Forge-ing a Path to Platform

BRUCE BUCK: All right. Well, welcome everyone. So excited to be here. Isn't it great to be back in person again? It's awesome, yes. [APPLAUSE] There you go. Been exciting so far for you?

DAVE GRAVES: I'm excited to be back in person and see everyone, so thanks, everyone, for coming.

BRUCE BUCK: And we're excited because we have an amazing panel before you, people who have been forging the path, so-to-speak-- now Autodesk Platform Services.

DAVE GRAVES: Yeah, we're going to have a jar. Every time we say Forge instead of Autodesk Platform Services, we're going to have to put money in.

BRUCE BUCK: Exactly, but we have an amazing panel for you today. Here's the basic format of what we'll try to cover in this session. Have some introductions, learn a little bit more about the panelists themselves, and then have some discussion, learn a little bit more about their insights, the things we have over 100 years of experience here combined in terms of what they've done in their respective careers and the insight that they can bring on the technologies. And so, hopefully, we'll gain some insights from that. And then we'll have a little time for some Q&A for your questions.

Sound all right?

All right, so first question-- we'll go ahead. Each of you can introduce yourselves and tell us the most interesting thing that you've seen at AU thus far. So who'd like to go first?

We can start with Marti.

MARTI DEANS: Oh, man. OK, I'm Marty. I'm on the Fusion 360 product management team, and I look after, specifically, the tool library in Fusion 360. Today is actually the 10-year anniversary of when Autodesk entered the CAM market through the HSMWorks acquisition, so big day for us in DNM. And the most interesting thing I've seen in AU-- that DJ who plays at the general session. She's been here at every AU I've ever been to in any location, and I think that's fascinating.

BRUCE BUCK: Awesome.

MARTI DEANS: She's great.

BRUCE BUCK: Yeah, always good to see familiar faces.

BANKIM CHAREGAONKAR: So I'm Bankim. So I've been working on various Autodesk products for 20 years, first as a developer on Inventor Vault and a bunch of simulation products, and then as a product manager, almost since the beginning of Fusion. So I've been responsible for the data management capabilities of Fusion, so all the experiences on the web, in product, and now, most excitingly, through web APIs rather than just client APIs.

And I think the most interesting thing I've seen so far is all the product sessions have been packed, but just to see how packed a lot of the Forge sessions, especially, where partners are speaking about the solutions they're building and extending beyond what we offer-- seeing the excitement in those sessions has been awesome.

BRUCE BUCK: Awesome.

KARL OSTI: Yeah. Karl Osti. I'm really glad to be here on the panel. With the company 27 years. I have seen a lot of different things, of course. I was running the ADN network in Europe for a while, so I know Forge, and now I need to get used to Platform Services, as everyone here. But I know what customers and partners are really dealing with in terms of realizing a digital vision, as an example.

What I like most here at Autodesk University, number one, is it's a location which is new for all of us, which is a little confusing-- a learning exercise for all of us. I like New Orleans, actually, to be honest. And my favorite for sure is seeing you guys in person and having conversation with you guys.

AARON VORWERK: Hi, I'm Aaron. I'm an architect and engineer out of Fort Worth, Texas. I have the pleasure of seeing some of my team's work on screen in the general sessions. We create a lot of what you see that's what's new and what's coming. I'm not sure what I can-- when you ask the question, what's the most interesting thing you've seen, it's been costumes. But I'm not sure I should describe that in any more detail. So that's outside of the convention center. It can be really entertaining. And I'm not referring specifically to Andrew.

BRUCE BUCK: Yeah, I think, for myself, hamburger on a fork-- so in true engineering fashion, come up with some interesting ways to solve an issue. You've got hot dog on a stick, and you've got hamburger on a fork, so interesting things.

DAVE GRAVES: Yeah, I'm Dave Graves, by the way, out of Charlottesville, Virginia. [INAUDIBLE] interesting [INAUDIBLE] probably just New Orleans in general, just kind of going around, seeing the architecture, seeing everything, so the new venue has been kind of different and refreshing.

