Pricing will be interesting.... initially, the five year cost of software rental is going to have to be lower than the 5 year cost of maintenance subscription to get any traction. Once customers have bought in, and will have great difficulty migrating away, I would expect the cost to begin incrementing rather steeply. That first taste of heroin is always free after all.....
Tas wise, it's a decent option in the US, since subscription costs are immediately deductible as a business expense, vs a capital expenditure for mutli-thousand dollar software that has to be depreciated over multiple years. No different in that regard than buying office space vs renting one.
From a human perspective, it (IMO) encourages the treatment of staff as disposable commodities. bring people on board when needed, kick them out the door when not. Short term thinking.....
As a shareholder, I think it's going to be a nice short term gain in Adesk revenue, but I'm not optimistic that it will be sustainable, and could very well crash. As a _customer_, Bricsys, Carlson, and Graebert are looking much more attractive in the long run.
After all, one of the lessons we've learned from maintenance subscription (eg paying for the next version in advance without knowing what's going to be in it) is that the putative upgrades only rarely improve productivity, and often reflect software fashionability instead of what I need or could use.
