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Monday, April 15, 2013

The Cost of the Cloud - Autodesk Cloud Credits

For those of you following my blog over the past year or so you will remember all the posts about access to the cloud services, options for students, and possibilities for payment plans...  Well, the time has come.  It took a while but Autodesk finally figured out how they wanted to charge for the cloud.

Subscription Update

Dear Autodesk Subscription Customer,
As of April 12, 2013, you will receive 100 cloud credits annually for each software license on Subscription. Cloud credits provide you a better way to measure the costs required to use select cloud services.
Cloud credits will be needed for the following Autodesk® 360 Services available to you as Subscription entitlements:
Autodesk 360 Cloud Services
Rendering
Autodesk Infraworks 360
The amount of cloud credits required for these services fluctuates depending on the variables you choose – thus offering you a more flexible and accurate way pay just for the amount of cloud computing that you need.
To help you monitor usage of cloud credits we recently released the Autodesk 360 Usage Report which provides Contract Managers the ability to track how many cloud credits have been used and how many credits are left—by the contract or by the user.
If you need to purchase additional cloud credits, you’ll be able to do so from:
Subscription Center
My Account
Autodesk, Inc. (Direct Accounts)
An Autodesk Reseller
For more detailed information on cloud credits please see the Autodesk Cloud Credits FAQ.

Okay,  so each subscription license gets 100 cloud credits.  If you want more cloud credits it will cost $100 per 100 credits... Meaning each credit costs $1.00.  So... how much will it cost to render.  Previously, it was something like 5 credits to render with the cloud and Revit.  If this were still true, then it will cost roughly $5.00 per rendering (or 20 renderings per $100.00).  Not to mention you HAVE to be a subscription user.  

How many million cloud renderings did Autodesk say were completed last year?  Talk about a nice revenue stream.

 Currently, students still get cloud services for free (Thanks Autodesk!).