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I don't follow PTC closely since I started using Onshape for teaching instead of Creo. But the last few versions that I used go more and more puzzling as to what were the "improvements" and why did they make choices they did. I never saw their commitment to cloud-based software that Jon eluded to in his statement. So, until we actually see what happens I'll stick with Onshape. I love it. My students love it. Most of them hate SW and Creo after using Onshape.
So I hope PTC doesn't force or coerce (they will be the bosses btw) the Onshape team into making their product more PTC/Creo like. That would be a shame because I would have to find a new CAD package to teach with. Maybe this will actually be PTCs first product that can work cross platform and stay that way. They have never had any interest in working to make their products work on Linux or Mac OS in the past though.
Yes, I have indeed had the misfortune but are any of his points valid at all? I know that in your position at Onshape you cannot agree with any of his points but are there really only 5,000 subscriptions? And did PTC really pay 470 million? Those numbers don't even remotely work in any business universe but there they are, in an official PTC press release.
More than surprising that any company would let on how many subscriptions it has but to open its most basic financials (which are even less than most basic) to such scrutiny seems not only odd but not very smart. Maybe it begs another question as to why PTC would even offer such business information to the business community? Again odd at the very least, just not smart at the very worst. IMO.
I personally have no faith in the future of Onshape staying even remotely in the same form it is today. Pricing WILL change, it's just a business reality. And reading some the posts about how Onshape will remain the rainbows and unicorns that it's always been read like all the other posts about all the other companies that have been bought out. Have no fear, nothing will change for the user etc. etc. then low and behold after a couple of years everything changes or the company/software simply disappears.
Of course Onshape is different and nothing like that could ever happen here but time will tell.
I personally have NEVER had a better experience with ANY software company EVER and hope that experience remains as positive but where is there an example of these types of acquisitions where everything did not change (for the worse) to fit the new corporate paradigm and the very real business need to recoup a $470 million dollar investment?
In the early 90's I worked for an amazing startup called RASNA that was acquired by PTC. RASNA's product, Mechanica was a great product but, despite all the empty-corporate-speak-press-releases about how great this would be and how Mechanica would continue to be developed, the product was castrated and ended up buried as a Creo module. I also used to work for Hewlett-Packard. PTC bought HP's cad products and buried them too.
The UK sales/pre sales team was flown over to Boston and subjected to an aggressive east coast American Boot Camp where one of the PTC founders came in and proved he was a complete Dick by insulting every nationality there. He then introduced one of his star salesmen, an ex marine whose sales methodology seem to involve threatening customers with violence if they didn't buy Pro Engineer.
This had the desired effect and most of the UK field team that wasn't fired, because they were over 40 or had a beard(!), left along with our European colleagues. PTC never wanted the field teams, they wanted the development team, offering them each a $1m retainer in share options. There will be a lot of very happy Onshape employees currently.
I stayed for a little while while I planned my escape from the Evil Empire and was tasked with taking PTC UK management in to meet my Mechanica customers. This proved to be very entertaining as most of my customers also hated PTC due to their aggressive (God Bless East Coast American) sales tactics and delighted in telling PTC management that they would never buy a PTC product..
5,000 subscribers at an average of $1,500 is $7.5m. PTC are paying $450m for Onshape!
Any way I will enjoy Onshape for now and watch closely as to how the future unfolds. I'm a single user with very little at stake and hope everyone benefits, or at least is not harmed in any real fashion, from this purchase.
PTC clearly bough you for the technology and talent, certainly not for the user base as you only have 5000 users.
Creo use the Granite kernel which was developed in-house by PTC. Onshape uses Parasolid kernel which is now owned by Siemens (Siemens NX is a competitor of PTC)
PTC will need to recoup their 470mil cost and clearly this will not happen from the licensing fees of just 5000 users. I think they will expand their kernel and make Creo or an incarnation of Creo available online, just like Onshape is.
When this happens they will not have a use for 2 different kernels. Licensing Parasolid will cost them money and they will also need to hire programmers to maintain 2 different technologies.
So...Onshape will most likely disappear in a few years.
