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Autodesk on AWS

A leader in 3D design, engineering, and entertainment software, Autodesk has been producing such software for the architecture, construction, engineering, manufacturing, and media and entertainment industries since 1982. To speed and streamline development, Autodesk has been steadily expanding its use of AWS and decreasing its data-center footprint.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

When Autodesk launched in 1982, its desktop software helped transform the architecture, construction, engineering, manufacturing, and media and entertainment industries. The company has continued to innovate in the decades since, now offering subscription software services to more than 100 million customers worldwide. To meet this exponential growth in customers and data, Autodesk migrated workloads from its on-premises data centers to Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2012, taking a hybrid cloud approach. As a result, Autodesk has increased efficiency, scalability, and flexibility and enhanced reliability, security, and analytics capabilities—while saving up to 90 percent on data processing costs. Freed from manual processes, Autodesk’s data scientists can now focus on further innovation, using big data, machine learning, and serverless solutions on AWS.    

CUSTOMER STORIES

Collaboration and analysis by business people working in office
2023

Autodesk Fusion Delivers Generative Design Capabilities Powered by AWS

Autodesk leveraged scalable compute power to bring its generative design feature in Autodesk Fusion to market, enabling customers like PIX Moving to automatically generate hundreds of design options based on specified constraints and accelerate innovation. By combining Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances, Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), and AWS Batch, Autodesk built a robust cloud infrastructure capable of high-speed parallel processing to facilitate generative design's intensive computations and dataset analysis. 

Read the generative design case study »
2023

Autodesk Boosts Startup Performance by 50% Using Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS)

Learn how Autodesk improved performance of long-running hydraulic modeling simulations using Amazon ECS and AWS Fargate.

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2023

Delivering Near-Real-Time Insights Using AWS Lambda with Autodesk

Discover how Autodesk built Autodesk Forma (formerly Spacemaker), a service that provides conceptual design capabilities, predictive analytics, and automations to help users make informed decisions in the earliest phase of the design and planning process using AWS Lambda.

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2023

Autodesk Improves Observability and Delivers Personalized User Experiences Using Amazon SageMaker

Yathaarth Bhansali, principal engineer, data science team at Autodesk, shares how Autodesk built a platform that models and responds to user behavior data in near-real-time to improve observability and to deliver a dynamic, personalized experience for its customers with AWS services including Amazon Kinesis and Amazon SageMaker.

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2023

Autodesk Builds Reliable, Cost-Effective Big Data Analytics Using Amazon EMR

Learn how 3D design, engineering, and entertainment software company Autodesk migrated to Amazon EMR and improved performance and reliability while saving costs.

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2023

Innovyze, an Autodesk Company, Reduces Development Time by 60% Using AWS Managed Services and AWS IoT

Learn how Innovyze, an Autodesk company, reduced development time from years to months and deployment time from months to days using AWS.

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Photo of several water treatment ponds viewed from above
Quality metrologist scanning some moldings by professional optical 3D scanner with a turntable, automotive concept
2022

Autodesk Rapidly Expands Insights in Software Using Amazon SageMaker and Amazon EMR

Autodesk is using machine learning to improve the daily user experience of its computer-aided design program AutoCAD by delivering personalized tips for user efficiency & proficiency. Using Amazon SageMaker and Amazon EMR, Autodesk is generating more insights and using subject matter expert resources more effectively.

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2022

Creating a Data-Centric Security Platform

Anmol Misra, senior director of infrastructure security at Autodesk, discusses how Autodesk built a data-centric security platform that collects, centralizes, processes, and responds to configuration changes in near real time by leveraging AWS services including AWS Lambda and Amazon S3.

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2022

Taking Risks without Being Reckless

In this AWS Conversations With Leaders video, Amy Bunszel, executive VP of architecture, engineering, and construction design solutions at Autodesk, dives into the success of Autodesk and how they take risks, without being reckless. This approach created a culture of experimentation within the workplace, propelling them to solve complex problems as they build the right teams to scale at massive proportions.

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2022

Designing a Cloud-Enabled Workforce

Watch this conversation with Prakash Kota, CIO at Autodesk, about organizational strategies and best practices to empower people and business to succeed in the digital future.

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2020

Cloud Services Help Autodesk Deliver Solutions to Customers

Scott Reese, Autodesk SVP, talks about about Autodesk’s high growth business areas and his customer-centric approach. Autodesk's high growth areas rely on cloud services to deliver solutions for some of the world’s most important challenges.

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quote

Construction companies are trying to manufacture large parts of a building offsite, so they want the predictability and the quality that manufacturing companies have had for decades. And manufacturing companies are trying to become more flexible and agile, as construction companies have been for decades. But to practically converge and automate workflows and data, you must be in the cloud."

