Lu Xiang - GstarCAD 2011

CEans,

GstarCAD is recognized as the industry leading provider of 2D/3D CAD software. Gstarsoft, a company that develops CAD software for diversified CAD users and application developers. GstarCAD 2011 is released with substantial improvements on speed and ease of use. In our interview with Mr. Lu Xiang, CEO of Gstarsoft, talked about what's new in GstarCAD 2011 and Gstarsoft's future plans.

CE:  You position your product GstarCAD – as the fast, powerful and DWG-compatible 2D/3D CAD software. What are its advantages over your competitors?
Xiang: GstarCAD is recognized as the fast, powerful and DWG-compatible CAD software with a productive and profitable feature set. There are two aspects involving GstarCAD : 1. it is an end-user CAD drawing product for the most diverse fields of designing and drafting and 2. Via its API’s it is a sophisticated platform for CAD application developers. Of all the competitors in CAD area, GstarCAD has built a large market around the globe due to its specific features. Its IntelliCAD-based technology and full compatibility with AutoCAD ensures the power, performance and convenience, especially the compatibility of APIs, DWG file format and menus, and those who have tried GstarCAD sang high praise of our GRX technology. Besides, GstarCAD has more than 150 expertise add-ons, which make the drawing work easier and faster, its ease of use and high speed is one importance reason for the customers to choose us. Meanwhile, GstarCAD always provides the minimized purchase, upgrade and maintenance cost, and our onsite and online customer support around the clock are highly appreciated by the customers. Furthermore, our advanced APIs helps application developers improve their business together with us. Through the smooth transplantation, many DWG based applications can be redeveloped on GstarCAD, and they can meet a wider range of customers in various industries and fields. All these advantages are important for us to tap into the continuous growth in CAD fields.

CE: Which industries cover your product? Who are your customers?
Xiang: As what I mentioned above, GstarCAD is used by all the CAD designers as a CAD design and drafting tool as well as a platform for the diversified industrrial applications. Our products cover the industries involving AEC, mechanical, manufacturing, electrical, GIS, survey and mapping, civil, etc., internationally. We currently have a network of dozens of distributors, resellers and application developers all over the world, under the first-line support of these partners, GstarCAD is well accepted by 190,000+ architects, engineers and designers alike from more than 100 countries to represent their ideas.

CE: Which countries or regions are important market for you? What are your plans there?
Xiang: We've decided to go global from 5 years ago, and all the countries and regions are important for us. Once we get into one market, we ensure they get the excellent products, service and support at the time, as we have specialized R&D, marketing and tech-support teams available for the partners and customers of each country or region.

We map out the the BRICs - Brazil, Russia and India besides China, now plus South Africa as the extremely important market. These fast growing economies have huge potentials, and they have been our most successful markets, GstarCAD will continue to provide the exclusively cost-effective products and good service to meet their ever growing demands.

GstarCAD's high quality service has been a top development priority especially in the developed countries, as they attempt to address a higher demand on the value added efficiency. Therefore, the customization applications are specifically targeted at such ripe market. At present, 50+ applications based on GstarCAD are ready for use to meet the diversified needs of customers.

With regards to the developing countries, I don't deny that they have relatively lower purchasing power, but we are also very optimistic about their potential, and now we are paying more attention to the educational market and public infrastructure to make contribution for the local economic development with a more favorable price but customer service of quality.

CE: How long are you in the CAD business? Please describe in brief your background and GstarCAD history.
Xiang: My background is in mechanical design. My fascination on CAD began from a software project when I was still a student at Tsinghua University, which is the top engineering university in China. I, together with other 4 classmates, organized a team specialized in CAD software development after graduation. That's how I got started. GstarCAD company was starting to take shape from 1992 when we were appointed as an authorized application developer of AutoCAD in China. We built up considerable experience and expertise on this world dominate CAD software, which has a significant impact on our later development. In 2003, We underwent a qualitative change, GstarCAD was released with self-owned intellectual property rights, it was based on IntelliCAD technology but was closer to and better serve the Chinese market and supported to push the use of genuine software in enterprises. GstarCAD realized a new span over technology since selected as a board member of IntelliCAD in 2008. After that, the GRX based “Platform + Application” solutions were globally recognized from 2009, which makes diversified customers benefit from our professional service, and GstarCAD passed CMMI Level 3 certification in the same year. I have to mention that GstarCAD won WIPO Award for Protection of Intellectual Property in 2010, which will help create a beneficial intellectual property rights environment internationally.