BRUCE BUCK: Awesome. So to start us off to get us learning a little bit more about each panelist and how they go about looking at challenge and looking at pursuing a path of excellence here. What kind of path maker are you? As you think about how do I face a challenge, are you a machete type, maybe a bulldozer, maybe like, OK, now let's just take a flamethrower. Maybe you're like, no, I'm just going to strap on a rocket suit and just skip all of this getting into the weeds type of stuff. What type of path maker are you?

MARTI DEANS: Well, I definitely wouldn't say-- those were all very aggressive. I think I am a little more--

DAVE GRAVES: There's different line, Marti, it's OK.

MARTI DEANS: Yeah, I think dealing with customer-facing things that are going directly into a product, I think there's a lot of exploration that happens down different paths. We're always trying to figure out what's the highest priority thing for the most people. So it's not always barreling ahead, but you do have to be ready to explore new solutions, ready to be disruptive to your own technology to get there. So I don't know-- whatever that is. [LAUGHTER].

BANKIM CHAREGAONKAR: Yeah, if I was picking between the ones you mentioned, I think the machete one sounds pretty good. So I think talking to customers, figuring out problems, and then trying to come up with solutions-- a lot of times, it's technology or product-based solutions, but other times you have the opportunity to experiment with business models and figure out new ways to bring that technology to market.

So one of the things in the early days of cloud was looking at how we deliver our simulation products as very desktop-y products that you deploy and manage internally and trying to flip that model and kind of try to move the solving of those solutions to the cloud and build a new business model around it, trying to do things like that, while not necessarily just focusing on the business we have today. Looking at the next business has been interesting.

BRUCE BUCK: Awesome. How about you, Karl?

KARL OSTI: Yeah, sometimes I want to be a bulldozer, but actually bulldozer doesn't really work. So there's this saying, what's the difference between a vision and hallucination? And the difference is really someone else can see your vision too. So you need to be influencing other guys, which is really important.

And I think the other topic which is on my heart is building a sense of urgency. You can't do it alone, so wherever you are going, you can't do it alone. You need to build a sense of urgency, a common understanding, and then you get change, but it takes a while. For example, when you see something which is really beneficial for you as a customer, until you get that across and make that vision your own language, your own understanding, that you can articulate it and you can take your people along with you towards your vision, that really takes time, and you just can't be a bulldozer here.

BRUCE BUCK: How about you, Aaron?

AARON VORWERK: So the engineer in me is thinking about the path itself and the quality of the journey that we take. But that doesn't necessarily imply safety, and maybe it's the architect to me that's thinking I'm the provocateur. I'm asking the question, what do you want to be tomorrow? What do you want your firm to be? What do you personally want to be tomorrow? And then we go from there.

BRUCE BUCK: Awesome. So as we think about any destination that we want to arrive at, it can seem pretty far here. I don't know if this is the path to Mordor or, to me, it looks like the path to David's backyard. He lives in the--

DAVE GRAVES: The path to my house, and giving directions to Bruce-- sometimes, if he lives across the street, it's an easy path. But here, you know he could have to go through the woods. He could have to take a roundabout route. It just depends on where his journey is going. But the important thing is, along that path, is you need to have a goal. Where do you want to get to? And, hopefully, when you hear some of the comments today, what people are going to say today, it's going to help you narrow in on your goal, and that path is going to seem a lot clearer. So once you get that goal, then the path is going to become a lot clearer, and you can implement innovation and change within your organization.

BRUCE BUCK: And then the overarching question of, well, why? Why should we even take this path or this journey? And a lot of it revolves around this common phrase of don't fix what isn't broken. We've heard this a lot from customers, and even internally at Autodesk. There are certain things-- it's like, look, this works, and it works well.

DAVE GRAVES: Or we've always done it this way. We've always done this or we've been successful-- those type of things that if it's good today or good yesterday, it's going to be good tomorrow.

BRUCE BUCK: So I always appreciate analogies, and me being avid in photography and videography, this was the industry and the shift that that industry underwent-- it really came to mind. Film going to digital photography. And so that's really the challenge that a lot of businesses are facing of mature and highly optimized technologies versus pursuing that new and emerging technology. And there's always-- for all intents and purposes, the process of film is not broken. It still takes perfectly good pictures.

