Siemens FQ3 flatish, PLM “outstanding”, reorg looms
Yesterday Siemens announced the acquisition of Mendix; today's news was fiscal third quarter earnings and a reorg. Tariffs came up early and often, as the uncertainty surrounding global trading frameworks affect many parts of Siemens' business....
Quickie: Hexagon acquires Guardvent for driver fatigue/distraction detection
Now this is interesting: Hexagon just announced that it has acquired Guardvant, maker of OpGuard, which is used to detect and respond to driver fatigue and distraction. OpGuard is currently used in the mining world, but I can imagine that it has broad...
Siemens acquires Mendix to accelerate MindSphere rollout
Siemens announced earlier today that it plans to acquire Mendix, a company that makes what is called a "low code" application development platform. If you program from scratch in Fortran (horrors), C, C++, C#, that's not low-code. Low-code is a...
Hexagon’s Q2 revenue up 9%, with PPM up 14%, MSC up 8% cc
Hexagon is another serial acquirer, constantly adding companies into its roster --and that's an important part of its strategy-- so today's news that Q2 revenue was up 9% cc on an organic basis is truly good news. Hexagon doesn't give details...
Quickie: GE considers sale of digital assets, maybe including Predix
Several news outlets this morning say that GE is exploring the sale of some or all of its digital assets -- which could include the Predix IoT platform. You might remember that Predix was a big deal at GE under former CEO Jeffrey Immelt but has been...
SAP, ANSYS and digital twins (oh my)
I find it fascinating that SAP is pushing so hard on physics-based IoT capabilities, when it could more naturally come at IoT from the perspective of business analytics. Its partnership with ANSYS is another big step in that direction, adding...
Quickie: Nemetschek revenue up 17% in Q2
So far we've had PLMish earnings; today, Nemetschek chimed in with a report that shows how well AECish companies are doing, too. Total revenue was €114 million, up 17% as reported and up 21% in constant currencies (cc). Since Nemetschek is a...
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...

