AVEVA continues to roll, we think
Schneider Electric released earnings this morning which now means that AVEVA also does, sort of. AVEVA says that it "made a solid start to the financial year" and that it "maintains a strong balance sheet and saw good cash generation in the...
Spectris announces CAE ambitions, acquires VI-grade
The news came into my inbox this morning: Spectris has acquired VI-grade. Who? I know, me too. Background: Spectris is a big UK company, listed with over $2 billion in revenue in 2017. It currently does a lot of the physical parts of a...
Quickie: MuM’s results show climb up hockey stick
We've seen all sorts of analogies for what happens with top line revenue during the transition from perpetual to subscriptions--bottoming out and climbing back up the other side, a hockey stick with a curved decline then a sharp upwards trend,...
PTC beats expectations, fiddles with targets & ends most perpetual sales on 1/1
Bucking the trend, PTC announced fiscal third quarter results yesterday that showcased a product mix shifting the other way, as more customers opted for perpetual licenses, with the higher up-front revenue lifting PTC above its revenue guidance...
ANSYS & SAP create insights across engineering & operations
In all of the noise a few weeks ago about PTC’s partnership with ANSYS to embed ANSYS Discovery Live into Creo, you might have missed the news that ANSYS has also partnered with SAP to bring physics-based analytics to the foreground in manufacturing...
MSC + Hexagon: “Where Simulation Gets Real”
"This is where simulation gets real." That’s what Paolo Guglielmini, the CEO of MSC Software, told users in his standing room only keynote at last month’s HxGN LIVE conference in Las Vegas. You might remember that Hexagon acquired MSC in 2017, with the...
Autodesk acquires Assemble as race to digitize construction stays hot
Autodesk just announced that it has acquired Assemble Systems, makers of a SaaS solution that connects BIM (building information models) to construction workflows such as bid management, estimating, scheduling, site management and finance....
ESI’s FQ1 hints at upward momentum for H2
ESI reported results back at the end of May --travel and US holidays sometimes get in the way of timely blogging-- and they were, at best, mediocre as reported. Currency movements, customers opting for subscriptions and not perpetual licenses, and changes...
5 quick take-aways from Siemens Automation Summit
I spent last week at the Siemens Automation Summit, learning lots and speaking with many, many people who program PLCs, HMIs and otherwise make manufacturing facilities hum. I'm still trying to figure out what to write about in more detail, but...
Quickie: Siemens acquires to build out Mentor’s IC capabilities
Siemens announced today that it is acquiring Austemper Design Systems Inc., a company that makes analysis, auto-correction and simulation technology for integrated circuit (IC) design. This complements Mentor Grpahic’s Questa software, which...
PTC’s LiveWorx foreshadows digital transformations
Technology. Business partnerships. Longtime customers, dragged forward. New customers to be wooed. PTC's annual user conference, now called LiveWorx, is barely over and there is so much to digest and to draw conclusions from -- this blog post is a first stab at...
Bentley steps up 4D, acquires Synchro
Bentley just announced that it has acquired Synchro Software to boost its 4D construction offerings. Think of Synchro as software for virtual design and construction, enabling visual planning, scheduling, and project management. This lets asset...
Quick update on PTC + Rockwell
I'm at PTC's LiveWorx user conference this week. Yesterday, CEO Jim Heppelmann gave a bit more detail on the partnership with Rockwell Automation, announced last week. A quick recap: Rockwell is buying 8.4% of PTC's shares for around $1 billion. PTC will...
Hexagon snaps up SPRING’s NCSIMUL for machining
Hexagon just announced that it is acquiring SPRING Technologies, whose NCSIMUL optimizes the machining workflow from CNC programming to CNC simulation, managing cutting and tool libraries, real time machine monitoring and technical content...
HxGN LIVE merges old and new, urges epic leaps forward
HxGN LIVE, the Hexagon group's annual userfest, brings together thousands of people from manufacturing to fire/rescue/police to construction to mapping professionals. Walking the halls, it's hard not to run into someone who does something I know nothing...
Nemetschek NEVARIS addresses SMB construction with acquisition
I am at HxGN Live, the Hexagon user event that addresses the needs of many industries, including construction. From measuring how well a concrete floor has been poured to planning, scheduling and tracking progress, Hexagon's customers span the gamut in...
DS takes majority position in Centric Software
Dassault Systèmes just announced that it will acquire a majority stake in Centric Software, the privately-held maker of PLM solutions for the fashion, apparel, luxury and retail sectors. DS said that, "with this investment, Dassault Systèmes aims to accelerate the...
Quickie: Historic AVEVA surged in FY18
AVEVA had an awesome fiscal 2018 (ended March 31). You'll recall that the AVEVA merged with Schneider Electric Software earlier this year to create a much bigger company with software that reaches from plant design to operations. That combined...
A few implications of PTC+Rockwell
Yesterday, all I had time to do was tell you about Rockwell Automation's $1 billion stock buy of newly issued shares of PTC, but not to muse on the implications. To be clear, PTC says it will use the proceeds to buy back shares so that the...
Quickie: Rockwell invests $1 billion in PTC for IoT & smart factory
This is big: PTC and Rockwell Automation just announced that Rockwell is making a $1 billion equity investment in PTC, as part of a strategic partnership aimed at accelerating growth for both companies. You can see IoT written large all over...