Autodesk, Inc. (ADSK) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary
March 29, 2022
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Simon Mays-Smith
executiveGood morning, everyone. We're just going to wait for a few minutes to let everyone to get into the room, and then we'll get cracking. Okay. It looks like the numbers are stocking up. So let's get started. Thank you for joining us, everyone. Excited to see you all here today. With us, we have Amy Bunszel, the Executive Vice President of AEC Design Solutions, and she'll be talking with you about how our sustainability solutions are helping drive growth in AEC. After her presentation, there will be time for Q&A. [Operator Instructions] Before we get started, I'll read a quick safe harbor statement. We may make forward-looking statements during the course of this presentation. Please refer to our SEC filings for information on risks and other factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from these statements. With that, let's get started with Amy's presentation, after which we'll open it up for a live Q&A.
Amy Bunszel
executiveWelcome, everyone. I'm excited to be here today to talk about how Autodesk is accelerating growth in our architecture and engineering business with sustainability solutions. First, let's talk about the overall opportunity. Through FY 2026, our total AEC TAM is $35 billion, serving the 29 million design and make professionals, who are traditionally potential customers for our software. $20 billion of that total TAM comes from design and $16 billion from make, with 12 million and 17 million professionals, respectively. With our acquisition of Innovyze, our new opportunities like water infrastructure have also expanded our total addressable market. We're enhancing our core portfolio to support digital transformation by adding value for our current subscribers, expanding and deepening our reach across the ecosystem and transforming the way our customers approach design with outcome-based design capabilities and automation. I spent a fair bit of time at Investor Day last year diving into different initiatives here. Today, I want to look at Autodesk's growth with a sustainability lens. It probably won't surprise you that many of our customers are making sustainability a business priority. At Autodesk, we believe that what is good for the planet can also deliver long-term financial returns. You can see here that a significant portion of global carbon emissions, water loss and waste are generated in AEC and manufacturing. Solving these big sustainability problems cannot be achieved without digital end-to-end solutions in the design-and-make process, which enables sustainable outcomes across the value chain. We see this as a significant driver of demand for our end-to-end solutions over time. Let's take a closer look at the opportunity we have with our carbon management solutions. But first, let's talk about total carbon. Total carbon management is the measurement and minimization of embodied and operational carbon in the design-and-make process. The building industry is addressing the impact of the built environment holistically through total carbon management. That means they're taking action to reduce emissions for both operational and embodied carbon. On the operational side, designers and engineers use energy modeling to make choices about lighting, roof lines, building orientation and other design elements with the goal of delivering a structure that consumes less energy. On the embodied carbon side, architects and engineers choose materials and components with lower embodied carbon. Autodesk is addressing total carbon management by developing the next generation of Autodesk insights to leverage the power of BIM, to evaluate and optimize total carbon and other key aspects of building performance. By augmenting Revit data with total carbon analysis, designers get accurate real-time and reliable total carbon calculations. With total carbon, designers and architects can run analyses of both operational and embodied carbon from the earliest conceptual designs through construction and operations, making it easier to design for sustainable outcomes and environmental performance targets. Here's a great example. The New Mexico-based architecture firm, Dekker/Perich/Sabatini, or DPS, are focused on slowing down the effects of climate change by aiming for net zero energy-certified building designs. By using Autodesk Revit and Autodesk Insight during the design phase, the firm can demonstrate to clients how much money they can save with net zero solutions, occasionally saving its clients millions of dollars. One energy calculation DPS recently performed for our client showed energy-efficient solutions save an estimated $2.5 million over the course of 30 years. Our Spacemaker solution is also continuing to add new features to enable more sustainable solutions. In the past, site analysis like climate and noise would be sent to a third party with the whole process taking weeks. One of my favorite new capabilities in Spacemaker is actually called instant analysis, which is analysis for climate and road noise powered by machine learning. What traditionally took days or weeks to perform now takes seconds, making it easier for architects and real estate developers to select sites that will fit their needs. With Spacemaker, we're empowering designers with data for better project outcomes. Let's move on and take a look at the opportunity to drive more sustainable and resilient outcomes with our water management solutions. First, some context setting. Water is unevenly distributed around the globe, and climate change is altering its availability. 