Being interviewed by engineering.com could turn into a rite of passage for Autodesk CTOs (chief technology officers). See our interview with previous CTO Scott Bourdin here). We tracked down Autodesk’s latest CTO, Raji Arasu, at Autodesk University 2022, which was recently held in New Orleans.
Arasu proved to be as curious about the CAD industry as we were about her. She comes with experience from Intuit, eBay and StubHub. Entering the CAD world does not seem to intimidate her. She was recruited for her background in data platforms, which has been deemed vital to the future of Autodesk by her new boss, CEO Andrew Anagnost, who is fond of saying, “A file is a dead thing working.”
If you are asking, “What’s wrong with files?” we will pause here for some explanation. Anagnost, with his disdain of files, is reflecting the software industry’s trend of moving toward databases and away from files. Records in a database can be updated more easily than can files and therefore lend themselves to being shared and being on the cloud. It is not a fad, but rather the future. Databases can contain design geometry and metadata. So many things you have used have been accessed from an online database. Examples include Google mail, Microsoft Office 365, online banking, the airline ticketing for the flight to Autodesk University….
How did Autodesk find you?
I got a call from Autodesk. I had done a couple of stints around platform transformation. At eBay, Intuit, StubHub. Platform transformation is about creating shared capabilities, and getting data, cloud migration right to deliver outcomes on security, elasticity, scale and speed. At Intuit, we had consumers using Mint and Tax, the small businesses using QuickBooks and larger companies using accounting software. Whether you are a consumer, a small business, or an accounting firm, it all came together with data. All the capabilities and the insights that you get from data make it really powerful.
A platform initially used to be just breaking down one Rolodex applying a service-oriented architecture. It is also not just about getting onto cloud infrastructure or creating a SaaS offering, it is about deliberate creation of the right services and externalizing it to the ecosystem. It became much more than that. Services that accelerate the workforce internally while giving birth to future product ideas. Also, how do you really open a platform in such a way that your developer ecosystem can create something unique, something you didn’t imagine? That was my learning of the fundamentals of a shared platform—from a start to a mature platform.
Also, we need to think about how we can externalize it. How do we put it out there for others to use? Maybe as a headless service….
What is a headless service?
A headless service doesn’t have a product or experience associated with it. Like a retail site or a mobile app. It’s more like AWS (Amazon Web Services). You don’t see them, but they are the invisible Lego pieces that help you build some amazing experiences.
When I got the call, I asked, “What was the problem Autodesk was trying to solve?” A lot of what they wanted was what I had done for many years. I’ve done consumer experiences as well at eBay. At one point, I ran all of trading technology, both on the buy and sell side. It was a big job. They were like “don’t break anything” and “everything’s got to run” and “we have to innovate.” I realized Platform innovations at eBay helped us build applications rapidly for out there for our buyers and sellers. When I went to StubHub, I had to build a platform. There was no platform. At Intuit, I also had to build a platform. But I wanted to understand Autodesk’s perspective and need for platform. We have three large industries. Every industry wants to digitize. There has to be commonality and common capabilities when you look at infrastructure, industrial building, transportation and water. The data has to be connected. Like everybody else, we wanted to figure out what the cloud meant for ourselves. Do we put everything up on the cloud or do we put aspects of it on the cloud? What does the cloud buy for each of the disciplines, the people, our customers? What do they want out of it?
What’s it like having no CAD experience in a CAD company?
Autodesk was not asking me “Have you done CAD/CAM?” There are a lot of people within the company that do that really, really well. If I want to, I can go pick on someone and say, teach me what goes underneath additive manufacturing. Or teach me how you do generate machining or toolpath instruction. There’s a ton of talent here, right? The part they were looking for was the part that could find patterns in data and capabilities that can mature and accelerate everybody. Like the three industry clouds that we talked about yesterday[i]. That was the job. We’ve been hiring a lot of senior people with a background in platform transformation from other industries who see those patterns and build mature capabilities so that over time, we have a thicker middle.
What is a thicker middle?
I joke about this. A thicker middle is not about weight management. When you have a thicker middle, you get leverage out of it. Your industry clouds could be thinner, can accelerate and move faster. A thicker middle is the shared capabilities and data across the industries that I talked about. The applications are at the top of this thick middle. At the bottom of the thick middle are also things we do internally—our back-end systems and enterprise systems. We don’t necessarily need to worry about externalizing that, but everything in the middle is adding value for our customers. Maybe one day customers will use not just our products; they will use our APIs, capabilities and data.
Were the three industry clouds your idea or were you tasked to create them?
Creating the industry clouds was always part of the strategy even before I got here. We have three industries, and we have three industry clouds that all depend on that thick middle. The how is what I have been leading in working closely with the architecture and engineering leaders across the three industries and platform teams. My first job is to get the thick middle right for our industries and customers. In addition to that, it is providing technical oversight to our approach towards the three industry clouds and Autodesk Platform Services.
How many developers work for you?
There are roughly one thousand people who report directly to me. We also have development teams part of our industries who report into our industry leaders
See Part 2 of this interview here.
[i] Autodesk Flies into the Clouds, engineering.com, October 1, 2022.