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1) We know that the average subscription price is likely going to be between $1,500 and $2,100 since. (This is assuming the number of reported subscriptions is only including paid subscriptions. It's possible the average is outside this range due to some accounts being grand-fathered in with lower prices and some people possibly paying more for enterprise.)
2) The press release also mentioned $5,000 subscribers. What they don't say is the number of USERS. Again, here, the average number of users per subscriber is going to be more than one since Pro and Enterprise subscribers can have more than one paid users.
3) We don't know the exact make-up of the $470M. It's likely some combination of cash and PTC stock. Paying out $470M in cash is a lot different than paying $170M in cash along with $300M in stock.
So, if we assume the 5,000 subscribers have 5 users on average and spend $1,800 per user - we have $45M, which would increase PTC's revenue by about 3.5%. This would also mean that the valuation of $470M is 10.5 times Onshape's revenue. This still seems a little high (10x valuations aren't common), but we're just guessing at the average $$/user and the number of users per account and the amount of stock used in the transaction could also inflate the reported price. But, to me, it doesn't seem unreasonable for Onshape's revenue to be in the $50M ballpark (and likely growing!).
I was too amazed of only 5k subs (in 170+ countries). That would explain a lot of perfect customer care and superior response time and making us all feel like equally important. If you compare to SW: "Today (10/2016), there are over 2.3 million active users at over 234,800 companies in 80 countries, and that number continues to grow." source
Onshape appears to have ~120 employees so roughly 40 paying customers ($60-85k turnover) per employee. While SW has ~1800 employees / 1280 users per employee.
On the other hand as former VAR for Alibre - I know how 'easy' it is to convince someone to exchange their current cad system.
About pricing, do you think Ptc going up with price to get more subs?
I think they could make that highly requested middle tier and put Onshape seriously against F360 in terms of subscribers.
There is only two things where big companies put their money eyes closed - if there is good chance to make even more money or if their competitor has something they don't. Of course there will be a day when subs base is enough to adjust pricing.
Onshape deal means roughly 30% of single year revenue for PTC so it's like family buying electric car - of course they do have expectations but might as well just have it standing on drive way for neighbors. 'Usage cost' of Onshape's 120 person crew would be around 2% of total person expenses in PTC.
What this all means for existing users only time will tell..
Sure, they do a billion blah blah blah, and Onshape will only get better blah blah blah, but the number of subscribers HAS to be one of the most guarded secrets a company can have, isn't it? Until the number gets really large, and a company can convince non-users to jump ship because that number is so large, it seems the actual number of subscribers, especially if it is very small which 5,000 certainly is, would be held closely. Again, where is the logic in publishing that specific number?
I'm simply missing something here.
So I used Grasshopper in Rhino with some Rhinocommon/Python help to completely solve sheet metal unfolding in Rhino where it’s so easy to “direct edit” existing non-parametric models. I did this using pure geometry, namely using the measured bend reduction to calculate the neutral axis depth into the sheet and using Rhino’s ability to unwrap developable surfaces mathematically. Simply polysurface offsetting from the folded 3D model outer surface, with a appropriate bend radius fillets included in the model already, gives a perfect unwrapped flat pattern based on our physically measured bend reduction.
However, I still very much want flat pattern sheet metal in the iPhone version, so I can play around casually with ideas. I also still use Onshape mobile as a shop floor tool surrounded by fabricator questions. I use it personally at home exclusively on mobile, for serious design work. Eventually I would’ve learned FeautureScript but since my boss is very unlikely to subscribe to Onshape now, after my Rhino sheetmetal breakthrough, it’s just a casual toy and shop floor convenience I export assembly models to from Rhino. At best I might upgrade them from Inventor to Fusion. Onshape mobile is extremely useful overall. I even run it on mobile browsers to peek at sheet metal flat patterns and my recent interest in Featurescript was to indeed extract real flat pattern files on mobile.
What other iPhone app lets me find dimensions on a shop floor? And isolate a part in ghosted context? Only Onshape so far.
