Whenever I travel to industry events and get into conversations with readers about the major CAD firms—readers who happen to be AutoCAD users—sooner or later they ask The Bentley Question. The question is usually phrased as “What about Bentley?” but what they mean is “Does Bentley really exist? Does it have any customers?” To the average AutoCAD or Architectural Desktop user, MicroStation is as foreign as a Macintosh. But at least Apple advertises in magazines these AutoCAD users read.
How can a $350 million CAD company that serves AEC exclusively seem so invisible to the majority of AEC CAD users? It has everything to do with focus and intent.
In 2004 Carl Bass, Autodesk’s second in command, told me he thought Bentley “blew a fantastic opportunity” to take control of the CAD market during the life of AutoCAD Release 13. Bass is right that Bentley’s MicroStation did not become the most popular CAD program during that era. But as bad as R13 was, the only way another CAD company was going to become Number 1 by then (1994-1997) was if Autodesk disbanded and recalled every copy of AutoCAD ever shipped. AutoCAD had achieved market dominance years earlier; R13 was merely one bad release after many successful ones. (How bad was AutoCAD Release 13? At this year’s Autodesk University, Autodesk CEO Carol Bartz apologized for it yet again. I believe that makes eight years in a row.)
Bentley did not stand still during that period. In 1994 Autodesk reported revenue of $419 million while Bentley took in $28 million. In 1997, the year Autodesk shipped Release 14, Autodesk revenue had grown by about 20% to $510 million. Bentley’s revenue in 1997 was reported at $115 million, up almost 400% in the same three-year period. During that period of time Bentley went from being approximately the thirteenth largest AEC CAD vendor to being third, behind only Autodesk and Intergraph. (Bentley has since purchased the civil engineering and plot management assets of Intergraph to become second in most AEC segments.)
Where did the growth come from? Early on, Bentley recognized that it could never unseat AutoCAD. Because it started out as the microcomputer-based version of Intergraph’s CAD product, its natural market was the large firms who had standardized on Intergraph. In the 1990’s, while other CAD vendors took direct aim at AutoCAD, Bentley chose to capitalize on its existing relationships with large companies and organizations—which could buy more seats and afford more services. Bentley framed its growth aspirations in revenue dollars, not user count. By their chosen standard, Bentley succeeded beyond expectation.
For any CAD program to unseat AutoCAD, then or today, it would have to offer significant competitive advantage. MicroStation circa 1994 was a good product, but so were DataCAD, CADKEY, VersaCAD, ArchiCAD, Generic CADD, DesignCAD, FastCAD, and many other products from that era that either don’t exist today or have been marginalized. (I don’t really consider Graphisoft’s ArchiCAD a marginalized player today, but its survival is largely because of its roots as a Macintosh application. Also, I’m leaving Nemetschek’s ALLPLAN out of this analysis. It has been a big seller in some European countries, but never made it in the US.)
A third reason Bentley never overtook Autodesk has to do with the internal culture of the two firms. Former Bentley marketing VP Yoav Etiel once told me Bentley employees—from the founders on down—were “more motivated to be right than to be popular.” Another long-time Bentley employee once explained the corporate mindset to me by noting that Bentley creates software for designing nuclear power plants, not houses. By comparison, I remember my first visit to Autodesk’s original headquarters in Sausalito, California, in 1989. The furniture was cheap, the building was cheap, and the company was notorious as the home of “programmer princes” led by co-founder John Walker. “The hungry rats of Sausalito” was a local nickname that Autodesk employees of that day wore as a badge of honor. It was all about user head count, and an esprit de corps that stood for being true to the “average Joes” using AutoCAD.
Today Bentley still focuses on going deeper into existing user accounts, as opposed to gaining market share in head-to-head combat with Autodesk or Intergraph. That’s why the average AutoCAD user thinks Bentley is invisible, because he never sees the results of Bentley marketing. This year’s “You Deserve Better” marketing campaign may have looked on the surface to be about going toe-to-toe with Autodesk, but it was really aimed at Bentley customers who still run a mixed AutoCAD/MicroStation work environment. It would only take a small number of these clients to go 100% MicroStation to justify the cost of the campaign.
Bentley customers (called “accounts” internally) seek the proverbial one neck to choke, and are willing to pay what it takes to buy such peace of mind. Autodesk customers are afraid of the cutting edge, and like the company’s “democratizing innovation” pitch. Nobody buys Autodesk products expecting a cadre of consultants to manage the installation.
--RSN