Gemcom and GEOVIA, a tale of two brands

During its earnings call last week, Dassault Systèmes (DS) continued to explain its vision of  moving beyond “product experience” (engineering and design), to the larger concept of 3DEXPERIENCE, which adds business intelligence and other apps to its offering in order to “transform the way companies are engineering, creating, and managing innovation on production systems”. The “companies” in M. Charlès statement refer to include automotive, aerospace and others in the typical PLM universe, but also to a whole host of new prospects, in a very diverse set of industries. A big part of this new strategy is GEOVIA, built around the Gemcom acquisition  announced back in April. DS says that GEOVIA “champions the further development of Dassault Systèmes’ strategy of modeling the natural world, expanding the 3DEXPERIENCE to nature”. Gemcom’s core product set is targeted at mining, which, is a very specific form of “modeling the natural world”, so I wanted to understand how extensible Gemcom’s solutions are to other type of natural resources — the first, most obvious, adjacency being with oil and gas. Global demand seems insatiable, and if Gemcom’s solutions have a play there, it seems like an obvious target market. Gemcom tells me that its solutions are often used in oil sands extraction because this process is similar to mining, using techniques like soft-rock excavation and processing. Users import seismic data to model subterranean surfaces, from which volume calculations can be carried out to asses how much can be extracted. Factor in costs and asset owners can determine how profitable an operation could be. If all signals are “go”, Gemcom’s offerings can then be used to plan and execute the asset’s exploitation. So this part of the oil and gas upstream supply chain is very much a target for DS’ expansion. Too, Gemcom’s current customer base is far more varied that I realized. Customers include the top 10 mining groups worldwide, with over 8,800 licenses sold, but many adjacencies to iron, diamonds and what one typically thinks of when one thinks “mining”, such as

• anthracite coal mining that feeds into coal-fired power generation plants
• uranium mining clients supplying nuclear power stations, and
• civil engineers who use similar volume calculations for “cut and fill” operations in projects from dams to to roads to dumps — anything where earth has to be moved — and for projects like tunnels, where the underground geology plays a huge role.

Gemcom, of course, has competitors. Many are small and offer analytical tools for simulating mine operations, or specific types of seismology, or ore type, though Gemcom does seem to have the most comprehensive offering targeted specifically at mining (described here, when I blogged about the acquisition in May). Other vendors offer solutions for mining operations — some, like Caterpillar’s are intriguing because they “talk” directly to operating vehicles. Then there are the traditional AEC CAD suppliers which come at this from the design side, trying to extend into operations. My mining industry contacts tell me that they use a combination of software solutions, depending on where the asset is in its lifecycle. At the mining group level, it’s all about forecasting demand and supply and balancing the portfolio of mine assets. In exploration/evaluation, the main needs are for analytics and regulatory compliance. Once the decision is made to go ahead to production, the focus shifts to design, construction, operator training and facility operations and maintenance, although regulatory compliance and forecasting demand/supply remain critical to profitability. Gemcom’s products play in many, but not all, of these areas. Asset operators’ biggest IT issues typically revolve around the lack of pre-existing IT infrastructure in remote parts of the world, collaboration, data integration, authentication, silos and workflows, all of which can get in the way of a truly productive, smooth flow of information. Perhaps the big thing DS brings to this party is its portfolio of other products –ENOVIA for collaboration, data management and workflow; Exalead for data mining, perhaps DELMIA for mine operations– which can be of use to mine operators. It’s going to be interesting to see how DS manages the GEOVIA brand with the lofty ambition of “expanding the 3DEXPERIENCE to nature”. This is such a new market for DS that it should go slowly, learn from Gemcom what resonates best with this audience, and incrementally roll out any integrated offerings. Yes, these customers could benefit from DS’ data management offerings, for example, but only if they are easily configurable. This audience lacks the patience for a full-on PLM implementation.