Q&A Tuesday: It’s not all about CD-adapco
... though most of your questions over the last two days have been focused on CD-adapco and Siemens PLM. There is other news out there worth your consideration. First, keeping to the CAE theme: SIMSOLID (about which I'll write more thoughtfully soon) announced today...
Siemens CEO says CD-adapco is a perfect fit
I put up a quick blog post yesterday about the planned acquisition of CD-adapco by Siemens and added more info to it as the day went along — please check back there for initial thoughts — but wanted to do a separate update today. Siemens held its December-quarter...
Siemens snaps up CD-adapco for a cool $1 billion
The rumors are finally confirmed: Siemens PLM is acquiring CD-adapco for $970 million. For those keeping track, that's about a 5x revenue multiple. ADDED after this blog was first published at around 2PM ET on 25 January 2015 because people were asking for a bit more...
PTC’s Q1 shows people like subs — more than PTC thought
A one-word recap of PTC's fiscal first quarter earnings release: subscriptions. People really like them! That's messing with the rest of the finances (that whole ratable-over-the-life versus big-payment-upfront thing) and PTC's comments still focus almost...
PLM fosters business agility, if you do it right
No business is static. Everything changes, all the time. The successful business adapts, figures out what to change in its offerings, in the technology it uses and in the way its people work. This means identifying the change and brainstorming ways to succeed in spite...
Where are we going? A simulation view
The good news: we’re no longer evangelizing about the benefits of simulation. Most people and companies understand that CAE can help create better products, more quickly. The bad news: many still don’t get the fact that simulating one facet of a product isn’t...
AspenTech snaps up KBC for refinery ops
Now this is interesting. AspenTech, which makes software used for the design and costing of chemical processes (think the molecular changes required to turn crude into jet fuel) and for optimizing the overall oil and gas supply chain (think "how much crude do I have,...
Plant design in a world of $30 oil
I get asked this a lot: what are oil producers (and their contractors) doing when the price of oil is so low? Why keep producing? Why do they need engineering services — and CAD, PLM, visualization, and other engineering-related technologies? The questions usually...
ESI Group acquires ITI GmbH to add 0D/1D to its offering
ESI Group just announced that it has acquired 96% of ITI GmbH, maker of the 0D/1D SimulationX solution, and has the option to purchase the remaining 4% in three years. All ITI staff will join ESI (and it sounds like it will be business as usual for ITI customers, at...
Welcome to 2016! Deals continue …
Happy New Year! May 2016 bring you nothing but happiness, health and prosperity! It's starting the way 2015 ended: with news of acquisitions and divestitures. Nemetschek says that it has concluded its acquisition of all of the shares of Solibri. You may remember from...
Happy holidays from us to you!
Nemetschek adds Solibri to its BIM offering
Do you BIM? If so, you've probably heard of Solibri, soon to be a Nemetschek company. Solibri makes what could be called quality assurance solutions for BIM, validating that models meet specific country/region and project standards and performing various...
AVEVA and Schneider break up
Word just came that AVEVA and Schneider Electric have decided to break off talks to merge/acquire one another's software businesses. No real reason was given, just "unable to reach agreement and discussions have been terminated by mutual consent". Since the deal...
AU 2015 – something for everyone, even Star Wars fans
By any measure, Autodesk University is big. 800+ sessions. 10,000 attendees in Las Vegas and a lot more watching the web-streamed sessions from home, during and after the event. The Venetian and Palazzo complex filled to overflowing with design techies of all sorts,...
ESI Q3 revenue up 10%, secures new credit line for acquisitions
ESI Group announced a couple of significant things over the last few weeks. First, the company announced that it has restructured debt and signed new lines of credit to bring the total available borrowing to €49 million. CEO Alain de Rouvray said this would create...
Exa’s Q3 up 6% as reported on strong US performance
CFD company Exa reported results today that show how well recent investments in R&D are paying off: The company had solid, 16% constant currency (cc) growth in license revenue that lead to overall 14% cc revenue growth. The details: Total revenue for Q3 was $17...
AU 2015 pregame: what I want to know
It's the week after Thanksgiving so it must be time for Autodesk University, the almost-week-long festival of all things Autodesk with a lot of maker thrown in. This year is special, in that a lot of things are changing for Autodesk's business and for the business of...
Siemens acquires Polarion, gets further into ALM
Siemens just announced that its PLM unit is acquiring Polarion, makers of the eponymous Polarion ALM, Polarion QA and other solutions in a browser-based platform used by at makers of the myriad products that include software. Syncing software versions with...
Happy Thanksgiving!
It's a crazy time here in the US. Tomorrow, we celebrate the fact that immigrants came to North America and survived, yet our politicians are talking about not admitting new immigrants (and never mind all of the fallacies in the original Thanksgiving story)....
Autodesk and ZWSoft settle IP suit
Autodesk and ZWSoft, maker of ZWCAD, just announced that they have settled their dispute over who improperly used what intellectual property (IP). According to Autodesk, ZWSoft "discovered that an employee had ... improperly used AutoCAD intellectual property...