1/4 of the global population lives in countries experiencing high water stress, and digital solutions for water infrastructure are key to creating more resilient and sustainable water equity. With our acquisition of Innovyze, we have a much bigger set of solutions to address issues around water resilience and waste. We've expanded our capabilities into hydraulic modeling while also expanding into asset management and operational analytics to enter the operations and maintenance phase of the life cycle. This expansion resulted in a 3.7x increase to our TAM, going from $0.7 billion to $2.6 billion, and positioning Autodesk as the one-stop shop for water infrastructure. With a highly competitive and synergistic portfolio, we now cover the entire water life cycle from planning to operations. With this powerful and comprehensive portfolio, we're able to provide the industry with solutions to create more resilient designs and to improve planning, operations and maintenance for a more sustainable future. No other company can offer such a comprehensive water-centric solution. We've also identified 4 opportunities to grow this business. We'll accelerate the Innovyze business with our named accounts by leveraging the high-touch relationships Autodesk has with these customers. We'll also expand with Autodesk channel partners in countries where Innovyze does business today already, the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. We'll expand into countries with little Innovyze business with our Autodesk channel partners. These countries include Germany, France, Japan and India. And finally, we'll expand to owners and operators addressing net new target personas and disciplines. Here's a great example of how Innovyze is being used to build resiliency into entire water systems with a digital twin. Thames Water manages one of the oldest and most complex water systems in Europe and serves 9 million customers across London and the Thames Valley. While Thames Water is a private company, there are 3 regulators that oversee it. And the cost of missing performance targets is severe. It's imperative for Thames Water to be transparent about how clean, uninterrupted and competitive its water supply is. This means maintaining its aging assets, responding to incidents, investing in new infrastructure and looking at past data for insights about the performance of its assets. With our Innovyze solution, Thames Water is able to aggregate a vast array of real-time data into a dynamic digital twin. The team is starting to discover how historical telemetry data can give them insights in understanding the day-to-day performance of its assets, and how hydraulic and water quality simulation can help predict future demand and incidents before they happen, building resilience into its entire water system. This type of opportunity repeats itself nicely across the various water agencies. Now let's look at how we're reducing waste in building design and construction. The construction industry is one of the least digitized with much to gain for all stakeholders. BIM and connected construction have critical roles to play in reducing waste and driving innovation. Circularity, adaptive design, industrialized construction and other processes like regenerative building is expanding what's possible. Our Autodesk Construction Solutions portfolio, coupled with the Autodesk design authority modeling tools such as AutoCAD, Revit and Navisworks, connects the entire ecosystem from design to operations. What these technologies all have in common is they digitize critical segments of the construction workflow, addressing challenges in the design, preconstruction, construction and operation phases. With digitization, the increasing flow and intelligent use of data connects tools, people and processes through all phases of design and construction. Improved collaboration and intelligence results in better, more predictable and repeatable project outcomes, giving our customers the ability to make intelligent decisions to reduce waste while achieving their business goals. This all comes together through the Autodesk Construction Cloud platform, which supports workflows, spanning design, plan, build and operate with data shared across phases, connected to informed decisions during design and construction and also turnover of data for operations and owners. This is connected construction. Customers can streamline design decisions early in the process where they can make a big impact on sustainability and better project outcomes. Here's an example. Skanska created a regenerative building with the Kendeda building for innovative sustainable design at Georgia Tech. Regenerative architecture goes a step further and aims to create buildings that give more than they take in terms of energy, water and natural resources. The building is the first of its kind in the Southern United States to attempt to qualify as a living building through the Living Building Challenge, which was started to bring attention to regenerative design approaches. To meet the 20 Living Building Challenge requirements, Skanska explored multiple design options for a regenerative building. The team used Revit and Assemble to model and price these complex evolving designs accurately and quickly. Skanska even went a step further with real-time rendering and VR to visualize the choices for the clients. The team could show the sustainable material, the costs associated and tunnel through the options. Salvage materials were an important component to meet the 90% to 100% recycling requirements of the project. Materials even came from the campus itself, such as the original 1880s pine joist discarded after a tower renovation and reused in the stairway. Design obstacles and changes require a new level of agility for planning. Every material was exhaustively researched and documented not only for what it contained on the red list, but also the entire supply chain and how it was sourced. We're excited to leverage all of the strength and momentum to create a better world design and made for all. Autodesk is the technology leader in AEC, and we've led multiple digital transformations with CAD 40 years ago, BIM 20 years ago and cloud collaboration 6 years ago. CAD, BIM and cloud technologies are fueling transformation in our industry as they build on each other in ways that create a huge differentiator for Autodesk. We are the only company that supports the entire project ecosystem for capital projects from architecture to engineering to construction plus operations with Tandem and Innovyze and across 3 major industries, buildings, transportation and water. Finally, we have a tremendous ecosystem that expands our reach and relevance from our large network of third-party developers building on AutoCAD, Revit Forge and the Autodesk Construction Cloud to strategic alliances with industry leaders and customers to our flexible business models and channel partner and named account ecosystem. By bringing all our strengths together, we are positioned to win in architecture and engineering. We recognized at Autodesk that we have an opportunity to mitigate the effects of climate change by embedding sustainability into our products, equipping customers with the technology they need to unlock insights, make better decisions is our greatest opportunity to make a positive impact.
