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[Don] Yes, it is a challenge, for our product development guys and our product marketing guys to figure out what to build and how to prioritize, because there are some needs from smaller clients that are different than the larger clients. In general, and luckily, most requirements are similar, but there are a few that are different, and that does cause some idiosyncrasies at how you go back at the market.

[AFR] The announcement recently about RCMS...are we going to see more partnerships like that in the future with Graphisoft?

[Don] Yes, yes.

[AFR] And these are companies that are for the most part visualization experts, they are sort of CAD outsourcing...so exactly how does that work? What's your involvement with that company and how does that work when serving the client?

[Don] I think it's a natural outgrowth of our market share. So as our market share gets larger, service bureau say, "hey, one out of every three companies is using ArchiCAD," so they say why not support this further?

[AFR] We are talking about services...we are talking about not only CAD companies making the tools for the AEC industry professionals, but now becoming involved in providing services directly to them. Where is that taking you?

[Don] What we want to do with these 'Centers of Excellence' is make these people super-proficient, so there business grows -- as ours does -- and the customers get the best service possible. And the best documentation support.

[AFR] How will you make them super, super efficient?

[Don] We will work closely with them.

[AFR] As in training?

[Don] Yes, well ...generally these are folks who are well suited to it.

[AFR] They're CAD jocks!

[Don] Yes, they are professional CAD jocks and they understand that you have to really conquer the technology to be super efficient with it. Whereas architects might say, "you know what, this is just too much trouble." These guys say nothing is too much trouble if I can get the desired results, so if I have to change my process just a tiny bit that's okay with me because I get a movie out of it that I can charge the client $20,000 for.

[AFR] Right.

[Don] The other guy could too, if he learned how, but he doesn't want to learn. And that's his right as a businessman if he chooses to outsource it to someone who knows the technology well. The other reason we want to work with them is because they told us they found that ArchiCAD is so flexible it is super productive for them. So they can rapidly produce results and put those results into other formats.

[AFR] So they may get clients that need drawings back in DWG because the government requires it for example.

[Don] Absolutely, no problem. So they bang out a model and bang out drawings that the client is willing to pay $10,000 for that they can do for $1000, then great.

[AFR] So these 'Centers of Excellence', if they grow, this is really a change in the way the profession sort of works. What we are really talking about is CAD outsourcing, within and without, our borders to these specializing centers for building information modeling.

Thinking about this, on certain level, it makes sense to me because one can say that the jump from CAD to BIM is just too darn high, and companies may say: "well, why should I absorb all that cost?"

[Don] Yup, it does make sense that we are going to see some change; I think these centers will also be very important in the adoption cycle, and so the steady state -- I don't know what that will be because it's in the future -- it will be great for these experts to be available because it will help us serve our customers who are trying to serve their clients.

We want a bigger eco-system. The more experts the better we can serve our clients.

[AFR] What I'd like to talk a little bit amount now is the Apple-Intel announcement.

[Don] Sure.

[AFR] I understand that Graphisoft is going to fully support the Apple-Intel transition -- and I think that is wonderful and I didn't expect, honestly, anything less than that from Graphisoft. But what I'm really interested to know -- because you describe this chain or sequence between the original ArchiCAD product, which supports the Mac of course, and this construction BIM product that doesn't -- is, will the Apple switch to Intel allow more Graphisoft products to support the Mac platform in the future?

[Don] You know one of the reasons we chose the Maxon product to move forward on was because it supports all the platforms [Editor's note: Don is referring to the Windows platforms and the Mac platform as the platforms]. Whenever we can, we always want to support both platforms. So some of the ways in which we are going to go back at the market -- in the future with new technologies and products -- we will support the Mac platform.

[AFR] But not some that are developed around Windows technology?

[Don] Some of the products that don't are small enough still that we need to grow larger before we do that, and I'm not the decision maker there either, so there's a rationale for that, because the level of complexity is significant for supporting both platforms, and it's a challenge.

But we have a great system for handling this development and going forward this should expand. And hopefully the Intel announcement going forward will make that easier for us. And that will service everybody.

[AFR] Don, thanks for this discussion. We've covered a whole bunch of great stuff here and I look forward to seeing your new products and services come to market in the future. Best of luck.

[Don] You are welcome.

 

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[Article published: 3 October 2005]

 

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