Dr. Biplab Sarkar, CEO of Vectorworks, at the company’s annual user meeting.
Engineering software, which is tech at its most noble (sorry Angry Birds), needs to take a lesson from Vectorworks. The independently operating division of Nemetschek is in its second year of being led by Dr.Biplab Sarkar, who was previously its CTO. In ways that CFO, CMO or other C-levels cannot, a CTO can plow in long-term, foundational changes in a software to yield the most long-term and significant value in the product.
Sarkar has transformed Vectorworks into 64-bit code, a massive five-year effort. It has adopted Unicode throughout, which will be able to make his software localized and usable in big foreign markets.
“These changes are not exactly glamourous,” as Sarkar apologized to the 450 or so attendees at Vectorworks Design Summit 2017. He shouldn’t. Users will have much to appreciate with fundamental changes that ensure their choice in design software is viable now—and future-proofed.
Interview
We sat down with CEO Sarkar and his lieutenants on the first full day of the conference. He had been doing interviews all day but showed no sign of flagging.
Dr. Biplab Sarkar, CEO (left), and his lieutenants Darick De Hart, VP of product management; LaurenBurke Meyer, communications manager; Steve Johnson, VP of product development; and Sue Collins, director of publication and communications.
“I had to tell [ex-CEO] Sean that almost none of his code has remained,”…