Who owns your AutoCAD?

Question for CAD/Subscription Admins:

Who owns your AutoCAD? Is it at the department level or higher up at the division or corporate level? Some other setup?

I ask because we are struggling with license flexibility and shelfware. Our licenes are owned at the smaller, individual department level. For a while, our OPT file split up groups of licenses by department. This seems fair that departments that need more AutoCAD, buy more AutoCAD. But it can get expensive to add new CAD users. Then if your department recesses or is busy with other software then your licenses sit idle when they could be used by other departments who are ramping up projects. And it is a pain to track and move those license asset between departments.

Recently we've convinced the division managers to group the department license into a larger division pool. Doing so has relieved a lot of pressure from departments to buy unnecessary licenses when they add new people and sharing these licenses is more efficient. I have employed license usage software to track how much each person uses AutoCAD. But the licenses are technically still owned at the department level and paid for by the department at subscription renewal time. It is still a pain to group people by department for usage. Some people use licenses from a department that they are not technically part of. Then people move to another department or departments grow or disappear and we are still stuck with moving the licenses around. Other people borrow licenses so that skews the usage data. Then at renewal time, we must run around and get each department manager to sign off on their subscription costs and some put if off to the last minute.

It would be much easier if they were owned at a division or corporate level. But that raises other questions. How do you fairly distribute costs? Do you charge each CAD using department a flat rate for licensing? Would it all be company overhead? Would departments have too many hoops to jump through to get a new license or vertical product?

What is your setup?

Ultimately doesn't all the money to pay for these licenses come from one source and one source alone? The company owns all the licenses and its all overhead, in my opinion.

My employer pays for all licensing at the enterprise level due to the large number of licenses needed. The enterprise is broken up into multiple regions spanning the countries where we have a presence.

Each region is broken up into disciplines, and each discipline pays for certain things, namely all computer hardware, and software applications bundled into what I'll call "packages"... There's an Admin package, a Manager package, a CAD package, etc. with each having a PC / Laptop configuration.

Put another way, the discipline's 'rent' the software from the enterprise. Once an employee is added / or removed from the roster, the annual flat-fee is allocated (not sure if they pro-rate for those added / terminated mid-year?).

Being a consumer of the CAD package myself, I can tell you that we have a flat-fee for all CAD software. More specifically, once a CAD package has been authorized for an employee's computer, it takes little more than a formal request to have any CAD application from Autodesk, or Bentley installed on that computer.

We're able to do this, given that prior to our recent acquisitions we had +10,000 employees (where +/-60% are CAD Users), thus we have very low cost structure for enterprise licensing.

We have the "Drafting Trailer", 10-people of varying skill and field of expertise. Due to high costs of adding new licenses, we utilize both stand-alone and network licenses, as well as use multiple year-versions. I manage the licenses. I decide who gets what drafting program (LT, MEP, Revit), what version (2010, 2011, 2012) and what license (standalone or network). The way my reseller explained it: We own the version of the current year, and all prior. For instance, we own AutoCAD Revit MEP Suite 2011 and prior. After our subscription is paid this year, we will own 2012 outright in the next calendar year.

Compatibility between years isn't really all that difficult. It is a managing nightmare, though, when something needs added across the board. I spend a lot of time with lisp's and scripts.

I guess a simple answer would be: we don't exactly have departments, divisions, or anything like that. We're a small company. Everything is bought by the company, and owned by the company, it stays if you go...unless you buy it yourself without reimbursement (my Lycosa/Naga/Nostromo). How the CFO splits things out between managers, engineers and drafting is unknown to me. I just know that if "the trailer" needs something, I walk into the owners office and propose it with supporting documentation. Fighting for 64-bit Revit power-workstations right now.

The licences are owned by the company and I can get a print out from Autodesk from the Subscription Center of all of my licences and their current product level.

We are just one company in a group of companies and a few years ago the top level holding company somehow purchased an AutoCAD licence instead of the operating company. I spent a lot of time talking to Autodesk about transferring the licence from the holding company to the operating company and the upshot was that we had to pay a fee of around €250 to transfer the licence. They explained it so, a company (defined as a taxable entity) owns the licence and it doesn't matter if that company belongs to a group of companies under a holding company. They consider the transfer of a licence between group companies is just the same as the transfer of a licence between non linked companies. Well that's how Autodesk Germany see it.

I guess how a company with many departments organize their licences is purely an internal thing, but the way RenderMan's company does it sounds by far the best way for a large concern. Making things complicated is an invitation to confusion and misuse (unintentional).

Autodesk said that licences cannot be loaned or rented to other companies, even within the same group. How this could be controlled is beyond me and the consequences arising therefrom is also unknown. I would think a lot of companies loan/rent licences and don't even realise that they are not allowed to do it.

The company in general. Licenses are not charged to each department depending on their number of users (and some users might do work for multiple departments), they are just part of the general overhead. Software is relatively 'cheap', it is training that is expensive.

My employer pays for all licensing at the enterprise level ... the discipline's 'rent' the software from the enterprise.

Autodesk said that licences cannot be loaned or rented to other companies, even within the same group. How this could be controlled is beyond me and the consequences arising therefrom is also unknown. I would think a lot of companies loan/rent licences and don't even realise that they are not allowed to do it.

To be clear, all licenses are acquired, and maintained by the enterprise.

Use of the word 'rent' in my earlier post was my non-executive, non-accounting (poor?) word selection, and perhaps not the most appropriate given the comments that followed.

How companies, groups, enterprises, or however they are called all over the world, are legally structured will vary very widely and what is a valid structure in one country may well not be acceptable in another. I personally can't see how Autodesk can deal with companies world wide in exactly the same way and there must be some differences somewhere. My comments are based on how Autodesk Germany deal with the situation, it could well be different to the US, Canada or Australia.

As long as one stays legal it doesn't really matter and how a big multinational manages its licences has got to be different to a small company with just a handful of CAD places.

But its very interesting to see how others do it.

The mother-company own every one of our programs/licenses and the sections (mother-company = 4000 people in Swe -> each Section= ~15-20 people) pay for each hour that we use a license. The upside is that if I am required to use a program just one time and someone somewhere in Sweden has that program, I can borrow it very easy for the time that I need it. Also, the sections don't have bige expenses every month for licenses that we may or may not use.

It has not always been this way though, it's a fairly recent change that have moved all licensing up the ladder. But I must say that a few years ago it happened occasionally that when I got in late to work I didn't have a license to work from (more coffee for me!), that has not happened since this change. Also its much easier to get the new versions right when they are available and not two years later.