Autodesk & Pitney Bowes partner for AEC

Earlier this week, Autodesk and Pitney Bowes Software announced a strategic alliance to “help infrastructure owners and architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) organizations make more informed decisions and drive greater efficiencies across the plan, design, build, manage lifecycle of infrastructure.” If you didn’t know that Pitney Bowes Software used to be known as Mapinfo, this announcement probably left you a bit confused (mailing products, really?) and if you did know that this was an alliance about GIS, you probably wondered what it all meant. Mapinfo was a nifty little company that provided GIS (Geographic Information Solutions aka geospatial solutions) to businesses to help them place new retail outlets, utilities to locate new cell towers or transmission lines by anticipating demand, and, in general, combine business data with location attributes to make strategic business decisions. In 2007, Mapinfo was acquired by Pitney Bowes (PB) to, according to then-CEO Michael Critelli “deliver a broader range of advanced solutions for retail, communications, insurance, financial services and the public sector.” Pitney Bowes’ Software division is still a tiny part of PB, making up just 7% of overall revenue in 2010, and a few Mapinfo customers tell me that they have occasionally been worried about PB’s longterm commitment to the product set, so this alliance with Autodesk is interesting on many levels, not the least of which is a strong sign that PB is sticking with the brand. Autodesk has itself has offered geospatial products for years, concentrating on the CAD side of the process with AutoCAD Map 3D, Topobase and other products that integrate design and asset information. Did this announcement mean that Autodesk was abandoning its own GIS offerings? Not at all. During a call with James Buckley, SVP & GM, Customer Data & Location Intelligence, Pitney Bowes Software, and Rich Humphrey, Director of the Civil Infrastructure Business at Autodesk, a number of things became much clearer. Both companies see themselves as offering complementary solutions for the plan, design, build, manage stages of an asset’s life. Autodesk will play to its strengths in the design and build phases; PB, to its, in plan and manage. Mr. Buckley and Mr. Humphrey said that there is also the potential to extend further into downstream activities such as master planning and government policy-making and upstream into asset management. It is interesting to note that both also said that this partnership is not in response to any particular competitive threat when Bentley Systems is also working to extend its solutions further into asset management with it AssetWise product line. Where Autodesk and PB do overlap, Mr. Humphrey said, the potential for streamlining workflows is significant. For example, an asset owner could get existing conditions data via Mapinfo and manage and edit it in a familiar Autodesk CAD (presumably AutoCAD) environment. Initial target markets for this partnership are local governments, and transportation and natural resources companies. Both vendors feel that their offerings and sales reach can meet the needs of these customers, and are making joint sales calls as early as tomorrow. Other industries (retail, utilities) will be added as the offering matures and as the companies can roll this out through their sales channels. It is important to note that both companies see this as a global venture, and not targeting only North American markets. One of the key thrusts of the alliance is “freeing up silos of information for better decision making”. Any time we see those words, alarm bells go off: companies are, by nature, siloed, and freeing up information is seen by many as threatening and risky. To pull this off, Autodesk and PB will need to sell high up in their prospects’ organizations, to decision makers with the power to force that type of change and the vision to see that it is worth the disruption. It’s refreshing to see Autodesk in an alliance after all the recent acquisitions, since alliances are more transparent. There is no question that Mapinfo analytical products can provide significant insights into planning and asset management and also that this partnership, if successful, will push Autodesk even higher into its AEC customers’ consciousness. I’m looking forward to the first customer proof points.