DAVE GRAVES: Does anybody still have a film camera back there? Do you use it a lot? I mean, sometimes-- a little bit, but it's hard to get it develop now, right?

BRUCE BUCK: Yeah, and so as we've seen this industry undergo its own forms of digital transformation, we've also seen them refer to convergence. You've probably heard that a lot from Autodesk, about the convergence of technologies or convergence of disciplines. And the same was true with this industry of still photography and moving picture, and the challenges of what is ahead and what is actually being used. And so I think Autodesk is the same. We've been at the forefront of helping customers make that transition from analog toolsets to the digital age and the digital workflows that would enable that new way of working. And now we're on that path, and we've been on the path for a while, to discover well, what is.

DAVE GRAVES: And if you think about that image before, that iPhone, your cell phone, getting everything on that platform-- maybe not the exact same method, but that's what we're trying to do at Autodesk is get all these-- the next version of these technologies. How do we get them all together and just reinvent how we make things and do things? And, to me, that's the exciting part is where we're going.

BRUCE BUCK: And some of you, if your partners, if you've had the privilege of being able to attend TechX, you heard some of the reasonings and the whys of why this path is necessary. Andrew and Raji gave the examples of the jar of little tool bits and hardware. So raise your hand, don't be shy-- how many of you have a jar of little screws and random things in your garage? We all have it.

DAVE GRAVES: That looks exactly like my toolbox, just totally.

BRUCE BUCK: Just a mess.

DAVE GRAVES: Move things around till I find what I need.

BRUCE BUCK: Exactly, and so the analogy being here a file-based type of workflow, where I just really need a part of that information, whether it's metadata, maybe it's the geometry, maybe it's something else. But in order to get that, I've got to dump it all out, find the piece that I need, and then put it all back in. So there's a lot of things going on in terms of why that's important.

And so at Autodesk, we have a saying. We don't wait for the progress to happen. We make it. And all of these on the panel today have experienced that-- of the hardships of finding that path when you need to change that path sometimes and just reevaluate where you're going as well as what it's going to take to actually get there and make progress.

So starting out, we thought, OK, what are some of the questions that the audience might have in terms of wanting to know more about this? So we figured the first one-- what progress have we made so far and what are some of the obstacles that you see still in the way?

DAVE GRAVES: Does anyone want to volunteer?

BANKIM CHAREGAONKAR: Sure, I'll start. So two slides ago, when you showed the jar of bolts, there was the second half of that analogy is like you have a Phillips head screw there or a flathead screw, and you have to use a particular tool to actually use that object. And the tool chest is that you're digging through that to find the appropriate tool as well. So you can almost think of that as all the various products we make and the files that each one of those product make.

So now, if you want to have interoperability between them, what is it that you're doing to actually take data from one of these to the next one. And rather than thinking of these as individual tools, that toolbox image is trying to show how do these all become capabilities of a platform so that a tool for a file isn't the paradigm anymore. In the platform way of thinking, it's all just data, and you have all of these various tools available in the platform, so you as the end user can decide what's the right thing to use at the right time.

BRUCE BUCK: Awesome.

BANKIM CHAREGAONKAR: And I think that's what we've been trying to do with Fusion, and you see that with how we've been bringing design, manufacturing, analysis, et cetera together so that you have all of these capabilities on the platform. You have all of the right data there available to every one of these personas that's using Fusion. And now I think we just have to keep doing a better job of pulling those things apart so that partners and end users can actually come up with new ways of reassembling that data into new workflows that we might not even think of.

DAVE GRAVES: Aaron, being on the AEC side of things, I mean, what's your take on that question?

AARON VORWERK: I mean, there's a couple of things to look at. One is just a general acceptance that maybe one favorite tool isn't the answer to everything. I'm thinking about it from an industry perspective as opposed to our internal perspective, is just that we kind of see that there's a bigger toolbox now and are more likely to use it than maybe we would have at one time and then more likely to connect those tools in different ways than we might have at one point in time. So it might have been all about just exporting and importing.

What's the best possible format? What can I retain the most information through? What process can achieve that for me? Where now it's like, OK, well, I can connect these to a service that may be local, that maybe somewhere else and start to connect not only the files but the people. And I think that's just become mainstream in a sense over the last few years, probably accelerated by global events.

