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/archive/2012/07/07/sibe lius-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.

just making the link clickable.

I'm not even a sibelius user, and that pisses me off... How do you "outsource" development of an app like that? Either you own the software, and you therefore maintain a team of developers to maintain and enhance said software... or you sell the software and associated assets to a compnay or individual who is interested in investing the resources in doing likewise. You don't "outsource" development of an app like that. I've worked in finance for many many years, in IT, web dev, mobile dev, etc. etc. on everything from little $50K pet projects to $100-200 million major initiatives... "outsourcing" even in the big corporate environments does not always make sense. In fact, in my experience it usually does not make sense simply because a.) it's done for the wrong reasons, and b.) it's not executed in a manner conducive to success.

It is not a matter for xenophobes, in any direction, east, west, north, south. It is simply a matter of: who possesses the bulk of our institional knowledge and core competencies wrt. specifically what we're trying to accomplish here? Seems like that would be a pretty simple question to answer, right?

If you choose the right team for the job, you get efficiency and timeliness. If you arbitrarily choose the wrong team based on the wrong and/or irrelevant qualifications, you get stops and starts, inefficiency, communication problems, contract disputes, missed deadlines, budget overruns, and many times outright failure. It's simply a matter of finding the right team, whether that's inside the organization, outside the organization, on the moon, floating in the stratosphere on the mothership waiting for 12/21/2012, whatever... The problem is that "the right team" for some meets one set of criteria, while the same for others means something totally different.

Outsourcing does not mean "going overseas". Outsourcing can be between domestic corporations -- and I mean corporations who are strictly domestic entities, not international in any way. In all cases, the question has to be asked: does it make sense to give the entirety of, or part of, this work to an external team?

The problem in the software world is that the answer to that question these days is typically provided by somebody adept at counting beans, not making well-informed, practical decisions regarding software development. The bean counters open up their spreadsheets, plug a bunch of numbers into column A, a bunch of numbers into column B, and out pops an answer. That answer is typically of the form: "it's cheaper to hire some people over here to do this work". Note they concluded "cheaper", not "better". And moreso, when they say "cheaper" they really mean "generally cheaper"... nothing to do with efficiency and cost-effectiveness "specifically for what we're trying to accomplish here" (you know, the real question you should be asking). What the bean counters fail to understand is that the work doesn't end after the hiring process is complete, and success is not measured 4 times per year. In the software world the devil is in the details, and success is measured 12-16 hours per day, 6-7 days per week.

I don't know if it would shock anybody if I said a goodly chunk of my outsourcing experience has been of the "quota" variety. That's right: we are no longer in the "does it make sense to ____________" realm... but instead "my boss's boss told me I need to maintain 4 people from this country, 3 people from that other country, and 2 people from the Salt Lake City office on my books".

Sometimes you strike gold. I've worked on projects that were partially outsourced (as opposed to an entirety of development being shipped somewhere), and we just so happened to have just the right people on the team. But that is a matter of luck rather than by design.

That's software development in the world of big corporations these days. The decisions are not required to be rational, as long as the all the numbers add up one way or another to somebody's short-term satisfaction. Only after substantial failure (and I've seen a bunch of that), heads rolling, etc. do the irrationalities start to be balanced somewhat with rational decision making -- generally by persons with significant interest in making sure certain things don't happen again.

And the rest are left standing on the sidelines, observing, muttering to themselves "well, I could have told you that was going to happen".

It pisses me off when a large company buys a cool software program and then discontinues it. I hope this does not happen.

"In August 2006 the company (Sibelius)was acquired by Avid, to become part of its Digidesign division, which also manufactures the leading digital audio workstation Pro Tools."

Edit

Also!!

"I wish we could get Notation or better Notation in DAWx"

Common response

Just use Sibelius.



What now?

Large companies DO ACQUIRE other companies for intellectual property, licensing, etc. - so perhaps Avid is just consolidating and will keep the Sib core engineers on staff, and continue to build upon Sibs reputation.

OR Avid could turn around and just start licensing Sib to other DAW developers.
OR Avid could just dump it all together.

I think the latter is the dumbest way to go, and if this is really the case, then it would show that Avid may be feeling a financial crush and is bending to share-holder wishes to streamline their operating and development overhead.

Just sayin....

G

Working in (non audio) software development.. this type of stuff happens all the way more often than one might think... people in suits who spend their days in meetings enjoy (mis)managing, consoldating, and otherwise making more 'efficient' the process by reducing the engineering and development staff and/or moving them to a location outside of the rest of the company.