Simon Mays-Smith
executiveBrilliant. Thank you, Amy. So we've got time now for some Q&A. I'm going to be joined, obviously, by Amy, but also Joe Speicher, I'll ask him to click in as well, who heads our impact team. So we can ask any broad questions around sustainability, lots of interest. [Operator Instructions] Just while we're collecting those questions, I'm going to ask a couple just to get us warmed up. And firstly, Amy, I guess for you, how does Autodesk compare to its peers in sustainability? What kind of makes us unique?
Amy Bunszel
executiveThank you, Simon, and welcome, everyone. For me, a lot of it has to do with a couple of my closing statements there, really, our ability to cover both buildings and infrastructure and our ability to work end-to-end. If you think about it, there's planning, there's design, there's building and then there's operating. And we really have tools to cover that entire spectrum. And then, of course, our global footprint and ecosystem that we have, both with everything from our named accounts to all of our channel partners and to our thriving eStore business as well.
Simon Mays-Smith
executiveFantastic. And then sort of second question before we move on to the questions from the listeners is -- a hot topic is what is our Autodesk position in sustainable energy generation? And do you see this as an opportunity?
Amy Bunszel
executiveWell, certainly. And pretty much history shows anytime there's infrastructure projects happening, there's benefit to Autodesk customers and the Autodesk business. If I think about sustainable energy in particular, there's a lot of, I think, innovation happening, a lot of infrastructure being built to ensure the distribution of the energy. And that's certainly going to benefit the overall ecosystem that we play in.
Simon Mays-Smith
executiveAnd Joe, maybe it might be useful to talk a little bit about how we are thinking about stimulating sustainable energy demand ourselves by the way that we purchase and consume energy?
Joe Speicher
executiveYes. Thanks, Simon. We've made -- as a business, we've made commitments around net zero, firstly. Secondly, to power our business with renewable energy. So we are 100% powered by renewable. And we have an internal price on carbon that helps us manage those things. So through those tools, we're able to kind of drive capacity in the space and help to advance the transition to a renewable energy future.
Simon Mays-Smith
executiveSomething we're sort of thinking about is how we help encourage the sort of additional sustainable energy capacity to be built from the way that we purchase our energy as well. So let's go to some of the questions. So Jay Vleeschhouwer of Griffin. To the extent sustainability implies having operational and performance data, how will Autodesk develop and sell, employ Tandem and/or relevant Internet of Things functionality? Amy, I guess that's one for you to talk about sort of Tandem and also Innovyze a bit.
Amy Bunszel
executiveSure. I'll start there. So Tandem and Innovyze both offer digital twin capabilities. And that's really one of the key pillars in our operating strategy and working with the owners of the infrastructure. I would say it's early days. So we are working really with strategic partners and trying to figure out what the best business model is for those. So we're not really disclosing at this time what we're doing there. I will add, though, that one of the nice things that we're doing with both Innovyze and Tandem is leveraging just really the broad ecosystem of IoT providers, standards in this space and really building both a very purpose-built solution, but that's also open to everything that's happening in the ecosystem.
