Microblogging here to stay?
Wow. The Wall Street Journal says that Twitter is about to close a $100 million round of new venture capital funding that will value the company at $1 billion. The real problem, of course is that Twitter has yet to generate revenue or prove that it has any sort of...
Update: MSC gets yet another offer, postpones meeting
MSC Software announced today that it received a new offer from the unnamed party bidding on the company of $8.30 per share. Symphony now has until September 28 to make a “responsive offer”. Under the original deal struck between MSC and Symphony, MSC may terminate...
Virtual conference: as good as being there?
Last week I attended my first virtual conference: Powering the Computational Ecosystem. From a technological, gee-whiz aspect, it was very cool: On24, an online event producer, created a virtual conference venue, complete with lobby, exhibit hall and auditorium....
Adventures in the Twitter world
Since I wrote earlier in the week about PLM and social media, I decided to step up to the bat and join Twitter. Signing up for the account was ridiculously easy -- which is why you occasionally see a celebrity announcing “that’s not me!” You might want to take a look...
Symphony ups its offer to $8.15/share for MSC
In a sort of non-announcement, MSC Software today announced that Symphony Technology Group has bumped its offer to $8.15 per share in cash, equalling the offer it received from an unnamed third party last week. According to the press release, “The MSC Board of...
Now THAT’s a headline!
Last week I wrote about crafting a press release that is brief, compelling and spurs the reader on to a desired next step. Today Dassault Systèmes issued a release that isn’t brief but is quite compelling: Entergy Nuclear Expects to Save Up to $1 Million per Day with...
ANSYS hopes CAD+CAE = better CAE
So you’re a CAD company without an analysis capability or a CAE vendor without strong ties to any one 3D modeling engine. How do you compete with the integrated suites offered by vendors such as Autodesk, Dassault Systèmes, PTC and Siemens? You partner. Last week,...
ESI reports Q2 flat with last year
ESI Group yesterday reported preliminary results for the quarter ended July 31 that echoed the business conditions seen by others in the PLM universe: companies need the innovation solutions PLM supplies, but are having a hard time signing up right now. Repeatable...
WSJ on helping displaced workers
The Wall Street Journal today showcases how a carpet manufacturer, legal information service and PLM vendor are helping their unemployed former customers retool and retrain for an eventual economic recovery.The best idea comes from David Carr, an interior architect...
MSC bidding war heats up
MSC Software announced that its board of directors has received revised offers to acquire the company. The original offer of $7.63 per share from Symphony was trumped last week when an unnamed party offered $8.00 per share; under the original agreement between...
Using Xbox 360 to simulate more than games
In the “How cool is this!” pile: According to HPCWire, researchers in the UK used a number of Xbox 360 gaming console chips to build a cheaper parallel processing engine for their research into the predictability of cardiac arrhythmias. The research is described in...
Social media the answer to PLM marketing budgets?
At a time when it is more expensive than ever to rely on traditional marketing outlets like user meetings, mailings, magazine ads and call centers, the perceived “free” nature of online marketing is very appealing. Do PLM/design/engineering/analysis software buyers...
MSC gets another offer
Remember suitor M, described in MSC’s proxy as not having financing available by the end of August? Well, that may have changed. Or it may be a completely new entrant - who knows?MSC just announced that it has received a proposal “superior” to that from Symphony and...
HPC explained
I don’t usually promote vendors’ marketing materials, but this one is just too good to pass up. Sun Microsystems and AMD have teamed up to sponsor HPC for Dummies, an ebook in the famous yellow and black Dummies series. You do need to give some contact information and...
Five tips for writing the perfect press release
I see dozens of press releases in a typical week, and most are nothing special. Company A is proud to release product B; company X has selected vendor Y; so-and-so is named to powerful-position-Z. But some releases do stick out, leading to my top tips for writing...
MSC proxy: drama, mystery and 13 suitors
MSC Software has finally filed the proxy statement for its proposed acquisition by Symphony Technology Group - and it makes interesting reading. At the very least, it explains why it took so long to get the proxy to the SEC.First, a proxy statement is a document that...
The potential for CAE: 10 million licenses?
One of the questions I am most frequently asked is the rate of CAE penetration: how many possible users are there for CAE applications? How many of these are actually using CAE today? How is this likely to grow? Investors ask because they don’t necessarily understand...
Are you thinking about cloud computing?
Cloud computing is still a very ill-defined concept, with definitions that vary by user industry and from IT vendor to vendor. But most agree that cloud computing provides access to IT resources that are outside the traditional data center, in a shared resource across...
All about you and you and you …
I started Schnitger Corp. a little over a year ago, and I must say it’s gone very well. Thank you! But this post is about you, the people who read this blog. My hosting provider makes available a pile of statistics from which I’ve distilled the following • in the last...
Carl Bass on R&D
One of the most interesting aspects of the Autodesk Q2 earnings call was a short discussion on R&D expenditures. Autodesk was making the case that it was poised to withstand the economic downturn, however long it may last, because it has been managing budgets to...
