What do Resellers and Partner Employees Think?
In preparation for SolidWorks World, I want to stir the waters a little bit. I’m interested in the opinions of resellers and partner employees. Please post anonymously. I don’t need to know who you are, I just want to know what you think about what’s getting ready to rock your world? How are the pending changes going to affect your business? your customer’s business? How much grip on reality do you think remains in DS?
We are seeing more and more open criticism of Dassault and how they are handling the transition to a next generation product. Even a guy as careful as Jon Hirschtick has gone as far as to say that V6 was announced too early. If you watch twitter, you see open mocking of Dassault’s marketing techniques from people who are generally more reserved than your typical Dezignstuff blog writer or commenter.
We know that V6 of some stripe is going to be demoed at SWWorld this year. We know what some users think. Let’s see if we can get some resellers and partners to respond.
@Gary
Gary,
I rather like purchasing all of my software direct, and not through a VAR “Partner”. If the Cloud only eliminated resellers and made the product less expensive, the support direct rather than indirect, then I will happily conduct my purchase and support transactions on the Cloud. But my hardware will never be on the Cloud.
Even MicroSoft does business with this model. CAD partner resellers are a very dated concept……………
@David Paulson
David,
Autodesk is fully commited to providing all of their Cloud CAD solutions through their parnters. You might want to take a look
Perhaps CAD On the Cloud is not the most significant concern for the resellers. CAD on the Cloud may not meet most sophisticated user’s needs, but it may meet the needs of 2-3 times the existing user base of SolidWorks. I have non-engineer and non-CAD employees, customers, and suppliers that would be able to communicate ideas in a productive way if the interface were more easy.
But if the Cloud can make the use of the application this easy, why can they not market it directly on the Cloud and not through the VAR’s?
If you need easy non-engineer CAD the standard is Sketchup. Why would DS throw away an existing and enthusiastic customer base to compete with a free product?
I think it depends who you ask. Dassault has weaved itself deeply into the fibers that used to be the warm and fuzzy SolidWorks we all grew to know and love. Back in 2010 there were a number of notions that came to mind to those of us in the channel when SolidWorks showed off a hosted CAD platform. The message of what this next generation platform will be has been almost non-existant in the channel and at the past few SolidWorks World Conferences it is mentioned as the next generation solution to be showed next year…
My fear is DS/SolidWorks have launched a few web properties: Post3D, !nFuze and Live Buildings… none of which are products today. I am not confident that DS really understands the cloud of how to properly deploy and offer tools that run on it. Maybe this year we will all get the details we have been waiting for.
The one good thing is SolidWorks has tried to calm the masses by explaining that the desktop version of software is not going anywhere…hopefully that doesn’t mean it will be stationary as the development muscle focuses on this next generation product that might not be fully embraced until the next generation engineering wave.
I’m not in the market as a reseller.
I’m looking to add some reverse engineering software. If I buy an add-on its going to be a requirement on the PO that they will switch me to a different add on for another cad vendor.
The more people in the channel know about the murky future, the more terrified they are. As a VAR principal, I’m keeping my technical people as isolated as possible from this mess. They have an idea of what’s going on, but don’t know the full import. I will need to 100% retrain all of my techs within 5 years. I’ll have to have probably 3 of them retrained in the next year or so, and they may never work with SolidWorks V1 again.
Most of what is happening is coming from the very top, in Paris. What is not directly pushed from there is closely overseen. There is a new marketing “religion” with its own language and belief system which seems baffling to me as a channel principal. My gut tells me that the geniuses in Paris don’t understand the mid-market, and they seem ready to throw the lot over the rails.
Our customers are calling with strange questions. It’s clear that the competition is taking advantage of the situation. If I were them, I’d be far more aggressive. Picking up another product to sell is not out of the question. DS has approached some of us with a new contract which looks like a bad business proposition for me in my position of uncertainty. I would not be surprised to see some resellers knuckle under and become essentially puppet organizations for DS. As a large value added reseller in the US, I can’t imagine that other channel organization owners are not thinking the same things that are going through my mind.
End users should be safe with the current software for another 3 years max. Starting this summer, you will see resellers promoting new software. Infer what you will from that.
There are some reseller employees who are more optimistic than others. None of us is in full-on panic mode, but I think everyone is keeping their eyes open. SolidWorks/DS know we’re nervous, but with the new arrangement, they don’t have much to offer us. One way or another, resellers will take care of our customers.
On the optimistic side, resellers will now have more access to the products, and our bookkeeping will be simplified with just a single vendor. Our biggest profit is training, and that will not change, in fact it will get a bit of a bump initially. The new software has great potential for our customers, and we think we’ll be able to solve support issues much more efficiently.
Yes, the “good ole days” of SolidWorks are over, but we’ve got a bright future to look forward to.
As a SolidWorks Partner, I’m in the dark. There is no communication from DASSAULT about what’s going to happen soon. Most of the people that would normally keep me up to date about things have left DASSAULT. The recent press releases from DASSAULT are baffling and contain nothing of value.
Overall just a bad feeling, currently.
I can’t speak for others, but I know things in my office get tense when the SW corp guys come around. They paint a rosy picture of the future, but I know my boss doesn’t really trust them. Behind the scenes we have been demoing some other CAD packages, just in case. We also feel like the things DS is doing are scaring customers that find out about it.
The people who are really getting screwed are the gold partners. There is no place for them in the brave new world. A lot of our business as a reseller comes from selling 3rd party apps. In the future, we’re just going to have to sell all DS apps. The transition is going to start this summer, and I predict it’s going to be painful for all involved.