Simon Mays-Smith
executiveSomething like 3/4 of the cost of the building comes after construction and so managing that. And the digital twin will be the kind of [indiscernible] which you compare your performance against, both financially and also sustainably -- your sustainability metrics. So that's really the opportunity.
Amy Bunszel
executiveOne of the other things we talked about, too, a lot is the resiliency of the infrastructure going forward. So if we think about just the waste that happens when operating water infrastructure water is a scarce resource, and it's just a shame to think about how many trillions of gallons are wasted on a regular basis. And so those kinds of things will help us really build more resilience and, quite frankly, cost-effective infrastructure as well.
Simon Mays-Smith
executiveSo next question also from Jay, just to sort of round up, and Joe, this is maybe also one for you. With respect to designing in -- or the impact of sustainability, are there yet certain accepted ROI measurements?
Joe Speicher
executiveYes, it's a good question -- I think that there's -- there are 2 ways to consider the return on investment for sustainability -- one is what Amy just mentioned, which is cost effectiveness. The example that she gave in the AEC space of building design that saved on energy costs over the long term is demonstrative of the capabilities that we've got here. And I think that, that very specifically is one of the ROIs that our customers are looking at in particular. I think the other thing that we're looking at also, Simon, is increasing regulatory pressure to manage carbon as a kind of output from various projects. And we recognize that, that pressure is coming to our industries and how we can help our customers solve for that. So again, it goes to the cost-effective argument that Amy was making earlier.
Simon Mays-Smith
executiveAnd is it worth sort of mentioning the work we're doing with our foundation companies to help on that front?
Joe Speicher
executiveAbsolutely. So Autodesk has a foundation that's been in operation for the last almost decade. And the foundation looks at the return on investment for the grants and investments that it makes itself. And those are specific to carbon emission reduction to jobs created, et cetera, and has a pretty rigorous way for assessing how we get a return for our foundation investment dollar, which will be applicable to looking at this on the commercial side of the house as well. So we have a pretty rigorous data and reporting function there, and I think that will become increasingly important as we're looking at this in the future.
Simon Mays-Smith
executiveBrilliant. So moving on to sort of tuck-up round at SG&A. How does the company's opportunities in renovation compare to new builds? We were just talking about this before we started, Amy. I think that's one for you.
Amy Bunszel
executiveYes. So -- and I think Joe can help me here because there's some EU regulations that are in progress that really, when they look at the -- what was going to be built and the existing building stock, there's a huge problem with the existing building stock that will be here 50 years from now that has never been renovated in terms of energy use. So there are big initiatives going to be happening across the EU, in particular, to renovate buildings with the mindset around energy use. And so one of the things for us that I think is interesting is that's a big opportunity for us, but we also are working with people as they're deciding, do we build or renovate, making sure they're making good sustainable choices in doing the building with our approach to total carbon, because as much -- it's about 50-50 how much carbon goes into the creation of the building and then how much carbon is used to operate the building. So we really get to work on both ends of that. And Joe, do you want to add some more details on the -- what's happening in the EU there?
Joe Speicher
executiveWell, the one thing I would add, Amy, just to get out ahead of it is related to the EU taxonomy, which is something that we're watching very closely. We're researching the best ways to respond because as you mentioned, Autodesk unquestionably enables climate mitigation, adaptation, circularity, et cetera. But I will say this is pretty complex, and it's going to take time. So we don't want to make any claims lightly. And again, as we think about the EU methodology, we're looking at some of our ways that our philanthropic capital looks at its return on investment to be able to apply that to this methodology as it emerges. So not much to add, but full-throated support of what you said is that we need to help the EU manage this carbon and can do so through our tools.
Simon Mays-Smith
executiveAnd more broadly, in renovation, there are adjacent opportunities not specific to sustainability around the ventilation systems, obviously, post-pandemic around office reconfiguration as well for more sort of shared spaces, et cetera. So renovation and sort of reusing existing spaces is going to be a thing going forward and an opportunity for us. So next question from Wes Twigg at Piper Sandler. What percentage of growth is likely to be driven by sustainability projects over the next 2 years? Is there a way to calculate this? So we're not going to precisely answer that Wes. But Amy, sort of do you want to sort of just frame it in terms of sort of the scale of where we see the most opportunity in this area?
