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SolidWorks – You’ve Got A Hanger!

9 April 2010 7 Comments

If you haven’t heard by now (and if you haven’t, where have you been?), earlier this week Josh Mings posted an article about an announcement SolidWorks made to VAR’s: as of SolidWorks 2010 Service Pack 4, that they would begin aggressively enforcing their policy of not allowing users access to service packs if they are not on subscription maintenance.

To get more clarification on this issue, Devon Sowell has scheduled an interview with Rich Welch, SolidWorks Vice President of Customer Services, next Tuesday, April 13, 2010 covering “SolidWorks Subscription Maintenance, Service Packs, and Bug Fixes”.  Devon is currently soliciting questions that folks would like answers to in this interview.

I’ve been thinking about this ever since Josh’s post, and the biggest question I would like the answer to is why are they just now choosing to enforce this policy?

I’ve never understood this policy, and why it even exists when most (all?) other CAD vendors allow access to service packs/bug fixes for their purchased version.  Eww! You've got a hanger! I’ve always thought this was the hanging booger SolidWorks was walking around with while talking about being customer-driven. (How do you like that analogy?)  It definitely doesn’t make you look cool!

You know, they could have scored major brownie points with customers and press alike, and not come out with black eyes and bruises that they are going to get from this, if instead they had announced that they had changed the old policy to reflect a more judicious, customer-centric approach, allowing anyone access to all updates for the version they had purchased (or the last version they were on when their subscription lapsed)…

What do you think of this policy?

Image credit: inyobusiness

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  • Hey Brian, thanks for talking about this. it's true, this change in policy won't affect many, but the policy itself does, and in turn it would affect SolidWorks (and the VARs) if they dropped it. Think of this… if bug fixes (SP's) were free, would you stay on maintenance? I wouldn't and most others wouldn't. They would lapse a couple years and renew. They're in a sticky situation, but it's not impossible to really add value to the resellers and endear customers like us. :)

  • Josh,

    I have thought about this angle, and actually was going to address it in the post too, but then didn't.

    Sure they would lose some folks who would let maintenance lapse, but there are also quite a few who would stay on it.

    I know we would. It is a line in the budget every year. Personally, I think it is a good value to be able to get the latest version when it comes out, to be able to participate in the Beta, and also for the few-and-far-between support calls to the VAR when we can't figure something out (yes, we have an excellent VAR!).

    SolidWorks could up the renewal fees to get back on maintenance after letting it lapse to combat this (and I wouldn't blame them one iota for doing that).

    But charging for bug fixes is plain wrong!

  • Josh,

    I have thought about this angle, and actually was going to address it in the post too, but then didn't.

    Sure they would lose some folks who would let maintenance lapse, but there are also quite a few who would stay on it.

    I know we would. It is a line in the budget every year. Personally, I think it is a good value to be able to get the latest version when it comes out, to be able to participate in the Beta, and also for the few-and-far-between support calls to the VAR when we can't figure something out (yes, we have an excellent VAR!).

    SolidWorks could up the renewal fees to get back on maintenance after letting it lapse to combat this (and I wouldn't blame them one iota for doing that).

    But charging for bug fixes is plain wrong!

  • Methadras

    Well, to further muddy the waters, the argument could be made that SW shouldn't even be charging a maintenance fee for software that they should fix to begin with. User should have a reasonable expectation that the software they use regardless of what version they run will work and will be fixed via SP's without having to pay extra for it.

    All this does is cloak the real issue as to the value of VAR's and what they really bring to the table and how SW is willing to put them up as a roadblock to having customers directly deal with SW. I personally believe that the VAR model is flawed and needs to be gotten rid off and SW should deal directly with customers and remove the layer of middlemen once and for all.

  • good post .

  • There are two type of peoples, one are those to which the policy will make difference and they will work according to that and others will be there for whom change in policy won’t make any difference. In a way you can say that there are 50-50 chances of both the parties.

  • Anonymous

    I know we would. It is a line in the budget every year. Personally, I think it is a good value to be able to get the latest version when it comes out, to be able to participate in the Beta,Plain Carbon Steel PlateAlloy Steel Plate and also for the few-and-far-between support calls to the VAR when we can’t figure something out (yes, we have an excellent VAR!).