And what about the real future of Onshape? Not from the unique and biased position as a principal in the company but from the position of a current customer? What should we really think about Onshape's future? How should we really plan on our future CAD needs? Why should we believe that PTC will continue to grow Onshape, not raise prices, and not orphan its user base as the world according to PTC changes and the business realities where an investment of $470,000,000 has to be recouped in some fashion?
Still love Onshape and as I've previously stated I've never had a better experience with any company ever, but it's now a different company and can only measure future satisfaction as the future unfolds. I will keep my hopes high and my expectations low and continue to use Onshape as always.
Or we should expect some important new functionality like the ones mentioned in @MBartlett21 spoiler?
Eduardo Magdalena C2i Change 2 improve ☑ ¿Por qué no organizamos una reunión online?
Partner de PTC - Onshape Averigua a quién conocemos en común
No offense intended but I will be surprised if the free version is retained in its present state much after PTC takes over. One of the principles promised years ago that all users in a certain class (including me) would get $150/year maintenance for life. When new management too over, that fee went to $400/year and when 3DS took over, Alibre development stopped for a few years alltogether, though the maintenance fees didn't. That sort of progression is just a fact of life in most cases. Here's hoping Onshape will be more idealistic.
I do still appreciate how my questions here are answered thoroughly and professionally despite not paying anything for the privilege.
I am sorry about your experience with Alibre - not the first time I have heard that story. One of the things you won't see from any company offering a SaaS solution (as far as I know) is 'lifetime' anything because it creates an accounting nightmare where that obligation sits on the books forever. It is also unrealistic to say 'the price will never change' - never is a long time. All we can honestly tell you is what our intentions are. We have no plans to; change the pricing, get rid of the free plan, change the kernel or mess with people in any way. Re Fusion, it's crown jewel is HSMWorks (I used to work there) and I happily recommend it to users looking for a CAM solution, but I find it highly unlikely that a company is going to use it for an Engineering platform at scale - it simply doesn't have the PDM+/PLM features needed.
When people calm down and look at this rationally, they will see that there is a lot of upside for them
In any case, best wishes on a successful transition for the Onshape team - from my perspective you guys really deserve it.
Mike
You take some of the best engineers that have been in CAD for years and years, and they come together to write a program within the last few recent years, incorporating the best aspects of CAD. They have a definite mind towards keeping it simple allowing the CAD operator to do CAD and not having to pull teeth in trying to figure out how to use the program. They say we’re going to make a program where you don’t have to worry about stinking installations. You don’t have to worry about having a super computer on your desk. You don’t have to worry about constantly updating. We’re gonna make this thing reliable and we’re going to make a program that isn’t always going to crash or hang. They say — let’s make it so you could run this program on anything — even a little phone that you carry in your shirt pocket. But not only are we going to make it so it can run it on a little phone, but let’s make it so you can actually do effective work on that phone — on that small screen. They make it so it is not file based to where you don’t have to worry where this file is or that file is. They make it so all your parts, PDFs, imports — the whole 9 yards are incorporated within one document. They make it so it’s as easy as pie to bring parts into assemblies. They eliminate massive spreadsheet type of configurations. They incorporate a script language were new tools are constantly being pumped out by staff and users. And the staff is making improvements on the program every three weeks!
Now is this thing perfect. No. But it’s coming along real nice. Some wish for certain things — like built-in CAM for instance. And I could only imagine how Onshape would be if that was incorporated. I can only imagine how it would compete with that other program out there if it did have built-in CAM. But regardless of this, it’s just hard for me to imagine a company spending the money that they did for this jewel of a program, and not keeping it going and improving upon it — but rather chopping it up and incorporating it into older technology that isn’t anywhere as user-friendly. That just doesn’t make sense to me at all. Go ahead and incorporate aspects of Onshape into other PTC programs, but don’t do away with Onshape itself, because that would make about as much sense as sinking the island of Maui.
My two cents.
I admit, I got warm fuzzies reading your post. Thanks!
Cheers,
I'm hoping that I love this merger, and mostly I'm hoping and praying that Onshape's Wonderful Customer Support doesn't get negatively impacted by the sale.
Nobody does support as well as Onshape does.