CE: GstarCAD is a platform for CAD application developers – there are over 50 third-party products based on it. How do you support third-party developers?
Xiang: We build win-win partnerships with application developers, and provide them with easy and feasible environment to develop or transplant their add-ons based on GstarCAD. First, and has powerful technical strength, such as high compatibility with AutoCAD and user-friendly APIs(GRX, VBA, Vlisp, SDS, Autolisp), which ensures the seamless transplantation. By partnering with GstarCAD, they can improve market share ratio by expanding their product and service portfolio based on GstarCAD's wide customer/distributor network and high awareness. Their application product will become accessible and usable by a wider range of customers, as we are keeping abreast with the latest technologies and strategic marketing promotion. Meanwhile, timely and regular sales and technical training and support are always staying within call.

CE: You released the latest version- GstarCAD 2011. Does it have any specific difference or enhancement compared to previous versions?
Xiang: GstarCAD 2011 is a milestone version in capability, operability and practicability compared to the previous versions, its optimized GRX technology, enhanced performance and newly added functions offer a productive and profitable feature set: The Ribbonized user interface helps the designers work more conveniently, the substantial function improvement enables them to work more efficiently, and the rise of performance makes the design work easier. Many other new features including transformation from 3D model to 2D drawings, Drawing compare, text field will increase the productivity throughout our customer base. In all, substantial improvements on speed and ease of use has been brought GstarCAD 2011, and the latest development will see further emphasis on end-user productivity.

CE: In GstarCAD 2011, you introduced Ribbonized user interface. Did existing users request this functionality or are you planning to attack the markets with it?
Xiang: Our philosophy is based on the idea of "Doing it right the first time" through early evaluation of the client's needs, and we pride ourselves in capturing and using the voice of the customer for product development. Together with the close focus on the industry development trend, we have advanced our market leadership at the idea, technology, or even the type of operation. Taking the Ribbon in GstarCAD 2011 for example, it is a fabulous way of specifying commands to make the user interface more accessible and beautiful. The GUI changed from collection of menus and toolbars to single ribbon mechanism, the users can find, understand and use commands more efficiently and directly. We unveil the stated and unstated customer requirements and transform them into demand-led products, and the optimal solution to this requirement is a high-efficiency, from usability to efficiency, from traditional to trendy.

CE: Recently many CAD providers released free 2D CAD software. Did it have any impact on your business?
Xiang: We all recognise that CAD software isn’t cheap, especially 3D software solutions. But the complete opposite appears to be happening to 2D software, which now has a glut of products that are free. Many competitors hope to push its other products' sales with re-subscriptions of 2D CAD. It seams to bring a negative impact on 2D CAD market, but it offers a good opportunity to take advantage of our own, as I believe. Software provider is known as integreated service provider, our customers in general require far more an integrated solution than a single 2D drawing tool. I do persevere to keep up to date on what is essential in CAD market, and improve our product quality with the strongest technical force, meanwhile, our onsite and remote support mechanism is still key to GstarCAD’s success, including CAD technical training, APIs training, Bug tracking system, tech-support database and process, market promotion and business consultation. All these have helped GstarCAD continue to make breakthroughs , and maintain its leading role in 2D CAD market.

CE: What are your plans for the following years?
Xiang: We have many plans and let me briefly summarize some of them: We want to be an industry leader in the CAD software market and continue the increase in investment into R&D and business support services for GstarCAD end-users, application developers and distributors.

First, we'll keep the technical superiority. A R&D center in Xi'an City, and GstarCAD Tower in Suzhou City will be launched this year to further strengthen the technology base of Beijing. Our technology development team will be a collaborative effort that strategically combines R&D, innovation, support and service to serve the technology needs and marketing goals of distribution.

Another important target is to be an excellent service provider, as what I mentioned above. A stronger support, marketing and sales team will be allocated to provide expertise support to our users, distributors and application developers. We are bringing in effective practices and processes to optimize our customer support. Customers can now experience more timely and relevant information available support service. The channel sales network will also be broadened in a large margin and we will keep a closer communication with our distributors. The marketing investment will increase by 3 times this year to help improve the business development of our distributors. GstarCAD also helps application developers to promote their products within our own sales network.

In the near future, we will soon extend our platform into industrial application market internationally. On one hand, the technological support for third-party application development based on GstarCAD will be enhanced. On the other hand, we expect to grow fast in the global industrial application market by providing our own application software, especially in AEC and mechanical and manufacturing industries. I can’t reveal every detail here but some applications such as GstarCAD Architecture will be coming soon. We are extremely confident as our application software have been well accepted in China's domestic market. It will open new business opportunities for our global distibutors and will definitely bring more added value to our customers.

Thanks to our international customers and partners, GstarCAD will continue to grow from excellent to outstanding together with you!