DAVE GRAVES: So, Marti, I know you've, again, been with the HSM in Fusion Cam. I mean, with what you're doing now with respect to Autodesk Platform Services, what sort of progress have you seen over the last three or four years? Because I'm pretty sure it's been substantial.

MARTI DEANS: Oh yeah. Over the last three or four years, just a bunch. I think when we talked about, formerly known as, Forge many years ago, we were all like, well, what is it? What's it doing? And now we're starting to see implementation and like the fastener library that's-- I don't think it's released yet but is coming soon-- is a good example. So seeing in practice the things Bankim was mentioning, like actually coming into the product and actually being built. And so working with manufacturing data and something in the manufacturing space, it just has to work.

That's our-- our obstacle is they are showing up to the machine shop to make their parts every day. And it has to work. So we're trying to build the bus while people are still on it. And it's really challenging.

So we can't put roadblocks in their way, which just means we have to be really careful with what we do implement and when we do implement it. But there's a ton of potential for the future with this more granular data model and the way we can connect that all up and connect it to partners and get more people looking at the data they need when they need it.

DAVE GRAVES: Karl, I mean, I know you've seen a lot in progress over the last several years.

KARL OSTI: So my point of view is we are still too slow. We still have to do more, OK? Straight to the point. Because all the conversations I have with customers is very much, I need to connect the AC data with the manufacturing data and the ERP data and all the things needs to come together. So we need to be faster. But the thing I want to make-- this is interesting here.

I want to turn it around, actually, and say you know I have seen you guys actually doing a lot of very amazing work with the Autodesk Platform Services stuff. I couldn't even imagine to make happen with the large [INAUDIBLE] and also lots of other stuff. And just to visualize it. I have a customer which is using the LMV for showing the progress for large plants, what's already in the works, what's installing right now, what's still in production, all that kind of stuff. So doing 4D, 5D sequencing if you want using the BIM methodology.

There's a lot of benefits. I think one of the obstacles I see is in the manufacturing industry, everyone knows that they have to do some digital services to some sort, call it predictive maintenance, after sales business, whatever it is. I see a lot of customers who are trying to outsource that, some sort of, hey, Autodesk, can you give me a digital twin for $5K? OK, so this is not how it's going to work, OK?

So there's still some responsibility on your side in terms of what is the service exactly, the digital service, you want to develop. Who's paying for it? It's a very important piece. It shouldn't be an IT exercise.

So even if you build it, there's the question on what's a business case and who is the business owner and who is needing it. That's really important because otherwise you're getting lost in this platform thinking. And for me, one of the obstacles is very much about how the companies, the customers I'm working with, they are a little confused in terms of who has the authority on data, who has the right on data.

If I'm working with multiple data clouds, who is responsible for what? Who do I call? And this is a little bit of problem. We'll get to that at one point in time. But right now, this scenario is a little fuzzy.

And that is one of the obstacles. Therefore, my recommendation would be go very straight on the use case. Identify what the business owner really needs and go for it.

DAVE GRAVES: Thanks. Has anyone out here implemented Forge at all or Forge Solution or, excuse me, Autodesk Platform Services solution? Has it been good? Bad? Helpful? Excellent. Excellent. So it's possible.

AARON VORWERK: Wait. Wait. Wait. Has anyone here use BIM Collaborate Pro? Anyone use Docs?

DAVE GRAVES: Fusion?

AARON VORWERK: We have a lot of platform services users. They just maybe don't know it.

BRUCE BUCK: So, yeah, if before moving on to the next question, maybe we can take just one or two questions if somebody has a--

DAVE GRAVES: Anyone have a question?

BRUCE BUCK: Yeah, related to this question that we see before us. See any takers?

DAVE GRAVES: Is anyone out there.

MARTI DEANS: Yeah, there is a hand up.

DAVE GRAVES: What you got?

AUDIENCE: I'll speak loudly. Can you hear me?

DAVE GRAVES: Yeah. Yeah.

CREW: Let's use a mic, please.

BRUCE BUCK: Oh, OK.

DAVE GRAVES: I'll bring it back here.

