Better economy, PLM priority lead to PTC’s growth
Earnings season begins today for the engineering software space (although AVEVA did hint at its results two weeks ago), with PTC announcing March quarter revenue slightly below expectations at $240.6 million, but still up 7% from last year. The company also adjusted...
Silver & gold: Autodesk’s new channel program
Autodesk recently announced a number of changes to its channel partner program, designed to make Autodesk easier to do business with and to give Autodesk’s 1900 VARs a competitive edge in the marketplace. Since Autodesk gets around 85% of revenue from the reseller...
COFES 2010: Mike Payne responds
A few days ago, I posted a few thoughts about this year’s COFES, including my take on a brief presentation given by Mike Payne. Mike graciously responded and below is his email in its entirety. He makes a number of good points: Monica, I had condensed the talk down to...
COFES 2010: Clouds, ashes and the future
COFES is always interesting (I’ve only been twice, so “always” is a relative term). Get 200-300 CAD/CAM/CAE/PDM/PLM people together at a resort in the Arizona desert for 3 days. Set up a few ballroom speeches and a lot of informal discussion sessions in the resort’s...
AVEVA shareholders not impressed
AVEVA today announced that the company made “good progress during a challenging year” as a resilient oil and gas market helped to offset weaker demand in its marine market. The company now expects that “full year results will be marginally ahead of current consensus...
Pricing is an art form
It must be, or why would we all believe that $12.99 is actually a more attractive price than $13.00? In the real world a price must reflect the cost to produce the product (or service) at its expected volume and the value the customer places on the product while...
FIRST Robotics finals start tomorrow
Those of you who follow me on Twitter may remember that I absolutely gushed back in February when a FIRST Robotics Competition team spoke to the analysts and media assembled by PTC. A quick recap: a small group of high schoolers (and their adult mentors) rolled in a...
SpaceClaim closes VC funding
As I noted a few weeks ago, venture funding has started to come back into the engineering software space. SpaceClaim today announced that it has closed a new round of funding to the tune of $5 million. The funding came from current investors, including Borealis...
Autodesk expands assistance program to veterans
Autodesk has extended its Assistance Program to veterans, according to the Wounded Artist Project. The Project contacted Autodesk to garner its support for a YouTube video on, of all things, BIM (Building Information Management); Autodesk was so impressed that it...
AVEVA strengthens its board
AVEVA Group today announced the appointment of Hervé Couturier as a Non-Executive Director, replacing the retiring David Mann on its board of directors.M. Couturier is a software industry veteran and is currently Executive Vice President of the Technology Group at...
CD-adapco: strong growth seeding the cloud
CD-adapco announced at its London user event that it was growing very nicely in spite of a global recession, has a succession plan in place and is adding additional licensing options to its StarCCM+ offering.Steve MacDonald, President and co-founder of CD-adapco, has...
Done deal: DS now owns IBM PLM
Dassault Systèmes announced today that it has completed its acquisition of IBM’s PLM sales and support organization has been completed. The $600 million transaction includes customer contracts and related assets and allows DS to present a single “face” to its PLM...
Unrest at Avatech
You may recall that Avatech Solutions, like many companies in the engineering software space, had a difficult 2008/2009 in response to the economic realities faced by its government, AEC and manufacturing customers. The company rebounded a bit in its last reported...
Delcam optimistic about 2010
Delcam plc, a UK-based developer of CAM solutions, reported on Monday that revenue for 2009 declined 3% to £31.8 million but, as the company points out “still represented the second-best turnover in the company’s history and stood 7% higher than sales in 2007”. Delcam...
News bites
Lots of things come over the transom that I find very interesting but don’t have time to do much about. But they’re too cool to keep to myself, so ... CFD on a Mac Sympscape (aka Caedium) was mentioned in this blog a while back for making CFD results available via...
PLM vendors have some success helping displaced workers
Over the last year I’ve written a number of posts about vendors offering free or low-cost software and training to laid-off engineers and designers to help them better position themselves for the job market. How has that worked and how many people were actually...
VC funds trickling back into PLM
Comet Solutions back in January announced that it had closed on a $2 million series B round of investment led by Athenian Venture Partners together with Tri-State Growth Capital Fund and Kentucky Co-Investment Partners. The company will use the funds to expand its...
It costs too much to grow?
Autodesk UK recently announced the results of a survey of “more than 100 senior decision-makers, primarily working for mainstream manufacturing companies in the UK” that highlighted a problem I thought we had long overcome: the impression that design solutions are...
Mentor Graphics acquires Valor
Taking a page from the PLM playbook, Mentor Graphics announced on March 18 that it had acquired Valor Computerized Systems, extending its reach from design into manufacturability. The net price paid was about $50 million. Valor did not report revenue for the fourth...
Measuring: You really do get what you measure
This is the last in a series of articles exploring business metrics and their usefulness in the engineering software space. The last few articles in this series have covered metrics that I believe are important in running a business but, of course, in order to analyze...
