A look at the next stage of the IBM-Dassault Systemes "marriage"

Brian Seitz and I developed this data reshaper to get our survey data ready for Tableau Software. It still could use an error rountine.  Be sure to read the notes and assumptions.  Comments and improvements are welcome.

This is a data reshaper for Excel for data that does will need to be moved into two columns: one for the column name and one for the data. It still could use an error rountine.  Be sure to read the notes and assumptions.  Comments and improvements are welcome.

Qualifier - This IS for data that does not reflect the column.

Last week, Cyon Research published its 2009 survey of engineering software users. The survey takes a deep look at buying preferences and practices. Lots of detail and deep insight. More information on the $2000 survey is available from info@cyonresearch.com.

Here's the executive summary:

The economic outlook has never been more uncertain. When will customer spending on engineering software and related hardware recover?

Is the worst over, or can we expect further declines? What is the risk to recurring software maintenance or subscription revenues? How many of your firm’s competitors have already begun investing in their engineering software tools to prepare to gain market share in the eventual recovery? What factors are driving customer spending priorities in the post-recession period? How do you identify the companies that are likely to be the first to increase investments in engineering software?

Cyon Research’s recently completed survey...

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...

 

I saw an amazing presentation while I was at TED last week. Several amazing ones actually, but this one is both relevant to our community and available for viewing. Take a look at David Merrill’s Shiftables at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/david_merrill_demos_siftables_the_smart_blocks.html

Our own Dick Morley is interviewed on NCMS Radio. Listen to him talk about the invention of the floppy disk, the PLC, etc. It's an interesting chat.

http://www.ncms.org/blog/post/09-ncmsradioep5.aspx

Information Week just published an article on users who are choosing to abandon their maintenance contracts for Oracle and SAP

http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/erp/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212902014&pgno=1&queryText=&isPrev=

Our industry is also at risk for this type of push-back. Do you know how much of your maintenance fee is rolled back into development? Ask your vendor. Let me know how we're doing as an industry.

Last week, Cyon Research published its 2008 CAD/PLM Survey. The survey takes a deep look at industry buying preferences. Lots of detail and deep insight. More information on the $1,995 survey is available from info@cyonresearch.com.

 

Maieutic Parataxis was a big hit at COFES 2008. We filmed the event and have just made the 5-minute presentations viewable by the general public at http://cofes.com/mp

Take a look. 

We're seeking candidates for Maieutic Parataxis at COFES 2009. Let us know if you've seen something we should consider.

Here's all you need to know about the Autodesk vs. Vernor ruling:

1. Software "licenses" where the customer pays upfront a single fee for perpetual use of the software, with no obligation to return the software, must be treated by the courts as if it were a sale. Therefore the application of copyright law follows the first-sale principle.

2. Software vendors can get avoid have this ruling apply in any one of several ways.

a. renting the software. The Autodesk vs. Vernor ruling interprets a fully paid up perpetual license as a sale. If the license is not perpetual and fully paid, the interpretation of sale would not apply.

b. require the customer to return the software at the end of use.  This would leave open the possibility of negating one of the conditions of the Wise decision on which this ruling is based.

I recommend the following CADCAMnet article for additional reading: http://www.newslettersonline.com/user/user.fas/s=63/fp=3/tp=47?T=open_article,969809&P=article 

...

I was at COE earlier this week when HP announced their new blade workstations. As a courtesy, I attended HP's product release reception, where I had the "opportunity" to learn about the announcement.  I was expecting to be politely bored.   HP is not the only company out there with a solution (IBM was showing its own workstation blade server at COE too.) But who cares about a workstation blade?

Well, now I do. This technology is a game changer. It addresses very real issues of security, intellectual property, centralized maintenance, access to power on demand, and can remove heat and noise generation to remote areas where they are not problematic and perhaps even beneficial. 

Resist the urge to ignore. Take a deep look at workstation blades -- I expect you'll be surprised too.