AUDIENCE: Thank you. All right. So we do our own development in-house on top of it to connect our ERP systems to the Autodesk Construction Cloud and BIM 360. What are you doing better over the next 12 months to get the APIs well documented and we don't have to go on a hunt and search path for our developers or finding it before our customer team is telling us there are new APIs? And stuff that's supposed to work doesn't work. And vice versa, stuff that's not documented does work. What are you doing to address that?

BANKIM CHAREGAONKAR: So I think within our platform team, there's a developer experience cohort. And it has been a big focus for them to, A, just document new APIs in a very easy-to-use way with multiple examples. So I'm from the Fusion Team. So I can speak for that.

We have a new GraphQL API that actually looks across the entire Fusion data ecosystem. Doesn't matter where the data actually lives. The one Federated API gives you access to everything within Fusion. And that one, I think, is well documented. And now as we get the new ones kind of up to scratch, we can then go back and look at some of the existing ones to see what needs to be tweaked. But--

DAVE GRAVES: And that's good feedback. And we can afterwards maybe find a contact, someone that can address it a little more appropriately. I'm glad to help you with that.

BRUCE BUCK: Yeah. Thank you.

BANKIM CHAREGAONKAR: There's one here.

BRUCE BUCK: Oh, one more. Mhm.

AUDIENCE: So how open is open?

DAVE GRAVES: The question is, how open is open? I think it's going to be more and more. Just the example I saw was Rhino and Revit, right? Those type of workflows. So I think the goal-- and you guys correct me.

I mean, I think the goal is to really make it as open as possible. And we don't care who's authoring it. We just want to be able to-- Phillips-head or whatever tool you want to use, be able to access it. But that's just-- I'll let you guys address that. Sorry.

KARL OSTI: Should I give it a try?

DAVE GRAVES: Go ahead, Karl. Sorry, I didn't mean to--

KARL OSTI: So I'm a big fan, actually, for making it very open. But the risk of making it very open is that you corrupt your data. And that is something where we at one point in time-- we also will be responsible to some extent. So with regards to the cloud information model, I am personally a fan of making sure it's reliable, some sort of stable, and then opening it up sequence by sequence instead of just making it available and then running into the risk that the API function doesn't call, you mess up your data of a couple of terabytes.

So I'm reluctant to open. But the ultimate goal should be very open because you should have access to your data. And we need to make sure that we not-- if you do something, we're not going to break your relationship with your API call. We need to refuse it in that case. But we need to put the mechanisms in place to support you here.

BANKIM CHAREGAONKAR: So I would address it slightly differently. I don't disagree with anything you said. I think the two paradigms we see with kind of SaaS products in general is you either have a walled garden, kind of the Apple approach of doing things, and others that are more open. I think we tend to be more on the open side of things.

If you're creating data with our tools, we're not saying that you should only use our tools to keep working on that data. So the whole point of these cloud information models is to have more granular and transparent access to that data. So you can extend the workflows with whatever tool is appropriate.

BRUCE BUCK: All right, which is a good segue way into cloud, right? Depending on how you feel about that-- why is cloud-- why do we talk so much about it and why is it a critical component in taking this journey?

DAVE GRAVES: I know Detlev has some insight onto this. I mean, Karl. Sorry. I know Karl has some insight into this. I'm sorry, Karl.

KARL OSTI: Yes, so we are a technology company, of course. And for us, tech cloud is a technology enabler for the next generation of our business, of course. For us, it's important. For you guys, it may not be important at all.

So for us, it's very important that we talk about your business outcomes. What is it cloud technology potentially can enable as outcome, such as improved collaboration, improved resiliency, shorter time span, less risk, whatever, given that we have simulation capabilities, coordination capabilities all in the cloud. The cloud itself actually is just a technology. You don't really need to care at the end of the day.

But it is something which enables this network, this ecosystem thinking so that you all can work together on one project, driving outcomes and successes. So he is talking about cloud, but that's-- all that is internal language, if you want. What you should need to care about, what's the outcome which technology can enable?

BRUCE BUCK: And actually, from my own perspective, too, if we go back to this, and I think this is really critical, if you look at each of these technologies and products, they all still exist today. There are still projects being done on film. There is still a professional level use for those tools.

