Building the snowball: DS sees Q1 as “defining”

Apr 29, 2010 | Hot Topics

Every so often a CEO says something on an earnings call that’s too good not to repeat. Bernard Charlès, CEO of Dassault Systèmes said on the call held for European analysts (and available online) that software revenue was up only 3% in Q1 because DS still needs to...

Better economy, PLM priority lead to PTC’s growth

Apr 28, 2010 | Hot Topics

Earnings season begins today for the engineering software space (although AVEVA did hint at its results two weeks ago), with PTC announcing March quarter revenue slightly below expectations at $240.6 million, but still up 7% from last year. The company also adjusted...

Silver & gold: Autodesk’s new channel program

Apr 26, 2010 | Hot Topics

Autodesk recently announced a number of changes to its channel partner program, designed to make Autodesk easier to do business with and to give Autodesk’s 1900 VARs a competitive edge in the marketplace. Since Autodesk gets around 85% of revenue from the reseller...

COFES 2010: Mike Payne responds

Apr 22, 2010 | Hot Topics

A few days ago, I posted a few thoughts about this year’s COFES, including my take on a brief presentation given by Mike Payne. Mike graciously responded and below is his email in its entirety. He makes a number of good points: Monica, I had condensed the talk down to...

COFES 2010: Clouds, ashes and the future

Apr 20, 2010 | Hot Topics

COFES is always interesting (I’ve only been twice, so “always” is a relative term). Get 200-300 CAD/CAM/CAE/PDM/PLM people together at a resort in the Arizona desert for 3 days. Set up a few ballroom speeches and a lot of informal discussion sessions in the resort’s...

AVEVA shareholders not impressed

Apr 16, 2010 | Hot Topics

AVEVA today announced that the company made “good progress during a challenging year” as a resilient oil and gas market helped to offset weaker demand in its marine market. The company now expects that “full year results will be marginally ahead of current consensus...

Pricing is an art form

Apr 15, 2010 | Hot Topics

It must be, or why would we all believe that $12.99 is actually a more attractive price than $13.00? In the real world a price must reflect the cost to produce the product (or service) at its expected volume and the value the customer places on the product while...

FIRST Robotics finals start tomorrow

Apr 14, 2010 | Hot Topics

Those of you who follow me on Twitter may remember that I absolutely gushed back in February when a FIRST Robotics Competition team spoke to the analysts and media assembled by PTC. A quick recap: a small group of high schoolers (and their adult mentors) rolled in a...

SpaceClaim closes VC funding

Apr 13, 2010 | Hot Topics

As I noted a few weeks ago, venture funding has started to come back into the engineering software space. SpaceClaim today announced that it has closed a new round of funding to the tune of $5 million. The funding came from current investors, including Borealis...

Autodesk expands assistance program to veterans

Apr 12, 2010 | Hot Topics

Autodesk has extended its Assistance Program to veterans, according to the Wounded Artist Project. The Project contacted Autodesk to garner its support for a YouTube video on, of all things, BIM (Building Information Management); Autodesk was so impressed that it...