Scott Reese
SVP Manufacturing, Cloud, & Production Products, Autodesk


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Infographic: Autodesk Increases Efficiency, Reduces Costs through Large-Scale Migration and Modernization on AWS

2020

Advice from Autodesk SVP & CIO on Digital Transformation and Training

Prakash Kota, Autodesk SVP & CIO, speaks about getting staff and leadership onboard with the company-wide enterprise workloads migration to the AWS Cloud and discusses how to motivate staff through AWS Training and Certification. A key learning from Autodesk's transformation has been to start small and expand fast by investing in your people to build a culture of continuous learning.

Read highlights from the conversation » Listen to the full podcast »

quote

We had this vision of moving all our enterprise applications and the back-office systems to the AWS Cloud, and it was a rocket launch. We had two months to engage staff in the migration."

Prakash Kota
SVP & CIO, Autodesk


2020

AWS Machine Learning Enables Design Optimization for Autodesk Customers

Autodesk uses machine learning models built on Amazon SageMaker to help designers organize and sort through thousands of generative design options. With Autodesk's generative design process, Edera Safety, a design studio from Austria, build a better and more efficient spine protector.

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2020

Autodesk Reduces Big Data Processing Cost by 90% Using AWS

The Autodesk Data Platform (ADP) collects and processes product usage data, providing Autodesk’s operating teams with a product analytics platform. By migrating the ADP from a Spark-based processing system to AWS Lambda, Autodesk saves up to 90 percent in data processing costs annually. Today, Autodesk is able to process data in near real-time, providing timely analytics for business users to leverage for product improvements and other business opportunities.

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2020

Database Freedom Allowed Autodesk to Modernize Legacy Commercial Databases with Amazon Aurora

To give its customers the power to work more quickly, effectively, and sustainably throughout project lifecycles, Autodesk needed to reimagine its infrastructure to support this complex, exponentially growing data. Learn about the five step framework that Autodesk used.

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2020

Autodesk Develops Machine Learning Models on AWS to Route Cases Between Support and Technical Teams

Autodesk built machine learning skills models using Amazon SageMaker that differed from typical classification models because they are designed to choose the correct team responsible for supporting users. This is in contrast to many models that attempt to predict the topic of a case and then route from that topic.

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2020

Machine Learning Helps Autodesk Customers Connect with Experts Faster

Autodesk chose AWS solutions to build and rapidly deploy a machine learning model for a new iteration of a forum called Community Match. The model matches the expertise of forum members with questions posed on the forum—the idea being to encourage community members who are experts on a particular subject to share their insider knowledge on Autodesk solutions. And whereas previously customers sought Autodesk support only to troubleshoot problems, now they take advantage of the knowledge within the shared community to use Autodesk software more effectively.

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2019

Data Preparation on AWS Enables Autodesk Customer Analytics

Developing a 360-degree view of customer financial metrics can give organizations the ability to make proactive decisions instead of being reactive with account team strategies. However, customer data is usually housed in various sources and requires a lot of effort to join metrics by mapping IDs, account names, and other fields. This data can be presented in conflicting formats, and the number of records can exceed what common data tools can handle. Autodesk leverages Trifacta on AWS to create a streamlined data pipeline process to automate the delivery of holistic customer analytics.

Watch the re:Invent talk »
2019

Amazon EC2 Spot Instances Help Autodesk Spend Less, Scale More

Autodesk creates design software that requires significant compute capacity for rendering. For Autodesk, the Rendering-as-a-Service (RaaS) workload was its single largest when measured by total spend. The company now relies on Amazon EC2 Spot Instances for significant cost savings on its RaaS function.

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2017

Autodesk Goes Serverless on AWS, Reduces Account-Creation Time by 99%

Although Autodesk benefited from its embrace of AWS, setting up new AWS accounts posed a challenge for the company’s two-person AWS Operations Team. Manual processes for account setup resulted in 2-week turnarounds on new-account requests and risked human error. Autodesk built a solution using serverless architecture to minimize the time and cost required for infrastructure management. With the solution, Autodesk developers now submit an online form to request a new account, and an API triggers the account-creation process. The solution, which also supports querying accounts by account number, email address, or IP address, took only a month to develop and launch.

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2018

Autodesk Creates Hundreds of Virtual Desktops in Days Using Amazon WorkSpaces

Autodesk uses Amazon WorkSpaces instead of renting physical hardware to host its virtual workstations on zero clients, improving setup efficiency and reducing its carbon footprint. Using AWS, Autodesk sets up and deploys 450 workstations at its Autodesk University events, saving nearly a week’s worth of time and thousands of dollars.

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2018

AWS Support Helps Autodesk Focus on its Core Business

AWS Support helps Autodesk focus on its core business instead of spending valuable time worrying about architecting its foundational AWS services. Autodesk thinks of AWS Support as its virtual infrastructure support team as if it was just another department or group within Autodesk because it knows it can contact them with no prior notice and get the level of support it needs.

