Yesterday September 30, 2010 Autodesk made an announcement and the formal launch of new products AutoCAD WS and AutoCAD WS Mobile for free. AutoCAD WS is the browser based CAD product in the cloud which offers many features such as DWG viewing, limited editing, file management, viewing, markup including the ability to work on the same drawing with multiple people at the same time. AutoCAD WS Mobile was the AutoCAD WS ported to the iOS platform and available for devices such as the Apple iPad, Apple iPhone, and Apple iPod Touch. AutoCAD WS was also released with the Subscription Advantage Pack for AutoCAD 2011 and also a free AutoCAD WS plugin (http://www.autocadws.com/downloads) for AutoCAD based products and AutoCAD LT.
While we expected the new products and services to be popular, we did not expect the massive amount of new accounts and data. On September 29th the AutoCAD WS Mobile app appeared in the Apple iTunes App Store (http://www.itunes.com/app/autocad-ws) for FREE. We were not planning to announce it with a press release until September 30th at 8am EST. This provided us a day buffer for testing and to make sure the apps were approved and in the app store. This is where the awesome power and effect of social media comes in.
Someone noticed the new AutoCAD WS Mobile for Apple iPad, Apple iPhone, and Apple iPod Touch as well as the AutoCAD WS web page content and mentioned it on Twitter, and it spread like wildfire across social media across the world.
Below is a letter from Autodesk’s Amar Hanspal who is the Senior Vice President, Platform Solutions & Emerging Businesses also known as the PSEB-Platform Group.
| Yesterday Autodesk announced the availability of AutoCAD WS, an innovative new product that extends AutoCAD through the cloud to web and mobile devices including iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. We have been amazed and overwhelmed by the response to this launch. Within the first 24 hours of availability of the AutoCAD WS mobile application on the iTunes App Store, it was been downloaded over 125,000 time. Over 80,000 new user accounts were created and more than 35,000 drawings have been uploaded. This has vastly exceeded our expectations and our servers have struggled to keep up with the demand. We know this has resulted in a less than perfect user experience and in some cases a complete inability to even view the sample drawings contained in the mobile application. We have worked through the night in Israel where the AutoCAD WS team is based to scale the service so we can better meet this unprecedented demand AutoCAD WS represents a significant advance for design, moving it beyond the desktop to the field, and accelerating better design. During The technology preview phase of AutoCAD WS(Project Butterfly), Autodesk was thrilled to have the active participation of over 75,000 users within 20,000 accounts. These users made it clear to us that AutoCAD WS would be readily adopted and would quickly cement itself into the workflow of the world’s architects, designers and engineers, but we never expected the type of response we've seen in the past two days. We thank everybody who has attempted to use AutoCAD WS for their interest and patience and hope that you will try AutoCAD WS again as we bring more capacity online. Amar |
The AutoCAD WS Team (http://butterfly.autodesk.com/blog) is now working around the clock to scale up to greater capacity levels. The team turned off the file thumbnail previews in AutoCAD WS until after the weekend to help with the performance while more capacity is added.
All I can say is WOW!!! and of course thank you for having a look at our new product. We will be working hard to meet this amazing amount of demand and ask for your patience.
-Shaan