AVEVA says recent performance is “Satisfactory”

In the opening salvo of earnings reports in the greater PLM universe, AVEVA Group today issued an interim statement saying that its performance since October 2009 is “satisfactory” as the company has seen resilience in the oil, gas and power segments, especially in...

SAP blinks, delays maintenance hike

You just gotta love spin: “In a demonstration of its commitment to customer satisfaction, SAP [on January 14] announced the introduction of a comprehensive, tiered support model” that leaves 2010 pricing at 2009 levels. Recall that SAP tried to move all customers to a...

2009: The year the buyer/vendor balance shifted

As we look back on 2009, it becomes apparent that the single story of the year might have been “doing more with less”. For too many companies, this meant closing plants, reducing their workforce and cutting costs wherever possible. CIOs were charged with cutting IT...

Are you social?

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged about PLM’s efforts to engage in social media, so it’s time for an update. On a somewhat depressing note, not that much has changed. Yet. And that’s the good news: a number of PLM companies are still in the watching phase, trying...

CAE to rebound in 2010, up 8%

Forrester Research yesterday gave a rosy forecast for tech spending in 2010, saying in a press release that “global IT spending, which dropped 8.9 percent last year, will rise 8.1 percent in 2010 to more than $1.6 trillion.” Forrester sees spending on computer...

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...

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...

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...