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ARCHITECTURE

2020

Autodesk Optimizes Visual Similarity Search Model in Fusion 360 with Amazon SageMaker Debugger

Autodesk quickly designed, trained, and debugged a machine learning model on visual similarity. Using SageMaker Debugger, Autodesk improved Fusion 360 performance and saved both time and compute costs.

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2019

Securing Studio IP in AWS: Cloud-based VFX Project Management with Autodesk Shotgun

Learn about the architecture of Autodesk Shotgun Private Cloud, a cloud-based VFX Project Management application running on AWS. Autodesk Shotgun simplifies creative project management and unifies visual effects (VFX), animation, and games teams of all sizes. Shotgun is a scalable on-demand platform that can support just a few users to thousands—used by more than 1,000 studios globally to track millions of tasks each day. This walkthrough shows how AWS helps customers build robust SaaS applications that address even the most stringent security needs.

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2020

The Architecture Behind Autodesk's Mission-Critical Database Migration from Microsoft SQL Server to Amazon Aurora MySQL

Autodesk migrated a mission-critical database with minimal downtime. This migration helped streamline the management and resiliency of the Autodesk SSO service, optimize costs, and reduce overhead for infrastructure maintenance. This blog details the pre-migration architecture, migration strategy, migration steps, and performance comparison.

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2019

Autodesk Deploys Windows and Linux Workloads Using Amazon ECS

Autodesk created an end-to-end ecosystem that standardizes the way it built, ran, and deployed software. One Amazon ECS cluster allows Autodesk to run both Linux and Windows workloads.

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ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

AWS BLOG

2020
Autodesk Adopts Amazon S3 to Save 75% on Storage and Modernize Backup and Recovery
This blog post covers Autodesk’s journey to the cloud and the Amazon S3 storage classes and features Autodesk uses to save both time and money. This includes a step-by-step overview of Autodesk’s data ingestion pipeline, from the data sources to cloud storage, and an explanation of how Autodesk recovers backup copies of their data.
Read the blog 
AWS BLOG

2020
Amazon Day 1: Autodesk Kept its Customers Running During COVID-19
Autodesk introduced new programs to support its customers impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic by offering free commercial use of several cloud-based collaboration products to accommodate teams working remotely. Additionally, the company’s new Design & Manufacturing hub provides resources to help designers, engineers, medical professionals, and maker communities work together to develop new solutions for personal protective equipment and life-saving devices, using open-source design, design review and validation, and connections to manufacturing facilities.
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AWS BLOG

2019
Migrating Hundreds of TB of Data to Amazon S3 with AWS DataSync
Enterprises are often faced with challenges in migrating vast amounts of data efficiently and effectively from their on-premises data storage environments to AWS. Autodesk successfully used DataSync to migrate over 700 terabytes (TB) of data from their on-premises Dell EMC Data Domain storage system to Amazon S3.
Read the blog 
re:Invent

2019
Deep Learning Applications Using PyTorch, Featuring Autodesk
With support for PyTorch in Amazon SageMaker, customers benefit from a flexible deep learning framework combined with a fully managed machine learning solution to transition seamlessly from research prototyping to production deployment. At re:Invent 2019, the PyTorch team shared its latest features and library releases, and Autodesk shared best practices based on its experiences with Natural Language Processing.
Watch the video 
WIRED

2019
​Machine Learning Takes the Guesswork Out of Design Optimization
“About a decade ago, we came to the realization that while the processes of design were evolving rapidly and people were able to design more complex things, they couldn’t easily take into account the manufacturing considerations early in the design process,” says Mike Haley, head of machine intelligence at Autodesk.
Read more on Wired 
AWS PARTNER NETWORK

2019
Autodesk Forge was a Launch Partner for the Industrial Software Competency Program
Autodesk provides solutions targeting one or more of the primary steps in discrete manufacturing or process industries: Product Design, Production Design, and Production/Operations. it follows AWS best practices for building the most secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient cloud infrastructure for industry applications.
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AWS PARTNER NETWORK

2019
Quick Start Guide: Autodesk BIM 360 Integration on AWS
This Quick Start deploys an Autodesk BIM 360 integration environment on AWS in about 15 minutes. BIM 360 is a unified platform that connects project team workflow and computer-aided design (CAD) data from construction management software in real time. Using AWS as the integration host provides an extra layer of security, scalable computing power, vast data storage, and rich content delivery.
Access the Quick Start Guide 
AWS BLOG

2018
How Autodesk Increased Database Scalability and Reduced Replication Lag Using Amazon Aurora
Autodesk migrated to Amazon Aurora from both managed MySQL databases running on Amazon RDS and self-managed MySQL databases hosted on Amazon EC2. Learn about factors that influenced Autodesk’s decision to move to Amazon Aurora, benefits of the migration, and best practices for migration and optimization.
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