'Here are some plans.. go code.'

This works great in certain, specific, situations. The problem is.. it doesn't in most others; What works for firm A might not work for firm B. But suits enjoy buzz words such as synergy and mojo as well as big, colorful charts and can thus convince other suits of their ideas easily with such 'tools.'

So if you have a bunch of people who don't develop/code managing a bunch of people who do.. and your product is software.. this is a very very bad scenario.

I've seen several projects go kablooey as a result of management deciding they didn't need as many developers and it would be more cost effective to continually reduce the coder staff, even after much pleading and reasoning by the coder staff that its a very BAD idea... only 6 months down the line to see management scrambling to (re)hire people.

The problem with management is in order to be necessary.. they must make themselves look necessary.. chop this, reduce that and you will save the money you were paying them in salary.. oh wait.. doom.. panic.. 8 months late on project now as a result.. rehire rehire rehire!! oh wait.. they are gun shy now and want more money to come back. hire them anyway. hire someone!! Phew we hired more developers. They don't know our design methods or our code base.. but that doesn't matter.. coder is a coder right? We (mangement) deserve an award for saving the day... you definitely need to keep us or the projects would have never been completed.

Wash rinse repeat

Management isn't evil. However, I find the problem, with many companies, is there usually is too much misinformed and self-centric management to the point where projects end up stuck in a tarry pit of tug-of-war politics and mangerial red tape with little input from the dev staff actually creating your company's tools and/or products.

As soon as the world realises that corporate culture brings nothing of true value the sooner we can move on as a species.

I'm just so disgusted with this whole thing. Cut all the talent from the company and replace them with cheap (unskilled) labor, destroying a genuinely good product in the process. Meanwhile, the company is bleeding out, and the CEO not only seems to not care, but is stuffing his pockets with more money. I don't see how failing your business should give you a raise. Clearly, people at the top are simply trying to collect as much for themselves as possible before Avid goes under.

that's business?

This is a genuine blow. Very sad news. And having used Sibelius for years (at no small cost!!) it makes me just so sad to see this news.

Wow...

So is AVID basically going to the wall? I did kind of wonder a year or so back... anyway they seem to be making a series of awful decisions at the moment.

I'd sort of wondered what the divestment and 20% staff reduction meant for Sibelius.
I'm imagining two scenarios:

1. they close the uk office, but retain Daniel on their staff to oversee additional development.

2. they close the uk office, and let Sib rot without Daniel. but hey, screw it...they got what they wanted out of the deal already anyway (rudimentary scoring in PT).

either way, i would imagine m-audio being much more profitable for them than sibelius, so with m-audio being divested, i guess it's not so surprising that sib would get a good looking at, too.

Thanks for posting the link.

kell

From the last Avid seminar I attended, it seems the focus is moving more toward audio post than music making. When's the last time anyone doing a song needed 256 tracks with effects? Okay, maybe Kanye or Polyphonic Spree...

I used Sibelius' midi to notation feature on a short deadline with live string and brass players last fall, and it saved my ass. When I needed to transpose the brass during the session and had reprinted scores in ten minutes(!), I almost laughed! I'd HATE to lose it.

Maybe Avid dipped their toe in the all-in-one music workstation with peripherals concept but realized where the real budget money is. And it ain't at Best Buy. Or notation. Or with musicians.

Movies are made for tens of millions, and dozens are made every year. Editing and Audio get their share. Albums are $500,000 at the very top level, and only a handful of artists do it consistently.

Digi's time stretching has always been iffy at best, and their virtual instruments are stuck in time three years ago with no third party (or internal, for that matter) support, BUT, the connectivity between their own high end film/video editing systems and Pro Tools is cutting edge. Hmmm.

If they want to be the go-to for audio post, fine. Just don't gut what's already there for making music, I use PT for BOTH.

KVR/eSoundz: Xenobt

lots of Irate people.
http://community.avid.com/blogs/avid/archive/2012/07/23/avid s-commitment-to-sibelius.aspx

maybe they really will integrate sibelius more into pro tools? and also offer a demo that you can try out without a dongle or certain hardware requirements (m-audio) and also offer a full updated version of pro tools that will work with any audio interface. RME ect

Passionate. That's the word. I don't recall ever before seeing such an intelligent and yet passionate outpouring of authentic reasoning mixed with scorn. And the Sibelius community is huge in the professional music world, as well as in the education of the next generation. All those users - some of whom are massive big name leaders in their respective fields... Based on this it seems fair to assume AVID are finished.