Fall is here!
Today is Columbus Day, the official height of leaf peeping season and, for some, a holiday. I'm heading to Berlin for the AVEVA World Summit, a 2+ day deep dive into the world of plant/ship design, construction and operation. I hope to see many of you there. But...
Nemetschek acquires Bluebeam for $100 million
Did you think the week was going to go by without any acquisitions? Nemetschek squeezed this one in, just before the start of the weekend. The company just announced that it will acquire Bluebeam Software, maker of Bluebeam Revu and other AEC-focused PDF creation,...
PTC says FQ4 at or above expectations, restructures anyway
Hot off the presses from PTC: Basically, PTC says that FQ4 revenue will be at or above the high end of earlier guidance ($340 million to $355 million), and that Axeda will add another $4 million to $5 million in revenue on top of that. Even so, the company last week...
MSC’s Apex rising to simulation’s challenges
What do we most often hear, when talking to people about why they don't do simulation, or don't do more simulation? It's usually one of more of three things: It's too hard and experts are too expensive (or not needed constantly, so it's difficult to justify having...
Rand’s FY14 up on all counts, buys back LOTS of shares
Rand Worldwide, one of Autodesk's largest resellers and a provider of technology solutions in its own right, yesterday announced results for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2014. Total revenue was $92 million, up 11% over the prior year (y/y), led by product sales,...
Bentley acquires SITEOPS civil / site design
Need to plan a new housing development or retail site? Bentley Systems last week said that it has acquired BLUERIDGE Analytics for its SITEOPS, a site engineering product that allows civil engineers and site planners to look at a piece of land and simulate its use:...
It’s good to be SolidWorks
New releases are funny things: companies pour their hearts into delivering bug fixes and new features that they hope will make customers happy, yet many customers don't even know about most of the new features/fixes -- they've found their favorite work methods and...
Siemens goes big at SMM in Hamburg
You probably don't know this, but my family lived in Hamburg, Germany, when I was little. Some of my best memories are of going with my Dad to the Port of Hamburg and crawling around ships with him on a Saturday. Memories are tricky, though: I probably got to do a...
Direct, parametric — better together?
Debating the merits of direct and parametric modeling is all the rage. Is one better than the other? Which one should you use? Are you doing something wrong if you're not using [direct|parametric], if you're using [parametric|direct] now? No, depends, definitely not....
Autodesk Accelerate: Customers talk PLM 360
Heard over and over in Boston's District Hall last week: "I got a trial license of PLM 360, played with it for 6* months (although I was still doing my real job most of the time) and then started rolling out workspaces. As we got further into it, we realized what...
Stratasys to acquire GrabCAD
I'm at the Autodesk #AcceleratePLM14 conference about PLM 360, so can really only reblab the press release -- deeper analysis to come. But you knew something like this was the endgame, right? The juicy parts of the press release: "Stratasys ... today announced that it...
ESI’s Q2 down due to currency, realignment, deals pushed to Q4
The second report in a few days shows that it's getting tougher out there. On Friday, AVEVA reported that currency was taking its toll and that its sales force realignment was taking time to prove positive benefit. Yesterday, ESI Group reported that FQ2 2014 revenue...
AVEVA’s H1 update = uh oh
AVEVA issues periodic trading updates in between the more formal and detailed announcements every six months. These interim press releases typically don't say much -- but every so often something interesting slips through. This time, the nuggets aren't joyous. In the...
AVEVA kicks off earnings amid takeover rumbles
PLMish results start in earnest this week, as both PTC and Dassault Systèmes talk about their June quarter results. But AVEVA kicked things off in their uniquely British way last week, updating us on how things are going so far in fiscal 2015 -- and all seems to be to...
Siemens PLM grows into the AG — a good thing
Altair today announced that it is acquiring Visual Solutions, makers of the VisSim graphical block diagram language for modeling and simulating complex dynamic systems, including embedded systems. Visual Solutions says it has over 250,000 users worldwide, scientists...
Unlocking the value of legacy data
Over at the PTC Creo blog this week, I'm musing on how to recapture the value of legacy data -- all those CAD models you created in the past, now stored on drives all over the place (or archived in a PDM/PLM if you're so inclined), gathering the equivalent of digital...
Trimble acquisition boosts public safety offering
The AEC world continues to expand and contract at the same time, as the big providers branch out into new areas by acquiring smaller companies. Trimble is a perfect example, making more than 100 acquisitions since 2000 (spending over $3.2 billion in the process)....
DS adds SIMPACK’s multi-body sim to its offering
Dassault Systèmes today announced that it has acquired SIMPACK (formerly INTEC), developer of the SIMPACK general purpose multi-body simulation software that's been used for decades to analyze the motion, coupling forces and stresses on mechanical and mechatronic...
Nemetschek ups its BIM game
Nemetschek just announced that is has invested in a startup and acquired a majority stake in another company to level up its 3D Building Information Management (BIM) portfolio to include time (4D) and cost (5D) in project planning*. As I've written before, 4D/5D is...
Get ready! Earnings are starting …
No, we're not changing our focus to industrials! Yesterday did, however, mark the start of earnings season with Alcoa announcing that Q2 was far better than expected, which raises the bar for all other earnings releases to come. Alcoa said that revenue for the...
