P3: Infrastructure wave of the future?
Imagine you're a town manager with aging infrastructure and a growing population: How do you build enough schools to meet projected demand? Boost the capacity of your water and wastewater treatment facilities? Revamp bridges that now carry twice as much traffic as...
Additive manufacturing roars into 2013
Additive manufacturing (aka 3D printing) is hot right now, making appearances in the US President's State of the Union speech, popular crime-fighting TV shows and all over social media. But is it just hype over something about-to-happen, or are companies actually...
Box.com tries cloud end-run for the AEC market
I use cloud storage for all of the usual reasons: always-on access makes it easy for me to work wherever I am. I can collect the files relevant to a project in one place, create a backup of important works-in-progress and collaborate with others without emailing large...
ANSYS revenue up 11% in Q4, looks at 10%-13% in 2013
ANSYS today reported results for Q4 and full-year 2012 that, while good, highlight the slow growth in Q4 of the company's non-Apache products. Since ANSYS has been such an aggressive aggregator of simulation technologies, it wouldn't surprise me to see more deals as...
Quickie: 3D Systems closes Geomagic acquisition
As expected, 3D Systems today announced that the Geomagic deal has closed. To recap, 3D Systems paid $55 million in cash to add Geomagic's 3D design, sculpting and inspection scan processing solutions to its portfolio. Geomagic is expected to be accretive to earnings...
Autodesk beats for Q4, disappoints in outlook & gets a new look
Lots of big news from Autodesk in the last 24 hours, including Q4 results, guidance for the new fiscal year, and a branding makeover. Q4 was better than expected on many fronts, but cautious guidance for 2013 caused the share price to drop 5-ish% this morning before...
DDD Q4 revenue up 45% on printer demand
3D Systems (DDD) today reported record revenue for both Q4 and fiscal 2012, as the hype around rapid prototyping continued to drive demand for its 3D printers and supplies. Q4 revenue was up 45% to $102 million; organic revenue was up 19%. For the year, revenue grew...
CAE competence management: are we ready?
There's an apocryphal story in CAE: A number of years ago, an auto company decided to see how consistently CAE was applied across its organization. Management asked a number of individual analysts to solve the same problem using the same code. Lo and behold, many...
Many signals positive as HEXA, NEMT and TRMB report
We've recently heard from three of the main publicly traded players in infrastructure software and this week we start hearing from some of their main customers. It seems, therefore, like a good time to review what's being said about the climate for software spend on...
Cimatron shares tumble after earnings release
Cimatron is a funny little company whose shares are traded on both the NASDAQ in the US and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange in Israel. Even so, not one investor asked a question during the earnings call, which meant it was over in minutes -- but also means that we didn't...
Cimatron reports record revenue, says 2013 off to good start
Hope you had a great weekend! This week is off to a good start, as Cimatron announced record revenue for both its fourth quarter and fiscal 2012 -- a combination that led to record profits and cash flow. Even better, says CEO Danny Haran, "[w]e achieved these strong...
Quickies: Rand earnings, PTC debuts Windchill PDM Essentials
While you're out buying flowers and chocolates for your Valentine (you did remember to, didn't you?), others were making news. First off, Rand Worldwide announced results for the quarter ended December 31. Total revenue was down 4% year/year to $21.6 million, even as...
Public infrastructure: what happens if we don’t invest?
Last weekend a huge storm dumped as much as 3 feet of snow on New England. Many municipalities put in place driving bans, which kept people off the roads and sped up snow removal. But when we all hit the roads on Monday, the traffic jams highlighted the huge problems...
Vero acquires SURFCAM
The CAM world grew one company smaller today, as Vero Software announced that it has acquired the SURFCAM assets from Surfware, Inc. According to Surfware, SURFCAM, a CNC programmer for 2, 3, 4, and 5 axis machining, has been installed on over 26,000 systems since the...
Dassault Systèmes’ cautious outlook dampens good Q4
Earnings calls are interesting beasts: on the one hand, company executives have to speak to and perhaps justify the reported results. On the other, they need to spin everything as positively as possible to boost the stock price. Add in investors who may be...
SolidWorks World 2013: It’s a wrap!
Another SolidWorks World has come and gone -- and it was a terrific event. A couple of things didn't fit into the other blog posts (day 1 and day 2), so we'll cover them here. The day 3 keynote presentations can be found here. The SolidWorks 2014 preview session isn't...
A bit OT: The power of community
One of the best aspects of SolidWorks World every year is the sense of community one feels. It starts in the airport when a bunch of people pile onto the plane and start up conversations based on a backpack or shirt from a prior event. Keeps going on the flight as...
PTC reports lackluster FQ1, focuses on portfolio
As you undoubtedly know by now, PTC recently announced results for its fiscal first quarter. In a nutshell, FQ1 2013 non-GAAP revenue was $321 million, flat year over year but up 2% on a constant currency basis. License revenue was $79 million, down 11%; excluding...
Quickies: Aras, Autodesk, AVEVA, Bentley Pointools, Delcam, Hexagon, PTC
Hi, everybody! I have something like 5 blog posts in various states of completion but last week's SolidWorks World, followed by 3 days of hanging out with adorable but sneezy munchkins at Disney and Universal and then a quick high school reunion (more on all of these,...
SolidWorks World, The second 24 hours
Monday's SolidWorks World keynote session is tilted towards the company, with presentations from CEOs and other leaders. We take a completely different tack on Tuesday and focus on customer accomplishments in the morning general session. Yes, a couple of customers...