And so whether it's on prem or cloud, there are still use cases for each of those. And there's development and investment going into each one of those branches. The prevalence of those is shifting. And that's part of what we're trying to get ahead of.

BANKIM CHAREGAONKAR: So I think we talk about COVID and the pandemic and how much it accelerated digital transformation for a lot of customers. So I think we did see in the early stages of the pandemic that customers who were already using some of the cloud solutions found it a lot easier to transition to having their distributed teams work mostly from home rather than in the office. And it took a little bit of doing for other solutions to catch up to that. So it shows the direction we're going in.

DAVE GRAVES: Marti, with everything you're doing with-- I mean, why is the cloud important? What advantages are they giving our customers?

MARTI DEANS: Yeah, I think the collaboration piece is really important. So if someone's programming at home, the operator can just open up the finished program and run it on the machine. So to Bankim's point, on the highest height of the pandemic, it enabled teams to continue working where their programmer didn't even have to come in or their designer didn't even have to come in. And they could just collaborate directly with the one person who went into the shop, so it was safe to do so, and still keep the lights on, keep the machines busy.

On top of that, I think it's thinking about library content. We want to work with as many vendors and third parties as we can. And this-- the cloud helps us just like take their data in and make it available to everyone. And then whatever they want to build on top of that, whether they want to build a recommendation engine or push extra data in, they are welcome to build on that. And the cloud really enables us to connect directly with those vendors and get that data to the people who need to use it.

BRUCE BUCK: And I've always seen that as a critical component when managing a team, are those libraries that need to be maintained. And usually when it's developed, it kind of stays that way for a long time in a legacy product. But the cloud enables exactly--

DAVE GRAVES: Always up to date.

BRUCE BUCK: Yeah.

DAVE GRAVES: So how many people are, we'll say, more comfortable with cloud than they were five years ago? Right?

BRUCE BUCK: All right?

DAVE GRAVES: Yeah. I mean, Aaron mentioned this the other day, that-- what was it, Aaron? That with the recent COVID and everything, we've almost seen an acceleration of that. You almost need the cloud, right?

AARON VORWERK: Yeah, maybe 300% or so increase. Yeah.

DAVE GRAVES: And I think we'll talk-- and maybe, Karl, you can help with this too. I mean, I get questions. Are all Autodesk going to be just cloud products? Are we just go in cloud? Or maybe Bankim, I don't know if you've heard that either, the questions.

KARL OSTI: So my future is-- there's still a need for on-premise software. So I think that the modern generation is going to be cloud. That's kind of obvious, clear. But I have plenty of customers who say, I can't do cloud everywhere. But again, the new capabilities, they should be enriched and accessible through the cloud. Yeah.

DAVE GRAVES: Do you agree, Bankim?

BANKIM CHAREGAONKAR: Yeah, absolutely.

DAVE GRAVES: Yes. I've heard it's not cloud or desktop. It's kind of and, right? When it makes sense.

MARTI DEANS: I think, too, what you can do when the data is in the cloud is there's so much more than just, oh, the data is there and we can all access it. There's a futures briefing at 3:00 PM that the D&M team will go through some of those workflows. I don't know which ones I'm allowed to talk about. So I'll just say go there to learn more.

But we're working on things where when you push things to the cloud, stuff is happening that's fully-- fully disconnected from the client. So it unlocks a bunch of automation workflows, too, that are a business outcome, that's not necessarily possible on a desktop product. Or if you're doing it on a desktop product, it's like locking up that computer or locking up that processing power versus offloading it to our servers or whichever servers that are just doing that for you.

So I think there's the data itself. And then there's what you can actually do with the data when it's there.

BRUCE BUCK: Yeah. So the next area, right? Technology, partnerships, and alliances. Great segue there of we'll find out a little bit more in the general session. So definitely that's something we want to explore. But I think from a customer perspective, we have technology partners and alliances that we have. But our customers also have their own technology partners in alliances.

And so a lot of what could be at top of mind is, is what Autodesk is doing, the path that they're going down, in alignment with the different technology partners that they currently use? Any thoughts on that?