Amy Bunszel
executiveYes, that's a tough one. I think when I -- when we look broadly at all of the different regulations and this opportunity, I think, to do a better job, because we start to see, I think, the way things are built will be changed radically over the next 50 years. Like I don't imagine anybody building anything without thinking about sustainability outcomes. And then I think the good news about this is as we get smarter about this, and there's different methods and ways of working, even things like industrialized construction and more automation, the customers will also get an economic benefit of making more sustainable choices. And so I'm very optimistic that we will see a lot of growth driven by having access to the information needed to make better sustainable choices in the beginning.
Joe Speicher
executiveAnd I'll just add to that very quickly, Amy. I agree, it's a very hard question to answer around as a growth driver. We have some proxy data internally looking at which of our large customers have made climate commitments, and the number is very high. We're looking at above 90%. We also have some concomitant data that looks at the number of those companies that are reporting their carbon impact to date, and it's about half. And so we suspect that number to come into alignment over time. And that's -- for us, that's the best proxy to gauge what we think the growth might be in the space.
Simon Mays-Smith
executiveSo Wes, I think the answer is that it will become like, a, it will just be -- but the key point is, and I think Amy made it well, was that connection between sustainability and financial and efficiency as well to the extent that you can fund some of the costs of sustainability by also becoming more efficient as well. That connection is very important. And the point she made in her presentation, which is you cannot do it without using end-to-end software. It's one of the things we're sort of most optimistic about. The next question is from [indiscernible]. Have you tried to aggregate the positive impact of Autodesk solutions and to attribute and quantify the specific contribution that Autodesk makes? That's probably one for you, Joe, I think, isn't it?
Joe Speicher
executiveYes. And it's an expansive question. It's something we're certainly thinking about. And Amy gave examples of our customers doing this at an individual level, at an N of 1. To think about it at the universal level where we have millions of users is a bit more challenging, but it's something we're thinking about and would potentially explore an assumptive model where we can do some calculations around that. But at this time, no, we do not have that capability. And it's a pretty big undertaking.
Amy Bunszel
executiveI think what's exciting about that is as much as we've done to manage our own operations in a sustainable fashion, we truly believe that we can have a much bigger impact by helping our customers achieve their goals. But it is an expansive undertaking, for sure.
Simon Mays-Smith
executiveSo let's move on to another one from Wes at Piper Sandler, saying, does Autodesk play a role in recovery from climate disaster events beyond rebuilding? Are digital twins or other operational programs helping with rapid recoveries? Amy, that's probably one for you.
Amy Bunszel
executiveSo I would say, absolutely. And I would say that also prevents -- minimize the damage in some ways. So we have a bunch of capabilities in the Innovyze solutions that look at kind of predictive analysis around weather, weather patterns, looking into the future and trying to understand where things might be changing and then some retrofitting needs to happen in advance of the disaster. So I think we care about both, both the kind of predictive nature of getting ahead of a potential disaster, but also, yes, we do come in. And with our tools, you can build more resilient infrastructure as we go forward. And that's also another place where the infrastructure spending that will be happening globally is really looking at. The conditions have changed from when we built a lot of this infrastructure 50, 100 years ago. And we really need to be planning for a more resilient future for all of us.
Simon Mays-Smith
executiveSo let's move on to James Sperling at Walleye capital . How substantial impacts could the rebuild of Ukraine be on Autodesk business in EMEA? So just to sort of scale it for you. We said on our Q4 earnings call that Russia and Ukraine combined is a bit under 2% of our revenues. So that should sort of provide some context for you on the scale of it. And obviously, Russia is the bigger part of that relative to Ukraine. Amy, do you want to sort of talk sort of more generally on that? There may not be much to say. I don't know.
