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/ar ... unity.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.

[mikeymike2000]

Hi Peter,

I just had to chime in here as a user of Sibelius 7. It is an amazing program worth every penny and yes it does require a BOAT LOAD of knowledge and expertise to produce. HOWEVER, with all due respect to the Brits; they are not the ONLY humans on planet Earth that can create such magnificent pieces of software.

Avid has been around since the beginning of time and have most all of the top products so I highly doubt that Sibelius will be destroyed in any way. In fact, it will prob be more easily integrated with other products is my guess.

Change is good and we now live in a competitive world. It is no longer us and our neighbors, or the tri-state area it is "the universe". On a personal note, I would love to see the office be moved to California, there are lots of great leading minds here too ya know.

Edit: It looks like you are in Cali too, so why on earth would you be opposed to this? There is not enough production in the USA anymore - this would help us get the leadership edge back if they moved here.

[DesireInspires]

Change is good and we now live in a competitive world. It is no longer us and our neighbors, or the tri-state area it is "the universe". On a personal note, I would love to see the office be moved to California, there are lots of great leading minds here too ya know.

Yeah.

I think the change will be for the best once the dust settles. Businesses have to stay competitive in order to survive. It will hurt temporarily, but I am sure this decision was not made in haste. We have to respect Avid's decision. It is their business.

[peter5992]

Guys, I appreciate the feedback but you have to understand that by closing the UK office, Avid essentially kills Sibelius. All of the 'brains' behind Sibelius are in their UK office.

We're not talking about hundreds of employees, it's just a dozen or so, but they are essential.

This is the equivalent of 'let's burn that Rembrandt picture we got, we have plenty of talented painters elsewhere'.

Yes, I am in California, but although I am an experienced Sibelius, I couldn't even begin to fill the shoes of people like Daniel. They are the heart and soul of the program.

I am all for free enterprise, but this is single most lame brained business decision in recent times.

And it doesn't just affect a handful of employees in London, UK. It affects hundreds of thousands of Sibelius users worldwide.

[Len911]

I'm not taking a pro or con approach, and I hate to see anyone lose their jobs for certain. If Sibelius is a masterpiece, it sounds like the major development work is done and only minor updates and maintenance would be all that was required henceforth. But of course I am still using Windows XP,lol!
If there is enough public feedback, it's possible they could use that to pump up the company and get a good price on it if they decided to sell it too, along with their consumer product divisions?? Maybe they weren't going to sell it because there wasn't enough interested buyers? OMG, now I'm sounding like a spokesperson for Bain Capital!

[kclements]

Anyone remember Opcode Vision/OMS/Galaxy? Remember when Gibson bought them out and killed the products without so much as a thank you? Is this what Avid is going to do with Sibelius by eliminating the developers?

I have beta tested Sibelius the last few versions and when I saw V7 I thought they basically turned it into MS Word. In my opinion, it just looks bad - amateurish. Sibelius has always had a very clean, get out of your way interface. The new version just stinks of corporate focus groups and stupid decisions (again, just my opinion).

I wonder how long it will be before Avid decides Pro-Tools is no longer in need of development?

kc

[mazz]

Well it seems they originally bought Sibelius so they could use the tech to add notation editing to ProTools. It doesn't make much sense to kill Sibelius but they seem to be doing what many companies do when profits are threatened, and that's to re-structure and try to do things cheaper. The problem with that is the consumer almost always suffers. The market for Sibelius can't be all that big compared to other types of products. It's pretty much a niche market. The pro audio market isn't really all that big in the grand scheme and Avid started as a video editing company and if you've ever worked with video folks, you know that audio is always somewhat of an afterthought.

Sibelius is awesome but I haven't been motivated to move to Version 7 just yet.

I hope they keep it around.