BANKIM CHAREGAONKAR: So I guess one example that comes to mind is even before we look at partners and how people outside of Autodesk are using some of this technology, one of the things we've done recently is-- we have the Prodsmart acquisition, which looks at shop floor solutions. And in order to connect Prodsmart to Fusion, we are using the exact same APIs that I was referring to earlier, the new Fusion Cloud data APIs. And that enabled us to integrate this acquisition and give those customers direct access to all their Fusion data in very fast-- in a very short amount of time rather than the usual process, where you might actually build a handshake between two products.

And it's a very bespoke connection. But just doing it through these open APIs allowed us to do it very quickly. And any partner can replicate something like that and connect to any other MRP system that they would prefer to use.

DAVE GRAVES: Say, Aaron, I know on the AEC side, especially with Construction Cloud, there's a lot of built-in apps and a lot of partnerships. What are maybe some of your favorites or one of the things you find very, very-- I don't know-- intriguing or technology people that we partner with that you're like, wow, this is really powerful?

AARON VORWERK: Well, a lot of them have been mentioned. I mean, I was thinking about this in the context of the last piece, thinking about the cloud and what that means for these partnerships and alliances. First of all, flexibility and scalability. The fact that I can go to a coffee shop anywhere in the world and connect on a tethered cell phone connection and work on a Revit model with someone anywhere else in the world, we've enabled that through this sort of hybrid, if you will, of the local client and the cloud and then the platform that's been built.

And that extends to the connections between us and others. So you mentioned data exchanges earlier, the Rhino, Revit thing. In fact, I'm speaking from a building's bias at the moment. But the connections--

DAVE GRAVES: [INAUDIBLE]

AARON VORWERK: Yeah, the connections we've had over time that originally came through just the API being open now extend to the cloud set of APIs being open. And so what we-- we have competitive technology that runs inside of our software because we've enabled that, because we wrote the APIs for it. And now we are doing so on the cloud, whether it's design automation for Revit, where someone can run a headless Revit instance in the cloud that is tied in with their platform, or whether it's something that just augments what we do-- our partnerships with companies like Esri.

And so I think there's a lot of power that's been enabled of just making the data available somewhere else without having to export it and dilute all the decision making that was done and just letting that data float there for it to be grabbed for the next step in the project lifecycle. So I think that's where we're gaining strength.

KARL OSTI: If I can jump in-- so from a manufacturing perspective, there's an expectation that the big guys talk to each other. This is just clear. So it's like they got the partnership. Think about [INAUDIBLE] as an example and [INAUDIBLE] talking to each other to have a part in the handover.

But, of course, we are thinking in terms of, how can we cover most of the market and the market share? There's plenty. And there are thousands of niche applications where we actually don't know what's going on. And I really like the ecosystem the folks have built on the cloud on the AEC side of the business.

So I think one of the homeworks for us is still, we need to be much more precise in terms of what are the things we are doing and what are the things we are not doing so that you guys can potentially, your own business, based on a niche-- for us, a niche application. But for you, a big opportunity.

BRUCE BUCK: We can take-- oh, go ahead.

DAVE GRAVES: I was going to say, Marti, I mean, you're pretty much-- you're working with partners for all your tools. So you're really-- that's really important to you.

MARTI DEANS: Yeah. Yeah, for us it's a lot of-- on the library content side is a lot of data acquisition. So how can we-- it's mutually beneficial to us and vendors of and creators of that tooling data and the tooling products to have those live in the product so people can just grab them. So when they open Fusion, they can just see, oh yeah, I use this vendor. Oh yeah, here's my big list of tools.

It's great for them because they don't have to go hunt it or create it on their own. Great for the vendor because it's convenient and yeah. So I think there's, from a data acquisition standpoint, definitely just getting it in and making it easy for a user to find and use. And then from a partnership standpoint, what services might that partner want to build on top of that?

So rather than just seeing the list of tools, maybe they recommend one. Or maybe they recommend feeds and speeds. Or maybe they-- the laundry list goes on. It's totally up to them. But finding opportunities for them to build on top of what we already have is huge. I think it's something that we get a lot of interest in and something we're interested in supporting for sure.

DAVE GRAVES: Excellent.

BRUCE BUCK: Any insight on the partnerships that we do have? Which ones-- what type of things make that interaction easy in terms of that partnership with our group?

