzo and others that sent this over.

6 comments

  1. Tail wags dog.
    Not exactly unbelievable but close.

  2. James Maeding says:

    Why is that so slippery?
    When talking to the riverbed guys about this months ago, they said all compression type devices are affected, not just riverbed. So I would call the compression a generic incompatibility, which, once discovered, is something that Adesk would fix. It almost becomes a bug they are fixing.
    Can you explain your advice? or give a link if its somewhere. I’m sure you had resons so that would be interesting to hear.

  3. I think it’s slippery to cater the dwg format or engine to the needs of a small portion of the overall market. That doesn’t mean it won’t happen, just look at the amount of energy spent on 3D objects and tools in the core package that many people don’t use at all.

    If I’m nvidia, or HP, I begin to bitch and moan next time a new version of Acad makes my hardware look bad. I’m just really suprised to see Adesk cater to an aftermarket developer.

  4. while they are changing…why not Open DWG?

  5. Jon Rizzo says:

    The reason this made such a splash is that owners of WAN accelerators tend to be larger companies which, coincidentally, also happen have a large number of AutoCAD licenses on Subscription. When a big dog barks, you’re gonna notice. You can call it a “small portion of the market” because the number of customers may be relatively, but it isn’t small from Autodesk’s standpoint.

  6. I think it’s smaller than the big firms would like to think. For every Jacobs, Woolpert, URS, there are thousands of two and three man firms just doing their thing. At the end of the day, you’re right, those large firms have large influence. I just believe it’s disproportionate to the actual seat counts.