Autodesk to expand operations

By Our Special Correspondent

BANGALORE, JUNE 6. Autodesk India Pvt. Ltd. (AIL), the one-year old subsidiary of the San Rafael, California-based Autodesk Inc., the world's leading design and digital content creation resource, is all set to play a greater role in the technical support and training areas in the Asia Pacific region.

Briefing presspersons at the spanking new office premises of the Indian subsidiary in Bangalore, Mr. S. Sridhar, Managing Director of AIL, informed that besides the existing Developers' Consultancy Group (which supports over 3,000 application developers worldwide), four additional operations will be taken up by AIL.

These are: information systems support for the global server farm of Autodesk Inc.; an assistance centre for the worldwide sales force; a technical support team for customers and channel partners in the Asia Pacific region and a central training division to provide curricula and train the trainers for the authorised training centres of Autodesk in the Asia Pacific.

According to Mr. Sridhar, these new initiatives will involve an investment of around $7-8 million over the next three years in the Indian subsidiary. AIL is also planning to partner with select large Indian IT companies to provide corporates with the whole gamut of information systems needed to use Autodesk's design solutions over the Internet. Similarly, discussions have been started with some large Indian technical universities to start teaching of technical subjects via the Internet.

Mr. Steve Cakebread, senior vice president and chief financial officer of Autodesk Inc., who also addressed the news conference, pointed out that Autodesk had transcended from a mere desktop design software vendor to a critical business partner keeping design information flowing smoothly not only throughout the whole enterprise but even linking up to suppliers as well as customers. This has been rendered possible with the recent web-enabling of its design solutions.

While conceding that Autodesk's share price has also been hit in the recent downturn in technology stocks, Mr. Cakebread pointed out that the dip had been far less in the case of Autodesk than for other CAD solution companies. The dip in the market cap for Autodesk has been just around 20 per cent as compared to 50 per cent for others in the business. Last fiscal, Autodesk Inc. revenues were around $820 million. He expects this year's revenues to cross $900 million.

Meanwhile, Autodesk Inc. announced today the launch of the world's first solution for bringing design and location-based information to the point of work via mobile devices.

Called Autodesk OnSite, the solution utilises the Palm OS platform, Oracle 8i Lite and the Microsoft mobile computing operating system.

Solutions built with Autodesk OnSite deliver high-precision asset management information and applications to mobile devices using a multi-tier architecture.

Through its reliable connections to a central database, Autodesk OnSite overcomes data integration and duplication issues that plague mobile applications. Employees can now analyse and update corporate data remotely to ensure complete, current information.

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Section  : Business
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