Autodesk tucking in
I missed it at the time, so perhaps you did too: Back in December, it was announced that Autodesk had acquired PlanPlatform (also known as Visual Tao) for about $25 million, according to the Haaretz (Israeli) newspaper. PlanPlatform was formed in 2007 by former...
Webinars 102
Do you follow up? Your competition does. A year ago, in Webinars 101, I listed 7 things companies could do to improve the effectiveness of their webinar-based marketing campaigns. Unfortunately, many companies using webinars to reach out to customers and prospects...
Intergraph acquires COADE
Huge news: Intergraph, a supplier of high-end plant design and data management tools, announced today that it had acquired COADE, a privately-held supplier of AutoCAD-based plant design and stress analysis tools. Terms of the deal were not disclosed; the COADE team...
Update: SAP Isn’t raising maintenance – yet
Through much of 2009 SAP wrangled with customers over a proposed increase in maintenance fees. In December, the software giant announced that the hike was on hold until at least early 2010 as the company awaits results of benchmarking by SAP and user groups to...
Live or virtual: analyst events
2009 was a busy year for us here at Schnitger Corp. I attended a number of analyst events, some live and some virtual. SageCircle, “an advisory resource that delivers AR strategic planning” published a piece during the break that predict that vendors’ analyst...
Happy New Year!
If you poke around the Schnitger Corp. website, you’ll note that we’ve changed the way blog posts are archived. This should speed up page loads and, someday, searches. Until search engine crawlers catch up, you may find that Google and other search engines offer up...
AspenTech feels the pain of license transition
Aspen Technology, a company you don’t usually see me writing about, today announced results for its first quarter of fiscal 2010. AspenTech creates chemistry, process management and supply chain solutions for the oil and gas, chemical and other industries and is...
Season’s greetings from Schnitger Corporation
Thank you to all who emailed to ask about Lazarus House; for more information or to make a donation, please see http://www.lazarushouse.org.
Boston Scientific gets innovative
A couple of weeks ago, I was fortunate to hear Boston Scientific speak about how it sought to build a culture of invention and discovery that leads its various businesses to successful new products. Randy Schiestl, VP R&D, and Jude Currier, cardiovascular...
ESI reports Q3 sales up 3% on strong growth in services
ESI Group reported reasonably good results for the third quarter today, as total revenue grew 3.2% to €13.8 million in what is typically the company’s weakest quarter. License revenue declined almost 6% to €8.5 million when compared to a year ago, slowing the steep...
Holiday Greetings: Efficiency, personalization, environment
This blog post on the Harvard Business Review site got me thinking. They point out that this time of year is hectic, and that holiday cards have a way of getting lost in the shuffle. Either we spend too many hours personalizing greetings, leading clients to wonder...
The SEC, ANSYS and deal ethics 101
My browse of the morning news turned up a Wall St. Journal story that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is looking at how brokers, hedge funds and others dealt with information about, among a dozen other deals, ANSYS’ acquisition of Ansoft.Before we all...
Hmm … CFD results via Twitter
Every so often, someone comes along and does something I honestly would not have thought of: Symscape, a UK CAE vendor, announced recently that release 2.0.1 of its Caedium product includes “the world's first automated simulation telemetry system for posting images to...
2102: Reliable Plant says manufacturing returns to the US
Reliable Plant, an industry magazine for the manufacturing community, just came out with predictions for 2010. It’s a provocative piece and the predictions have interesting implications for the PLM community: 1) Production will return to the United States. The author...
Siemens AG has a tough quarter; what about PLM?
Siemens AG on December 3 announced dismal results for its fiscal fourth quarter, ended September 30, with total revenue down 9% to €19.714 billion. According to the company, “While the global economy showed increasing signs of stabilizing, capital investment was still...
AU Virtual: just like being there?
I’ve been to a number of Autodesk University events in Las Vegas, and can tell you that they are HUGE. Last year, around 10,000 people crammed into the convention center attached to the Palazzo and Venetian Hotels, attending the handful of keynotes, dozens of...
Keeping tabs on what people say …
Last weekend, a famous athlete was involved in a car accident that has many weird aspects. While all that ultimately matters is whether he or anyone else was seriously injured, the media has been buzzing about the lack of solid information about why he was out in the...
Twitter Top 10
As many of you know, I’ve been experimenting on Twitter: checking out what the PLM companies are doing (not much) and trying to figure out who is doing Twitter well, with a view to getting that out there so that everyone can start off strong. Here are my top 10 dos...
Update on IBM/Siemens PLM: it’s going well
My recent conversations with IBM about the change in its relationship with Dassault Systèmes naturally led to questions about how the closer integration with IBM and Siemens PLM is going. No details were provided but it does sound as though the partnership is at least...
IBM speaks: The DS/IBM PLM deal from another perspective
IBM still believes in PLM -- but now sees a different way to interact with what it sees as a large, lucrative and diverse market. Its partnership with Dassault Systèmes is still strong, but the change in their business relationship allows IBM to enter a customer or...
