Read this: Where oil rigs go to die
The world of offshore oil has seen cycles of boom and bust, huge investments in risky locations followed by project cancellations and layoffs. There's the human cost, for sure, but there's also a fleet of unused assets. What happens to them? How do we go from the...
Q1 in AEC: looks like 2017 is a breakout year
You (and investors and entrepreneurs and many others) often ask me how the AEC market is accepting the technologies that discrete manufacturing has long relied on: 3D design, using a model as reference and not just drawings, managing those models and related...
Quickie: DS’ Q1 shows solid start to 2017
As always, there's a lot to unpack in a Dassault Systèmes earnings release, so here are the bare facts while I catch up on the earnings calls, presentations and press releases: Total revenue in Q1 was €760 million, up 10% as reported and up 7% in constant currencies...
MSC is now part of the Hexagon family
A quick update: Hexagon just announced that its acquisition of MSC Software is complete, since it has obtained all of the regulatory approvals it needed for the deal. Hexagon sees this as very strategic, enabling it to "connect the traditionally separate stages of...
PTC returns to modest growth in FQ2 – but we’ll take it!
PTC announced its fiscal Q2 financials a couple of days ago, and I've been trying to figure out what to write about ever since. There was good news, in that revenue was up year/year for the first time in nine quarters. And the net loss narrowed. But I worry about the...
MuM says 2017 is off to a “pleasant” start
What a nice way to start a week: an earnings report that includes the word "pleasant". Too often, it's all business gobbledy-gook; we all know what "pleasant" means. Not stressful, satisfactory, generally positive, moving in the right direction ... Of course, all is...
AVEVA’s update previews revenue growth in F17
AVEVA today gave an update on its performance for the fiscal year that ended 31 March 2017. And it was, as usual, a terse 2-sentence statement: The Board is pleased to report that the Group's results, assisted by positive currency translation effects, show a return...
Changing Tack: Moving to Collaborative, Simulation-Led Engineering
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
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 history...
Updates: Siemens+Mentor, ESI earnings, what ever happened to Geometric?
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 closing the Mentor...
Done! Siemens closes Mentor acquisition
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
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 builds out a...
Ola Rollén indicted on insider trading unrelated to Hexagon, remains CEO
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
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 results have...
ESI reports steady progress in Q4
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. With that...
Autodesk subs – we hear you, but …
[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 talk big picture. Many,...
Did you feel it? Amazon web services were down yesterday
-- 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, though not...
ESI acquires Scilab, a numerical computation platform
ESI Group today announced that it has acquired Scilab Enterprises SAS, which publishes and offers professional services for Scilab, the open source software for numerical computation that's an alternative to MATLAB from The Mathworks. This is ESI's second acquisition...
Autodesk sells Moldflow’s US lab to Beaumont
Unless you're a plastics guy, you may not know this, but one of Moldflow's key differentiators is its material testing laboratories. Plastics are tricky, with fibers and layers and temperatures and shrinkage rates ... designing a mold that can fill and cool to create...
ANSYS realigns to go from $1B to $2B
ANSYS held its first earnings call under the leadership of new CEO Ajei Gopal today to discuss Q4 and full-year 2016 results and to offer investors a glimpse into where Mr. Gopal believes he can take ANSYS. One clear takeaway from the call: the goals are ambitious, as...