Amy Bunszel
executiveIt's -- I would say at this point as a company, we're really looking more at what we can do to support the humanitarian-type things. And Joe and the foundation have been really helping us. Our employees have been donating money. We've been helping them if they're taking in refugees. I think -- but how do I say this? Conceptually, we're not really -- we're hoping for a peaceful end to this. We're not really thinking about how it might -- how we might profit from rebuilding in this country. Certainly, when we get to rebuild, you can be sure that we'll be seeing how we can help, again, with whatever efforts go underway there.
Simon Mays-Smith
executiveYes. We have just over 100 contractors in Ukraine, which we're trying to make sure that they're okay. And we have about 50 employees just over in Russia, again, making sure that they're okay as well has been our primary goal. Not giving too much thought yet to what comes afterwards. I'm just hoping that it ends soon and we can return to life. So Colin Moar at Barings, next one. Can you please point to any metrics that illustrate any increase in customer interest, specifically in the sustainability features of Autodesk, RFQs? And what are the pain points most driving customer requests? Is it material costs or regulations or stuff like that? So what's driving the signs of life in sustainability? And what are the sort of key things they're trying to solve?
Amy Bunszel
executiveThere's a lot. Joe, I don't know if you want to help me out here a little bit. There's -- I don't believe we have any data that sort of shows over time we've received more sort of request on this function. But I can tell you that there's not a customer that I talk to that doesn't have some sort of corporate goals around sustainability, starting with their own operations, thinking about having a supply chain that matches with their corporate goals, and then also thinking about the outcomes on the projects that they're building. And then thinking about the regulatory environment that they're going to have to operate in, in the future. So it's definitely a multilayer problem and one that digitization, I think first and foremost, getting a handle on the data and having digital workflows is something that they need to do in order to achieve the outcomes for the future.
Joe Speicher
executiveAmy, I think that's really well said. I wouldn't have much to add. Other than that, we are seeing a lot of activity in this space overall whether it's large platform data companies that are looking to help their customers manage ESG impacts or start-ups in this space. So I think it's a proxy for attention and interest that's going here. And so we increasingly see that.
Simon Mays-Smith
executiveGreat. So let's move on, and forgive me if I mispronounce it Akash Salam at Surveyor. Does the infrastructure bill force relevant parties to take into account sustainability metrics? Amy or Joe? And maybe also talk to the funding to encourage the Department of Transport to digitize their workflows as well.
Joe Speicher
executiveAmy, I'll take a swing at it.
Amy Bunszel
executiveOkay.
Joe Speicher
executiveI'm aware that there are provisions in various infrastructure bills around the globe to encourage climate positive policies as well as resilience, increased resilience. And so the ability to help our customers with that is something that we are driving towards. That said, the specifics of any given legislation, we're not familiar with specifically here. And we'd have to pull in our government affairs for that question.
Simon Mays-Smith
executiveSorry, Amy?
Amy Bunszel
executiveNo, go ahead, Simon.
Simon Mays-Smith
executiveYes. I mean, on the U.S. infrastructure bill, as we said, I think, in our Q3 call, earnings call, one of the interesting bits of that is a relatively small, modest amount of money, but long term could be consequential, is to encourage the Department of Transportation to become more digital because that is a sort of key driver both of efficiency, but also sustainability as they connect workflows together to enable them to drive sustainability. So the efficiency, sustainability go hand in hand together as you connect workflows together. So I think we think it will be a natural outcome of the process. Then moving on, and I'm definitely going to mispronounce this one. Apologies. I think it's going to be [indiscernible]. Which software products provide sustainable solutions beyond Revit and Innovyze?
Amy Bunszel
executiveSo I'll take that. Actually, really everything in the AEC collection, in general, helps customers achieve more sustainable outcomes. When we think about the benefits of building information modeling and working off of that core central model, and then connecting that to our construction solutions. About 30% of the waste in the developed countries comes from construction. So the more we can help make sure people are working off of the most recent data, having good feedback loops to their different subcontractors they're working with, all really reduces waste. And then when we're done, having a digital handover to create that digital twin allows for better sustainable outcomes on the operations side. And I should have also mentioned Spacemaker. Spacemaker helps our customers make better decisions in the very, very early phases when they're deciding where and what to build. So they can look at things like impacts on climate, impacts on noise, impacts on energy use when they're really making those very first design decisions before they even, quite frankly, decide to buy a piece of property. So really, it's the end-to-end. There's pieces along the way where they can create more sustainable outcomes.
