Discreet restructures

UPDATE: More information added from Discreet.

Discreet restructures and changes some staff. Some old faces are gone, some new
blood has been hired.

We can now report that following NAB, Discreet has been receiving tremendous interest and feedback from customers on its strategy for the Discreet Media Architecture (DMA). With that in mind, the company has two plans in place: one, to make adjustments to the DMA to meet customer requests and expectations that will ultimately affect timing to market; and two, to investigate options for bringing subsets of the technology to its current product offerings giving existing customers access to some feature-sets on their “most desired” list. As part of these changes, Discreet will be redeploying some resources for a better sharing of knowledge across its product groups. 

These new developments are aligned with the company’s overall strategy to be a leader in all three of its key markets. This week, Discreet has shifted the organization into three distinct business units – Systems, Animation and Desktop Video – demonstrating a fortified commitment, focus and effort to lead in these growing markets. 

With the film business expected to reach $30 billion in the next five years, and the quantity of digital effects rapidly increasing, the systems division continues to be a key business driver for Discreet. In parallel to its position in the high end visual effects market, the company is building on its commitment to the desktop video and animation space and the success of both combustion and 3ds max.

Post Magazine reports


Discreet is restructuring to better serve its customers and improve networking between its various products. The company has organized its business into three divisions that target three main media markets:

systems, desktop video and animation.

“Our customers needs to work in greater bit-depths, higher resolutions, the need for better collaboration, the need for sharing of assets, are nowhere near being satiated,” says Paul Lypaczewski, general manager of Discreet/executive VP of Autodesk, Discreet’s parent company. “There’s a lot of growth potential and we have great expectations for the potential of that business.”

Along with this realignment, Discreet has hired several veterans of the visual effects industry to promote its future ventures into the three market segments. Among these new hires is David Pritchard, who will become VP of worldwide software sales. Pritchard was the president and CEO of The Motion Factory, which was purchased by Avid. There he became the general manager for Softimage. Prior to that he was the VP and managing director of Macromedia. He also spent three years at Apple Computer as the managing director in Europe.

Not mentioned in the Post story is some Discreet R&D people are no longer with the company. Daniel Collin has left. Daniel was known to many FXGuide readers from his days with FIRE and most recently from heading up the Toxik R&D. Daniel will be missed by many we are sure. Dave Jones is head of all Toxik and FFIS development, Dave formerly did this but now we understand product management and R&D management has been merged under him.

In the other two divisions, Desktop now covers Combustion, Plasma, and Streaming products, Animation division covers Max and its associated products.