SaaS, or Software as a Service, has been a topic in COFES blog circles in the past. See for example the Brian Seitz blog of 02/10/008 entitled, “Is SaaS the Killer App for the CAD Industry?” That blog entry excited some 14 comments that stretched out through November of 2008. If you’re interested, go to the BLOGS tab on this site, and scroll down the right hand margin until you get to the Brian Seitz URL.

Another article on SaaS that might be of interest appeared recently on EDAcafe.com by Sharon Tan of Gary Smith EDA, entitled, “SOFTWARE-AS-A-SERVICE IN EDA – TIME AGAIN?” If you have an interest, copy and paste the following URL into your browser:

http://www10.edacafe.com/goto.php?http://e2ma.net/go/1848739412/1691895/63020433/goto:http://www.garysmitheda.com/note_TimeAgain.html

A pdf version is available there as well. Enjoy!

 

Headed for COFES2009 in Scottsdale, AZ in April? Bone up on the latest financial results of the leading Mechanical CAD and CAE (MCAD) Vendors, as well as the leading Electronics Design Automation and Intellectual Property (EDA and IP) Vendors, by reading the following three recent Commentaries: Commentary: Electronics IP Industry - A February 2009 Update http://www10.edacafe.com/nbc/articles/view_article.php?articleid=656383# Commentary: MCAD Industry View – A March 2009 Update http://www.mcadcafe.com/PDFs/MCAD_Commentary_4Q08.pdf Commentary: EDA Industry Update March 2009 -- What did the Last Quarter Bring? http://www10.edacafe.com/nbc/articles/view_article.php?articleid=665171 The basic format for each of these Commentaries is as follows: News Highlights are followed by the revenue & earnings performances of the selected group players for Q4 2008, and then vendor by vendor details. This is followed by the revenue and earnings performances for the calendar year and then for five years. Vendor...

Had an intersting chat today with Jay Vleeshhouwer, formerly of Merrill Lynch. For those few of you that don't know him, Jay is a grand master "sell-side" analyst, on of the few who actually cover our industries as a market, rather than just dabbling in a few of the stocks from our sector.  The conversation turned to the economy, the automotive sector, then to Chrysler and the recent NY Times article about Chrysler's cutback in its design staff.  Jay made the following interesting observations:

"These changes at Chrysler may put, or has already put, some pressure on Dassault’s US auto recurring revenues (for CATI, its largest product), albeit low-single digit percent of total business…..maybe offset to some degree with non-US usage. Dassault Systemes is probably the most heavily exposed to auto as a vertical. Generally speaking, for the group, besides the obvious pressures on new license sales, we’ll need to keep an eye on maintenance too. It’s conceivable for instance that in the April quarter, Autodesk’s...

We all found out on February 27, 2009 that the US economy at the end of last year actually contracted at a far faster rate than initially estimated, according to a US Bureau of Economic Analysis report. The decline in the country's gross domestic product in Q4 2008 was the worst since the 1982 recession. Output fell 6.2% at an annualized rate in the fourth quarter of 2008, revised downward from a previous estimate of a 3.8% decline. Today, more bad news was released by the US Labor Department. The nation's unemployment rate rose to 8.1% in February 2009, the highest since 1983, as employers chopped another 651,000 jobs. Both figures were (as usual) worse than analysts expected. And as predicted in this blog space on February 6, 2009, revised figures released today show even deeper payroll reductions in the prior two months: the economy lost 681,000 jobs in December 2008 and another 655,000 in January 2009. Since the recession began in December 2007, the economy has lost an incredible 4.4 million jobs....