Saturday, February 8, 2014

Re: [Avid-L2] RE: Avid's biggest challenges

 

I think Avid biggest challenge is cashflow. Everything else can be addressed/improved later...

cheers,
BG

From: Pete Opotowsky <popix@cfl.rr.com>
To: Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, February 8, 2014 9:44 AM
Subject: RE: [Avid-L2] RE: Avid's biggest challenges

 
Seems to me the biggest challenge is: how will Avid survive as an R&D company? Because they can't do any of the things talked about here without R&D. Avid can't maintain an R&D company by selling one or two software products, there's just not enough margin in it. Avid's hardware base is a very specialized server market. They know exactly what they are doing with ACA. It's specifically aimed at  those who are capable of buying servers, preferably in bulk – free of the "noise" created by all the small shops. But the thing is Avid's server scheme is dependent on other's products, they don't make the drives, switches NIC's etc. They have competition from Facilis and Editshare.  The only part of the market in which they might have a clear edge is the very top. The ACA 1%-ers.  Not sure how a company looks at this landscape and continues to go it alone. Long term it seems they'd be better off under the umbrella of a company with a large base of infrastructure products. Intel? Nvidia? AMD? Microsoft… no wait they tried them already.
 
Pete O
 
POP Pictures
Orlando
 
From: Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com [mailto:Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of oliverpeters@oliverpeters.com
Sent: Friday, February 07, 2014 9:27 AM
To: Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Avid-L2] RE: Avid's biggest challenges
 
 
The dilemma for Avid is advancing the software products on which (presumably) they aren't making money. To bring MC up to speed, and to a lesser extent Pro Tools, means dumping significant engineering resources into the product. But at the same time these products have to respond to a downward pricing pressure. Clearly these contribute to the pie, but aren't a great business by themselves.
 
OTOH, no one will buy any of the other Avid products (storage, consoles, etc.) except as an extension of this software. Clearly this means that MC and PT, even at a loss, are essential for the overall health of the company. Whether or not they are profitable by themselves (and I hope that they are) doesn't really matter, because they are the brand and image drivers for Avid.
 
We can argue about finishing needs, etc. but first and foremost these have to be great and modern editing tools. In that arena, they - at least MC - are getting significantly "out-thought" by the development that's going into the editorial tools from Autodesk, Adobe and Apple. Each have quirks and generates likes/dislikes from users, but it's hard to argue with the fact that each has also incorporated features that make them faster and more fluid editing tools than MC. That's something that really has to be turned around.
 
- Oliver


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Posted by Video Geek Squad at 11:14 AM

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