Autodesk Q4: things are looking up

Feb 23, 2010 | Hot Topics

I am fascinated by the varying types of spin put on earnings releases. Autodesk released what are really quite positive year-end results but one media headline read only “Autodesk FY10 revenue down 26%.” True, but not even the tip of the news iceberg and reflecting...

PTC’s swagger is back

Feb 18, 2010 | Hot Topics

PTC held their annual media and analyst day on the day “Snowmaggedon” was supposed to hit the Boston area. It amounted to not much of anything but did keep a few participants and a speaker or two away, and sent several people scurrying by mid-afternoon. Those of us...

Dassault Systèmes: Done with 2009, ambitious for 2020

Feb 18, 2010 | Hot Topics

Dassault Systèmes reported results last week that showed revenue declined in all major products lines and all geographies, with the company’s large installed base providing a nice cushion of recurring revenue that forestalled an even more dramatic decline. DS has put...

Avatech looking up and out

Feb 17, 2010 | Hot Topics

Avatech Solutions yesterday announced results for its second fiscal quarter 2010 (ended December 31, 2009). Like its peers, Avatech saw FQ2 revenue far below last year’s level but on a flattening trajectory – perhaps signaling that the worst of the recession is...

Measuring: How much is that customer costing you?

Feb 12, 2010 | Hot Topics

This is the second in a series of articles exploring business metrics and their usefulness in the engineering software space. In the last post, we covered using overall market data to measure success. This post discusses the cost of acquiring and keeping customers....

Dassault Systèmes Q4: slow recovery

Feb 11, 2010 | Hot Topics

Dassault Systèmes’ earnings call is in an hour, so this is all gleaned from the materials released earlier today. Much more color commentary coming later:For Q4, • total revenue was €339.0 million, down 11% as reported from a year ago, but up 16% from Q3. For the sake...

AspenTech reports some improvement, relists

Feb 9, 2010 | Hot Topics

Aspen Technology today announced results for its second quarter of fiscal 2010. AspenTech is in the midst of a painful transition from a typical perpetual license model, where a large upfront new license payment is followed by much smaller periodic maintenance...

Poor performance leads to management shakeup at SAP

Feb 8, 2010 | Hot Topics

SAP announced over the weekend that CEO Leo Apotheker was resigning, effective immediately, and that Jim Hagemann Snabe, head of product development, and Bill McDermott, in charge of field operations, would assume the roles of co-CEO.The change is perhaps not a...

Measuring: Are you #1 or #2?

Feb 3, 2010 | Hot Topics

This is the second in a series of posts exploring business metrics and their usefulness in the engineering software space. This article focuses on two types of external metrics companies can use to measure their market success: market share and category penetration....

You get what you measure

Feb 2, 2010 | Hot Topics

An interesting tweet came across the Twitter timeline today: “Most important reason to measure – to know what’s working and what’s not“ from @abelniak retweeting @amyblack and it got me thinking. Knowing what’s working and what isn’t is probably the...