LabVIEW subscription model for 2022

[crossrulz]

Let's not forget that Emerson bought NI less than a year ago.  NI has since gone through massive leadership changes due to the acquisition.  NI is not who NI was a year ago.  Ritu Favre (the head of NI now) specifically stated in an interview that they are changing course, in many ways back to what NI was 10 years ago.  Yes, there is a lot of damage control happening, but it is an effort to undo what the previous leadership did.  I was deeply pessimistic about NI 7 months ago.  I am now very highly optimistic.  As I keep saying, I think NI has hit the inflection point:  You will still things go downhill, but the momentum is swinging toward the positive.

So let's give the current NI leadership some grace and see what they can do.  I'm not saying you should stop telling them what is wrong.  Yes, most of us hate the subscription model that was shoved down our throats.  Yes, the price has gone up dramatically.  Yes, NI has a lot of issues on the sales backend.  NI needs this feedback.  But let's not blame the current leadership for the situation they inherited.

[Taggart]

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@rolfk wrote:

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@Kevin_Price wrote:

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2. I remain perplexed at the disconnect between the luxury pricing and subscription lock-in strategy on the one hand and the Community Edition zero cost of entry for hobbyists (but not degree-pursuing students) on the other.😁

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You missed one important point here. Since NI Week (I mean NI Connect) this year, NI has officially stated that the Community Edition is free for all students, independent of their degree level. So that is one point less to complain about. 

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Even if NI changed direction, the original decision remains perplexing and causes one to question NI's decision making ability.

Edit to add:

Tim's post above showed up while I was writing mine.

To be fair to NI, "There is a new sheriff in town". We'll see what changes with that. I do stand by being perplexed by their previous decision-making though.

[Newton_TP]

I'll pipe in on that. I worked there for a short while (about 5 years) and saw the beginnings of a trend toward business growth and taking more and more importance over engineering. It's inevitable I suppose; many companies have growth as a goal and product development is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself.
But once NI had Alex Davern take over, and 'business' and marketing people actually running the company instead of engineers, you increasingly take the direction and get the kind of decisions you have now.

Steve Jobs famously described this in an interview. You can find it online.

[beuvink]

“Consider that we have heard from the "Director of Test Software Commercialization", and the "Director, Product Management".  Have you ever worked for a company where your directer level staff are spending time in the forums?”

You could also view this as a serious step to fix what was broken.

Instead of our forum going trough for layers… it immediately is at the top.

You could also view this as the opposite of top heavy.

time will tell

[Jay14159265]

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@Taggart wrote:

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@LLindenbauer wrote:

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@Jay14159265 wrote:

Further reading: 

- I learned a good/hard software architecture lesson with LabVIEW; never align your team with a tool that requires a license (even a free one) to see your own source code. 

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This is by far the biggest point for me.

I do not understand why this was seldom talked about, even before the recent rough times.

Also, this is not about money. Even with the perpetual or SaaS licenses, users are still banking on the licensing services staying available forever (and/or their setup never failing) and future versions staying compatible.

NXG would have gone with the general industry trend of moving away from proprietary, undocumented formats.

Its cancellation came just at the moment when I was looking into migrating all important code over.

I assume that releasing documentation on the binary format is also impossible, at the very least due to legal reasons

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I think this is really the long-term hurdle for LabVIEW. Who wants their future permanently tied to another company? Picking any proprietary language or technology ties you to the company that owns it. Especially when the license is a subscription and not perpetual. NI offering a perpetual license again is a step in the right direction. I'm not sure they are pricing it correctly, but at least it exists. This is why I am also looking forward to some the open source initiatives from NI.

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You know, I have this idea that if NI open sourced NXG it would be a win win for everyone. It was really too bad they canned that program after so much effort was put into it. They have the opportunity to give back to the T&M community that made NI what it is today. If they were maintainers of that code base they can always make sure it has seamless integration with NI hardware which makes people want to buy NI hardware. For any one that did not use NXG, it was great, it was not ready to fully replace LabVIEW but it was going in that direction. 

