Avid seeking feedback on closure of Sibelius UK office

[peter5992]

Good morning everyone:

I am calling out to all Sibelius users and music lovers in general. As you may have heard last week Avid decided to close the UK offices of Sibelius, the world's leading software notation program. While this was purportedly done as part of "Avid's larger strategic reorganization", for Sibelius it means ripping the guts out of the program since all development occurs in the UK, under the inspired leadership of senior product manager Daniel Spreadbury.

At this point it is up in the air what's going to happen to Sibelius. Word has it that development will be outsourced to the Ukraine or perhaps Daly City, California. Neither scenario makes any sense; developing a notation software program isn't a cookie cutter job but requires indepth knowledge of both music and music theory, and the history of the product. You can't just outsource that and start from scratch.

The Sibelius forum has been in uproar over the past couple of days with users expressing massive support in favor of Daniel and his team. Apparently this hasn't fallen on deaf ears, since now Avid management are seeking public feedback, here:

http://community.avid.com/blogs/avid...community.aspx

If you haven't done so already, please go over there and express your concerns over Avid's policy in regards to Sibelius. We can't let Avid destroy a brilliant product because of a short-sighted attempt at cost saving or whatever it is Avid is thinking.

Thank you for your consideration.

[corp]

I don't think much can be done on this posting site........The people running the ship can only decide no matter if it's a smart or ignorant decision..... I'll support if it will help......

Many companies think the answer is out sourcing talent over to other countries because of lower wages (name of the game at the present). The management always thinks the problem is at the lower end when it's usually at the upper.... Would have to see the books to view wages and sales......

Past decisions reflect present and future answers.......

[dterry]

Thanks for posting this here Peter. At least someone at Avid is asking for feedback, for what little difference it might make at this point. I've submitted my input for their consideration.

It does seem strange to shut the doors (or announce you are), then ask for opinions. I don't really understand Avid's mindset at the moment. The company almost seems to be operating out of desperation rather than strategic streamlining.

I'm still not convinced outsourcing ProTools will ensure a stable future, regardless of the talent being hired there. Sibelius is much less likely to survive such a transition though. This doesn't give me a good impression of Avid as a company and it's ability to make rational decisions for the ProTools market either.

[RussUK]

Seeking feedback on a decision already made?

Talk about locking the door after the horse has bolted.

Surely it should have spent some time understanding the Sibelius community, the product, the team behind it and the impact of closures before making the decision.

[John_Toolbox]

Originally Posted by dterry

It does seem strange to shut the doors (or announce you are), then ask for opinions.

Not as strange as a public survey that says "We are thinking of firing everyone at the Sibelius UK office, should we do it or not?

If they actually did that before doing this, I'm sure the answer that every sibelius user would have given would have been "NOOOOO!!!!!!"... which would have led to a very awkward meeting when the Sibelius team eventually found out about the survey.

[RussUK]

Originally Posted by John_Toolbox

Not as strange as a public survey that says "We are thinking of firing everyone at the Sibelius UK office, should we do it or not?

No one was dumb enough to suggest this John, but then again no one is dumb enough to think that an autopsy now is going to bring them back from the dead.

[John_Toolbox]

The point I'm making is that there isn't any way that Avid could have done this that would have looked good to 99% of the people it has affected: employees or customers. Layoffs look bad, any way you implement them.

FWIW if I had Gary's job, I would have taken a pay cut to keep that office open.

[Bob Olhsson]

I think there is another side to the argument. Closing an office doesn't necessarily mean firing everybody. Code maintenance certainly can become a worldwide collaboration of developers working from home exactly as music and post production has become.

Sibelius also occupies by any measure a tiny niche market and from what I've been told the current 64 bit version is a very mature product that will not be in need of much in the way of new features for quite a while.

Something else to consider is that while closing offices and laying off staff looks very good on the books to Wall Street, it's not uncommon to turn right around and bring many people back as contractors. This happened with a number of people in the last round and an old friend of mine actually got rehired after a decade away from digidesign. Pruning can often really mean reshuffling behind the scenes.

[dterry]

Originally Posted by John_Toolbox

Not as strange as a public survey that says "We are thinking of firing everyone at the Sibelius UK office, should we do it or not?

No one is suggesting that, but I assumed that was obvious. What truly looks bad is laying off the full development team and claiming to be committed to developing the product. Selling Sibelius with it's team to another company would have made more sense than this embarrassment of a business decision. This is nothing more than putting the short term bottom line before long term development and survival common sense. In the end, it will cost Avid more than they think they will save. All they will have is a quarter or two of cost cutting, then it will be back to the same bleeding bottom line because the sales have dropped even farther than the savings.

Perhaps Avid management thinks they can continue developing with Kiev developers as they are with ProTools, and perhaps they can transition the code to some degree, but the product's momentum and the confidence of the Sibelius' community is damaged, possibly beyond repair. That is no small loss, and one the seem to have ignored when considering this move.

At this point, my confidence in Avid and ProTools' future is fading rapidly. No intelligent company stays in business by making decisions the way Avid has. I give Avid 1 year before they file for bankruptcy, probably ch 13 at that point.

Too many modern companies incorrectly look at labor costs as a liability and profit margins and stocks as their barometer of success, while forgetting their greatest assets to profitability are the people and their customers. The companies that survive the next few years of economic turmoil will figure that out and move back to employee/talent-based, customer-centric structures with better balanced pay scales. Those that don't will not survive.

[John_Toolbox]

I haven't used Sibelius 7 yet(Still have 6.2), but I'd find it hard to believe that the product is now at a state where it's development would be transitioned to a "maintenance and bug fixes" stage because it had been developed as far as possible. While it is a very powerful app, I think it will always have more room for innovation and expansion. So knowing that, it explains why most people would find it scary that the core development team isn't going to be continuing the work on it. However, it makes me wonder if the next phase of Sibelius will be even more integration between Sibelius and Pro Tools, which would explain the code being handled by the Kiev programmers who are also working on Pro Tools.