Cimatron acquired Gibbs for $5M in cash and $4.5M in stock.  That's about 75% of revenue, or about 7x income. Gibbs and Cimatron have suprisingly little overlap in their customer base.

The combined company has a current market capitalization of about $22M on a combined $30M revenue stream. When compared with most stocks on the Cyon Research Index, this is quite low. But Delcam, a direct compare for Cimatron, has a market capitalization of $45M on sales of about $60M. So the question to ask is: why are pure-play stocks in this sector so poorly valued?

For the past eight years, Cyon Research has been publishing its Cyon Research Stock index, first in Engineering Automation Report (as EAR Index), and then more recently in CADCAMNet.  Each year the index is rebalanced and updated. Now, for the first time, we have made the index accessible to all. You can see the index at cyonresearch.com/stocks.

There are tools here that we have not made public in the past. Please mark the page and check it often as we expect to expand the richness of the data provided as we can.

I just read Bill Buxton’s “Sketching User Experiences” (Morgan Kaufmann 2007).  Highly recommended. It has had a significant impact on my thinking of the process of innovation.  Buxton does an excellent job of delineating the role of sketching and leads the reader by example.  One key point is that while we all know how sketching is a learned art, improved by practice, the reading and interpretation of sketching is also a learned art. While the book seems to focus on traditional sketching, it does a very effective job of bringing the reader to understand the nature of “user experiences” and the context of sketching those experiences. Very enlightening. http://www.amazon.com/Sketching-User-Experiences-Interactive-Technologies/dp/0123740371/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1197241433&sr=1-1...

Bruce Sterling was not at COFES just to give the keynote. He was actively engaged in absorbing the essence of COFES. The result of his immersion into COFES is a mind-expanding short story that is full of detail that every COFES attendee will immediately recognize. The story was published by MIT's Technology Review and can be seen at: technologyreview.com

Enjoy! 

The London Financial Times announced this afternoon that UGS is about to be acquired by Siemens. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/af89b41c-aba4-11db-a0ed-0000779e2340.html

The deal, which is out of Siemens' automation group,  is likely to be designed to leverage the factory automation tools from UGS, not unlike the relationship that Dassault Systemes has with Schneider Electric.

The price clearly reflects that this deal is strategic to Siemens -- the dollar value of their factory automation group dwarfs that of UGS and if the new relationship can bump that number up even a small percentage, the cost of Siemens purchase will seem quite reasonable.

This is one of those deals where everyone wins.

Siemens gets a strategic asset at a discounted price. UGS' financials have not been a strong as its competitors over the past few quarters, depressing its non-strategic valuation. I had predicted a valuation at the time of...

John Callen and I have had a number of very interesting conversations over the past few years.  John has this habit of actually reading the press releases we put out and then making cogent points on them.

On hearing of the theme for COFES 2007, John wrote:

I remember a couple of COFES' ago commenting on how it was accepted that it was hunky dory that domestic manufacturing move offshore.  And then the very next COFES, everyone was up in arms because REAL Engineering was also getting outsource offshore.  And now, COFES 2007's theme has us fully accepting the Globalization (AKA Outsourcing) of Engineering, by which I would expect, even the REAL Engineering.  Amazing. 

So what do we tell the kids in high school that are making choices for their future careers?  Try the service or entertainment industries???

I want to be clear that the Globalization of Engineering is NOT synonymous with Outsourcing.

Outsourcing is a related issue, but one does not require the other.

Globalization...

Audio recordings from past COFES events are now available to COFES attendees.

Autodesk today announced that they were going to delay submitting their 10-Q quartery report http://go.cadwire.net/?49918,1,1 

I spoke with Carl Bass last week regarding this possibility. Bottom line, this is an accounting issue. There will be no noticable effect to this on Autodesk's bottom line and there are no issues here that have any substance.

In other words, you can ignore it, even if you are a stockholder.

The recent decline in Ansys has set off fears in investors that something must be amiss with the Ansys-Fluent merger. My colleague, Richard Davis, has given me permission to post his explanation as to why that is NOT the case.