[EricR]

@beuvink 

I'll reply on my own behalf.   

You can look back at my posts in these forums that spans nearly my entire career at NI (although some of the older posts only exist in archives now).  I have always participated in the forums, since my first day with the company.  I believe that progress comes from active engagement and dialog. It is an opinion shared by many of the people I work with, regardless of the titles we have.   I also see this at other companies that I respect so I don't think its a trait that is unique to me or NI.  

While I agree that there are some things that need to be fixed, and gathering feedback from the people here in the forums is a good way to learn about the ones that have the biggest impact to people, I also have a genuine interest in learning how people use the products and services we build.  I greatly appreciate the time people take to provide their feedback to us.  While I can't reply to everything, and I don't agree with every comment made, hearing people put their concerns and dreams into their own words and learning how I can help address them has always been a rewarding part of my job, across all of my many roles.  

Thank you for providing the opportunity for us to learn.  I look forward to earning your trust and continuing to improve the products, services, and relationship that you want from NI.  

[AhmedEisawy]

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@old_fart wrote:

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@Jay14159265 wrote:

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 Well I can take a guess and say that what has happened is that the old guard, the people who started NI, have all left the building and the people that are there now are not test and measurement engineers, especially on top.

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Consider that we have heard from the "Director of Test Software Commercialization", and the "Director, Product Management".  Have you ever worked for a company where your directer level staff are spending time in the forums?   Maybe director level at NI is basically anyone on the staff?   Seems top heavy and bloated.   

Looks like their system admins were doing some damage control for their directors.  LOL 

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The fact that 2 NI director levels are actively listening and participating in the forum should indicate the importance of this forum to NI and the importance of the feedback and active discussion. Feedback is a privilege. It's precious time from all of you and we, at NI, take it seriously.

For the second time, we would appreciate it if you use professional language in your posts. We appreciate your feedback and participation in the discussions but please focus on the topic instead of such negative commentary.

[old_fart]

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@AhmedEisawy wrote:

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For the second time, we would appreciate it if you use professional language in your posts. We appreciate your feedback and participation in the discussions but please focus on the topic instead of such negative commentary.

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I'm not sure what you're taking offense to now.  Perhaps that I stated that your admins were doing damage control after your releasing personal information of customers?   That to me was very unprofessional and the fact you continued to do so after it was brought to your attention says a lot about the culture of NI.   You may not like I consider NI top heavy.  Again, just an observation on my part like your fishing for information.  I have no plans to use or promote NI products in the future, nor have I since their new business strategy.  I fully agree with your comment "It's precious time .." and will solve this one problem for you.     

[rolfk]

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@old_fart wrote:

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@Jay14159265 wrote:

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 Well I can take a guess and say that what has happened is that the old guard, the people who started NI, have all left the building and the people that are there now are not test and measurement engineers, especially on top.

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Consider that we have heard from the "Director of Test Software Commercialization", and the "Director, Product Management".  Have you ever worked for a company where your directer level staff are spending time in the forums?   Maybe director level at NI is basically anyone on the staff?   Seems top heavy and bloated.   

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I'm not sure from which geographic region you are coming but you are likely assigning the word director a somewhat higher value than what it usually means in modern companies, where pretty much every department head has some "director of something" in his title. 

What you may understand as director is in modern management usually more often called C-level management. (CEO, CFO, CTO, etc.)

[beuvink]

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@EricR wrote:

@beuvink 

I'll reply on my own behalf.   

You can look back at my posts in these forums that spans nearly my entire career at NI (although some of the older posts only exist in archives now).  I have always participated in the forums, since my first day with the company.  I believe that progress comes from active engagement and dialog

..

Thank you for providing the opportunity for us to learn.  I look forward to earning your trust and continuing to improve the products, services, and relationship that you want from NI.  

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Hi Eric,

Indeed I've been on this forum for a few decades. I've seen many very usefull participations from your side on this forum.

Looking forward for things getting or LV and making engineering fun again!

(making engineering fun was NI slogan somewhere in the 00's 😉 )