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What’s So Premium About the New “Premium Plan” from Autodesk?

By Serena Harris, Sales Director, Annex Pro

As part of the transition to named user plans, Autodesk are ending sales of multi-user licenses as of August 7, 2020.  This means you cannot buy any more after that date.  It also means that if you have a subscription renewal for a multi-user seat after that date, you will be given a one-time offer of trading each of your multi-user licenses for two named user licenses. 

The major pro for that is you get a load more.  More seats of Maya, more seats of 3ds Max, and if you have collections, loads more Arnold and a huge amount of Bifrost, which by the way is an awesome addition to Maya for creating very cool effects that you can save and share with your team. Contact me if you would like to see a presentation of Bifrost!  

What about privacy? 

Another pro in my mind is the reporting side of this.  Privacy is important, and we don’t want Autodesk knowing what we are doing.  I don’t want anyone tracking my usage on anything either but somehow the ads that show up on my social media are ALWAYS about something I have been Googling or talking about.  This is the world we live in, get used to it. The good news is Autodesk has publicly stated that it will not sell or share this information outside Autodesk (it’s simply not their business model).  

What do I gain with Named User? 

The usage reporting in the Named User licenses is useful as it can save you money.  You will actually see trends on usage of how many people are actually using each product and version plus the overall frequency of use so when you come to renew next year, you only need to pay for what you need based on data rather than gut feel.  Many customers find they are paying for more licenses than needed at any one time. 

What about security? 

For customers required to run sites not connected to the internet, Annex Pro has found a way to handle the required ping back to Autodesk in a very secure manner that does not contravene the ULA or security protocols (contact me and Ill set up a call with one of our technical engineers). 

What’s the downside? 

The major downside to named user licensing is that now you must manage hundreds of individual licenses for hundreds of artists.  Sure, there is a bulk upload function so you can add a load of users at once but that doesn’t really help you manage users on an ongoing basis. 

This is where Premium Plan comes in 

To put it out there, Premium Plan in Canada is $390 per named user per year.  For context, a Media & Entertainment Collection Commercial Single-user Annual Subscription costs CAD$2,795. per named user per year. 

So yes, a slight premium on price.  But look at the benefits. 

Enhanced reporting so you can drill down to the individual user level (even more opportunity for cost saving), automated user additions, plus single sign on support, 24×7 live support, Autodesk internal admin experts offering to help set this up for you at no cost and free training. And no more network servers to manage or anonymous serial numbers to track! 

I did some “back of napkin” calculationsif you have 80 single user collections with Premium Plan and you discover that you really only need 70 at the end of the renewal year, even paying that premium, you would save around $100,000 after year three.   

Surely that’s something to seriously consider! 

Chat to me directly, and I can set you up with a one-on-one with the chaps at Autodesk. 

PS – Did I mention BifrostREALLY COOL! Check out “Taking the Mystery Out of Bifrost”

About Serena Harris

Serena’s knowledge of media and entertainment workflows spans over two decades. She has an IT background with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from London University and started in the industry as a technical support engineer. Moving up through presales into sales management at Avid and then Marquis Broadcast, Serena has a wealth of knowledge about the challenges of media management and complexities of media workflows.

Although a Brit by birth, Serena is now a full-fledged Canadian living with her husband and dog in North Vancouver.

Aug 4, 2020 | Cloud & IT

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