New Yahoo! CEO's former company cuts and restructures Oh, the irony. Autodesk has announced it will cut 10 per cent of its workforce and has lowered its fourth-quarter earnings forecast. Usually, we wouldn't pay the travails of the 2D and 3D software design firm too much heed, but the cuts come just two days after executive chairman Carol Bartz was named the next CEO of Yahoo!. …
Autodesk hardly just produces commodity 2D and 3D drawing engines any more. They make a lot more money from their other software and services which add all sorts of capabilities including structural analysis, quantity surveying, geographic information systems, etc etc.
A significant part of their income comes from government contractors who have tightened the belt recently. Real world profitable companies will change to fit changes to their market.
It is fair to say that Autodesk has grown, and diversified, considerably during the last 15 years - mainly by adding all these extra packages to the core drawing engine. Autodesk has shown an ability to identify and exploit market opportunites. Yahoo, by comparison has been stalled for the last few years and is just on a glide path.
If Yahoo can be turned around (big doubts there) then it will have to be through doing something like what Autodesk did: add more value to their product and continue to find new opportunites.
Frankly, the new CEO looks like just what Yahoo need. Hope it isn't too late.
We are switching to Bricscad for 2D drafting because Autocad (incl. LT) is just too expensive. Their upgrade model also follows MS i.e. products are "retired" after 2 years! Now they deserve to struggle a bit after ripping off us smaller customers for years. Their model has always been to give their kit away very cheap to schools and colleges, make it the de-facto standard, rip off everyone else.
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