It’s been an interesting week. This is the second unanticipated deal to float into my inbox: hot on the heels of Intergraph adding GT STRUDL to its stable is ESI’s news that it has acquired CAMMECH (Cam Mechanical Solutions), based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. According to its website, CAMMECH represents many of the major PLMish brands trying to establish a foothold in the fast-growing Vietnamese economy: SolidWorks, Mastercam, Delcam’s ArtCAM, PTC’s Creo, Autodesk’s AutoCAD and Inventor, Siemens PLM NX — but not, as far as I can tell, anything related to CAE.
ESI’s Lech Tomasz Kisielewicz, EVP for Services Operations said in prepared remarks that “the acquisition of the CAMMECH company allows the extension of our multi-shore coverage in Asia and the opening of a new center of competency close to our customers on this continent. Through this new foothold we will meet the growth in demand for our services both on local and continental markets, and more specifically in Japan and South Korea.”
ESI’s release says that CAMMECH employs 10 senior engineers that (will?) specialize in CAE, to “support the Group’s development in Asia and around services dedicated to high value-added projects.”
Economic news has recently focused on Vietnam, seen by many as the next big thing. According to McKinsey in 2012,
Vietnam’s economy has come an extraordinarily long way in a short time. China is the only Asian economy that has grown faster since 2000.
More recently, the Wall Street Journal says that
The country’s gross domestic product grew 5.42% this year, compared with 5.25% in 2012 … Last year’s GDP, the slowest since 1999, was revised up from 5.03%. Inflation was down as well … The 2013 economic growth was led by the services sector, which expanded 6.56%. The manufacturing and construction sector rose 5.43% and the agriculture sector 2.67%.
Vietnam is clearly emerging as a market in its own right, but also serves as a springboard to the rest of Asia, where wages are higher and competition for talented software engineers/support teams perhaps higher.
UPDATE: Corinne Romefort-Régnier of ESI told me that CAMMECH no longer resells Siemens products, and is being restructured to focus on engineers with CAE knowledge.