Simon Mays-Smith
executiveBrilliant. And another question from [indiscernible]. Which of your competitors are most worried about in terms of their sustainability offering? I don't know whether we want to talk too specifically about our peers, but where do you think we are in the sustainability ecosystem?
Amy Bunszel
executiveWell, we've been doing sustainability for a very long time. And I really feel our approach is, again, one of those that's differentiated because of really who Autodesk is, having both infrastructure and buildings also and covering off everything from planning as I just talked about with Spacemaker, design and build with the AEC collection and the construction tools, and then making forays and to operate with the digital twins.
Simon Mays-Smith
executiveAnd really, our source of competitive advantage just as a business is the same in sustainability, which is we have lots of competitors who are essentially trying to replicate the on-prem model in the cloud, which is have points of the vertical solutions, addressing different silos across the chain. So very few of them are trying to connect those silos together to drive efficiency and sustainability. So really the source of our competitive advantage or one of the source of competitive advantage is also a source of our advantage in sustainability, too. So let's go on to Blair Abernethy of Rosenblatt. Where are civil infrastructure builders and operators at in their journey to the cloud? Amy, is that one for you?
Amy Bunszel
executiveI think so. So I would say there is -- it's earlier than it is with the architecture and the kind of building space. But for the same reasons we just talked about, the need to digitize is present in this industry as well. They're facing a lot of the same work-from-home, distributed workforce, projects that are being done in far flung places where they need to communicate in digital fashion. So I expect to see this accelerate just like it did on the -- in the building space.
Simon Mays-Smith
executiveRight. So next question from [indiscernible] again at Web. Are there any areas where your clients have asked to develop new tools to help them with their sustainability commitments? So I guess Skanska is a big example, but there may be others, Amy?
Amy Bunszel
executiveYes. The embodied carbon and total carbon calculators that we've done -- we have worked on was done very closely. Actually Skanska again, working on a project for Microsoft. And that's been a great real collaboration on the carbon front. Joe, I don't know if you have exposure to any other things that we may have done?
Joe Speicher
executiveI would say, with our move to the cloud, that we anticipate like a lot more of its work where we're kind of opening up the hood and working with customers to develop tools. I think the Autodesk Construction Solutions has some really interesting partners that they're working with, with their partner platform to allow for this. So I think we're going to see increasing amounts of this work with customers to be able to do these, in some cases, bespoke, in some cases, scalable solutions like EC3.
Simon Mays-Smith
executiveSo let's move on. Great questions, everyone. Thank you. Keep them coming. So another one from Jay at Griffin. Is there any technology -- I'll broaden it out -- technology you license that can be or should be employed in the sustainability engineering process. So the of partners that we use. I guess EC3 was created by us. Is there any other sort of core data sets or something that we use in our sustainability offering?
Amy Bunszel
executiveWell, I would say -- I mean, our EC3 partnership, I think, is a great example of bringing in all of the geospatial context, working closely with them to make sure that our customers can share. And we're doing cloud-to-cloud sharing with them now so that people have kind of up-to-date current information that they can use to make decisions based on the geospatial context of their projects. That's probably one of the biggest ones. The Spacemaker team does leverage like local municipality type data that helps customers adhere to regulations in the different jurisdictions in which we operate that product as well.
Simon Mays-Smith
executiveOkay. Brilliant. So next one is from -- and this is the last one. So if you have a question, ask it now. Will Spacemaker and BIM 360 be more and more connected over time?
Amy Bunszel
executiveAbsolutely. Part of our overall strategy is really around leveraging data to connect the entire end-to-end process. So you will absolutely see Spacemaker become more embedded in the whole Autodesk portfolio, and more to come on that in the future.
Simon Mays-Smith
executiveBrilliant. I think I'm just going to pause for a second there to see if we have any last questions. If not, I will give everyone their time back. Just wait for 10 seconds. No. I think we are out of questions. Amy, Joe, thank you so much. Thank you, everyone, for attending. If you have any follow-up questions, please e-mail me [email protected]. And we look forward to catching up with many of you in the near future. Thanks very much.
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