Monica Schnitger

Changing Tack: Moving to Collaborative, Simulation-Led Engineering

Apr 18, 2017 | Hot Topics

Do you ever think about how the products you rely on are created? How you can be sure that the car you drive is safe? Or the laptop, not exploding? Or how that latest gadget turns into an object of must-have, while the one next to it on the shelf is just OK? I get to...

Q&A Tuesday: Where does PLM fit? What’s a flexible ship? And more

Apr 10, 2017 | Hot Topics

You ask the best questions! Here, some quick answers from the mailbag: I probably get more questions on PLM than anything else: what is it, who uses it, why does it matter — and where does it fit into an overall IT strategy. The first thing to realize is that...

Updates: Siemens+Mentor, ESI earnings, what ever happened to Geometric?

Apr 4, 2017 | Hot Topics

You’ve been asking some great questions, here on the blog, via email and over on LinkedIn — and since you tell me you rarely have time to go back and look at old posts for updates, I’ve collected a few right here, right now. First, more on Siemens...

Done! Siemens closes Mentor acquisition

Mar 30, 2017 | Hot Topics

Siemens just announced that it has closed the Mentor Graphics acquisition, adding all sorts of EDA and CFD goodness to its portfolio. A quick recap of the particulars: On November 14, 2016, Siemens announced that it would offer Mentor shareholders $37.25 per share in...

SIMULIA and the 3DEXPERIENCEs aim to build a platform that’s bigger than the brands

Mar 21, 2017 | Hot Topics

When you’re looking at a CAE solution, do you look at brands or vendor names or do you look at capabilities, at how the solution fits into your workflow? Or the workflow you eventually want to have? That, in a nutshell, is Dassault Systèmes’ dilemma as it...

Ola Rollén indicted on insider trading unrelated to Hexagon, remains CEO

Mar 16, 2017 | Hot Topics

You know that this is news no company wants to release: Yesterday, Hexagon AB said that CEO Ola Rollén has been indicted by the Norwegian economic crime authority (Økokrim) on insider trading charges stemming from investments unrelated to Hexagon. The press release...

ADSK’s Q4 a muddle of math and accounting, better than it appears

Mar 15, 2017 | Hot Topics

It’s been a while since Autodesk reported results for the fiscal fourth quarter and year ended January 31, and I encourage you to look at the details here, if you’re interested. Given that Autodesk is moving its users from perpetual to subscriptions, the...

ESI reports steady progress in Q4

Mar 14, 2017 | Hot Topics

ESI just reported revenue for the fourth quarter and fiscal year that ended on January 31 — and the news is good. Recall that ESI’s revenue is really backweighted, with the bulk of renewals coming in Q4 and skewing result for earlier periods each year....

Autodesk subs – we hear you, but …

Mar 6, 2017 | Hot Topics

[This started out as a write-up of Autodesk’s latest earnings release but the preamble got so long that I think it needs to stand on its own. Earnings coming later this week. –Monica] Before we dive into Autodesk’s Q4 and fiscal 2017, let’s...

Did you feel it? Amazon web services were down yesterday

Mar 1, 2017 | Hot Topics

— and for something like four hours, from 1 PM ET to 5PM ET or so. I wasn’t using any cloud solutions as my primary tools at that time but did feel occasional hiccups in email or web things that were peripherally affected. Bottom line: I was able to work,...