Yahoo and Microsoft strike search deal
Looks like Carol Bartz made the deal many believe she was hired to make: Microsoft and Yahoo today announced a ten-year partnership to take on Google’s dominance of the search market. Under the agreement, each company will maintain its own advertising business and...
PTC Q3 in-line but lowers Q4 outlook
PTC announced last night that Q3 revenue (for the period ended June 30) was $226.2 million, compared to earlier guidance of between $220 million and $230 million, bolstered by a $3 million positive currency trend. The company lowered its revenue guidance for Q4 by...
Making the most of customer advisory panels
MSC Software announced yesterday that it had formed a customer advisory board of eighteen leading companies across the automotive, aerospace, and marine industries to “to discuss, debate, and have open dialogue on industry trends, business & technology drivers,...
The business of PLM: 0% financing?
PTC yesterday reminded everyone on its blast list that its 0% financing offer for Pro/Engineer, Windchill and other products continues right through to the end of its fiscal year, September 30. PTC rightly says that the 0% financing will enable buyers to conserve...
Autodesk grant program for environmental solutions
Autodesk announced a cool program to award software to early-stage, clean technology companies “working to solve some of the world's most pressing environmental challenges.” The "Clean Tech Partner Program" aims to award software bundles to 100 companies by...
Negotiating maintenance
Bank of America/Merrill Lynch last week published results of a survey of 20 CIOs, highlighting that IT spending is still expected to decline in 2009, just not as steeply as earlier predicted. ML asks CIOs to comment on their spending priorities, budget shifts into and...
5 more reasons the Apollo moon landing was awesome
Wired magazine has a cool feature about the Apollo 11 landing, including one writer’s list of 10 things that made it awesome. Everything on that list reflects the worldview of the time but five other things were omitted and deserve mention - no doubt, left off due to...
Off-topic, sort of: Apollo 11
So many of us were kids when the Apollo program proved that humans could leave Earth and expand our horizon to worlds unknown. It was exciting to see these heroes -- smart, brave and daring -- risk everything to explore another world. Of course, as kids, we had no...
Is the MSC deal a good one?
I don’t usually weigh in on this sort of question -- especially since we don’t have the proxy material that details the Board’s decision criteria in selling the company to Symphony Technology Group -- but there is so much flying around out there that I’ll try to ......
CAE data management – the breakdowns
CAE data management has become a critical topic for many CAE departments -- after all, tying together which CAD models were used as the basis for an analysis, the meshing technique and resulting mesh, the loads and constraints and the resulting data and visualizations...
Autodesk and Roopinder Tara cycle for MS research
Roopinder Tara, publisher of TenLinks, and a team of cyclists from Autodesk’s Lake Oswego, Oregon office will participate in a group bicycle ride to raise money to fight multiple sclerosis. The ride, on August 1 and 2, will cover as many as 150 miles.According to...
And the market breathes a sigh of relief …
I’ve been wrong so often on pre-announcements that I waited this time until companies announce their earnings dates: ANSYS and PTC both announced today the dates and times of their June quarter earnings calls, which means that neither is likely to announce results...
AVEVA sees strength in plant, decline in shipbuilding
AVEVA Group provided an update on market conditions from April 1 through June 30 ahead of its shareholder meeting today. The brief note said that the company saw an expected decline in new license sales in the marine sector even though shipyards’ order books for new...
MSC to be acquired by Symphony Tech Group and Elliott Assoc
As we’ve been wondering for a while: MSC today announced that Symphony Technology Group would be paying shareholders approximately $360 million in cash for the company, a 13% premium to yesterday’s closing share price of $6.75, with financing provided in part by...
MSC CEO staying on – at least for now
According to yesterday’s filing with the SEC, MSC Software interim CEO Ashfaq Munshi is continuing on beyond the June 30 deadline originally imposed by the company’s Board of Directors—and will be paid a $500,000 bonus when a permanent CEO is appointed. The filing...
Avatech sells BIMreview, lays off another 41
In an unfortunate sign of the times, Avatech Solutions has reduced its workforce by 41 more people, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These latest layoffs follow an earlier reduction layoff of about 20 people in April, now leaving the...
Rumor-mongering: no news on MSC
Yesterday was July 1, the date on which Elliot Associates’ “standstill” agreement with MSC Software expired. Under the February agreement, Elliott Associates could not buy the additional shares that would give it a 20% stake in MSC, enough to affect management...
New link for RSS feed
Sorry about this, but the RSS link for Hot Topics has changed. Please use the links to the right or go to http://feeds.feedburner.com/SchnitgerCorporationHotTopics to subscribe.
schnitgercorp.com changes
As you’ve no doubt noticed, the schnitgercorp website has undergone a major renovation. We did this to make the site easier to read and navigate. Of course, the web design tool selected for its built-in search feature appears to have a bug in its search server links,...
PTC tries to sell investors on growth strategy
PTC gave a comprehensive presentation of its financial status, goals and milestones at its user conference earlier this month. The headlines from the event focused on the announcement that revenue would come in at the low end of the company's guidance for the June...
