The Future of PC-DMIS BUGS

Just to empathize with Hexagon: Companies would spend $$,$$$ for SMA's each year, with nothing in return... Companies would stop paying, without seeing fruit of their SMA investment.
With an ever shrinking budget and super hungry competitors snatching up market share...
How would they pay for the SW development to stay state of the art AND test/debug to the extent you are expecting?

It seems this is somewhat the course that AutoCAD took. Fifteen-twenty years ago, AutoCAD was probably >90% market dominant across the world. Now they only have about 30% of the market.
I think they slowed down on innovation, and instead focused on customer service/debugging.
They even went and developed a low cost cloud-based software, just to try to compete with the copycats.

If Hexagon slowed down on innovation and acquisitions of potential competitors, and instead invest in perfecting what they currently offer; I feel they'd end up going down a similar path.

Just to empathize with Hexagon: Companies would spend $$,$$$ for SMA's each year, with nothing in return... Companies would stop paying, without seeing fruit of their SMA investment.
With an ever shrinking budget and super hungry competitors snatching up market share...
How would they pay for the SW development to stay state of the art AND test/debug to the extent you are expecting?

It seems this is somewhat the course that AutoCAD took. Fifteen-twenty years ago, AutoCAD was probably >90% market dominant across the world. Now they only have about 30% of the market.
I think they slowed down on innovation, and instead focused on customer service/debugging.
They even went and developed a low cost cloud-based software, just to try to compete with the copycats.

If Hexagon slowed down on innovation and acquisitions of potential competitors, and instead invest in perfecting what they currently offer; I feel they'd end up going down a similar path.

Some of this may be true, but for a company to think they can dominate a market forever is pretty ignorant. (Look at what happened to the cell phone manufacturers when apple came into the phone market.) Nothing lasts forever. In my opinion, a lot of companies try to do too many things and thin themselves out.

Companies try to snatch (wait, i can't type "S-n-a-t-c-h"?) the new markets on this or that rather than be true to what they do best. Hexagon makes a fantastic machine frame and has a pretty solid software. That's what they should stick to. Hexagon AB is constantly snatching up CAD/CAM software companies and dissolving them into the broader hex network and losing people in the process as Murphy stated. (see, Vero Software, MSC, and others.)

Further, as consumers of the Hexagon product, we have certain expectations of the software. And unfortunately, those expectations include bugs and things that will drive you insane. But i will take those things over having to switch to Calypso or some other software. but what i WILL NOT do is pay an SMA for a software that's has an expectation of Bugs. Sorry, Hex. The yearly SMA costs simply aren't worth it to me. Fortunately, my time at Hex allows me to not have to rely on the support team but there will eventually become a point where i'm far enough behind that logic won't work anymore. But until then, I'm saving my company a few thousand per year.

Not really following the Apple analogy considering they've been making computers and brand-unique interconnected products since the early 80's. In fact, that seems to be exactly what Hexagon has been trying to do (follow/emulate Apple's strategy). They have been swallowing up all automation, manufacturing, measurement/quality organizations, to make brand-unique (and hopefully seamlessly integrated) products, which they can use as leverage to penetrate into new markets.

PCDMIS is a Wilcox product, not a hexagon product. It is a Hexagon branded product now, but the Wilcox PCDMIS has had persistent 'bugs' of varying magnitude since I started using v3.4 back in 2002. It will never be perfect. if you expect otherwise, go try aberlink, mcosmos, collapse-o, easycmm, quindos, or other competing products. I guarantee you will come back begging the demon for forgiveness, like I have, lol.