MARTI DEANS: Yeah. Well, there's a lot of things that make them fun and interesting to do, which means challenging. But I think it's a willingness to collaborate on the data side. That's always the first step, is how do we make our data interoperable?

And so moving towards something like-- is it going to be Autodesk Content Services for content? I don't know. Whatever. Moving towards something like that that's more flexible, less file based, less rigid will be really nice in that I think it will help open that up a little more, make it easier to do that handshake.

We deal a lot with different standards, which we learn are not that standard actually. And so it's always a fun challenge to, well, you're not standard. No, you're not standard. And then we'd work through that. So lots of opportunity.

BRUCE BUCK: Awesome. Thanks for the insight.

KARL OSTI: So maybe another work on that. There's a little tension, of course, given that we are talking platform. There is the expectation that we all will be agile. And there's a lot of functionality and capabilities coming and showing up on that platform.

But when we talk about market share and we talk about big players talking to each other, means big players have big organization and processes. So even if we talk to the big guys, sometimes not as fast as the market would expect it to be.

DAVE GRAVES: Sure. Awesome.

AARON VORWERK: And a different take on that-- in the AEC space, because asked a lot about country specific niche use cases. Do you have a solution for this? Do you have the answer for finishing this type of analysis that's a code specific to ANZ or something?

And the truth is that we can't necessarily do that for every municipality in the world. And so what we rely on is these kinds of partnerships. It's not even just being open to them. It's we need your help in order for this to be complete. And so there's an expectation for these kinds of partnerships.

BRUCE BUCK: We've got maybe one or two questions from the audience for related to technology partners and alliances.

DAVE GRAVES: There's one back there.

KARL OSTI: It's hard to see in the light.

MARTI DEANS: It's hard to see with the spotlights.

DAVE GRAVES: Getting behind it here.

AUDIENCE: What are you guys doing to take partnerships or alliances with other companies to get 2D or even as-built systems and getting into this digital BMI and everything else, working platform?

DAVE GRAVES: Aaron, I'll let you take that one.

AARON VORWERK: I don't know that I can say. There's-- well, I'll say this. And because I heard something yesterday that I'm not sure I should repeat, but that I know we're investing in certain technologies that help us translate that kind of data into something more intelligent. I mean, we've done some things that are visible. But, yeah, just say we're aware of that. I don't think I can say anymore.

BRUCE BUCK: All right. Anyone else? Cool. OK.

So where do I start? For those who have started, you're already well on your way of learning the ropes and learning how much of a journey it can be. But a lot of times, it's just from that perspective of, OK, I know that I need to get there, but I don't know how to start. I don't know how I can go about this journey.

Any insight into what you've seen because, again, your careers are chock full of examples of starting something and then just trying to figure out, well, all right, what's the first step that we take to make progress, Bankim?

BANKIM CHAREGAONKAR: Sure. So I think the first step, obviously, is to identify the problem you want to solve, and then from the Fusion side, I think for a while we've had a focus on desktop APIs. You can do a lot with the Fusion desktop API, even starting to get into some of the Cam automations now. But that only really solves the problem in a specific way for that specific person.

So where I would go is start looking at some of the new Cloud APIs we've put out because we're looking at what's the convergence of what you can do on the desktop versus what we can do by granularizing the data in the file so that you have easier access to it and it's transparent through the REST APIs, et cetera, and then figure out how you're going to develop that application, starting with something small, right? I want to be able to connect to this other kind of system. And I want to get my part number from Fusion over to the other side.

And once you can do something simple like that, then you can start getting into more complex things like, oh, if I wanted to have a costing type of connection, then how am I going-- how am I going to get the [INAUDIBLE] information for this component along with the material, et cetera, so that we can process, figure out the cost, and bring it back into Fusion for a bill of material kind of workflow.

DAVE GRAVES: OK.

KARL OSTI: From a manufacturing perspective, when I have conversations with executives, they all want to do their digital business, of course. They're building their digital house, their digital strategy, all that kind of stuff. And the problem is if you do it top down, then you basically get not started at all because there's-- going to have a common understanding and buy in, all that kind of stuff.