COFES attendees and/or aficionados interested in the recent and future performances of key Electronics IP and MCAD/MCAE public software vendors are invited to read the latest quarterly Commentaries published on EDAcafe and MCADcafe Internet portals. (Earlier blog entries in this space on March 13, 2009 and June 07, 2009 provided access to similar articles for previous quarters). The latest Electronics Intellectual Property (IP) Commentary was posted on August 18, 2009. It covers ARM, CEVA, MIPS, MoSys, Rambus and Virage Logic. Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://www10.edacafe.com/nbc/articles/view_article.php?articleid=730002 The latest MCAD Industry Commentary was posted today. It covers ANSYS, Autodesk, Dassault Systemes, ESI Group, MSC.Software and PTC. Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://www10.mcadcafe.com/nbc/articles/view_article.php?articleid=730825 (NOTE: The latest Electronic Design Automation (EDA) Commentary was posted on June 04, 2009. It covered Altium,...

This breaking news at 5:30 AM PDT Friday August 7th verifies the August 2nd blog entry in this space:

"WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. employers throttled back on layoffs in July, cutting just 247,000 jobs, the fewest in a year, and the unemployment rate dipped to 9.4 percent. It was a better than expected showing that offered a strong signal that the recession is finally ending."

In four previous blog entries in this space (April 03, May 25, June 06, and July 05), comments were made regarding the search for signs of the “bottoming out” of the current recession that had already reigned for fourteen months under Bush 43 and that has since bedeviled the new President Obama. While there were in fact several published statistics that suggested a recession bottom may have been reached after Obama’s $787 billion Economic Stimulus Program was enacted earlier this year, sympathy for the woes of the unemployed caused us to focus on the monthly jobs reports from the US Department of Labor. Using that indicator, hopes that we had reached the bottom of the recession during Q2 2009 were dimmed when the June 2009 unemployment numbers seemed to reverse the declining trend of fewer and fewer job losses of the previous few months, even though we knew that unemployment numbers are lagging economic indicators. But finally, a report on the actual GDP of the United States for the second quarter of 2009 appeared on July 31. While the country’s output was still declining in Q2, the annual pace was only minus 1%, compared to the plunge of more than minus 6% in Q1 2009. (Indeed, until Q2 2009, the nation’s GDP had been on a steep negative slope since reaching +4% in Q3 2007.). The just-published Q2 2009 GDP report provides unequivocal evidence that the Obama Stimulus is working and that the bottom of the recession has already been reached. ...

Back on March 12, 2009 MSC.Software Corporation announced that its Board of Directors had named 47-year-old Ashfaq A. Munshi interim Chief Executive Officer and President of the Company. These actions followed the relatively sudden resignations of William J. Weyand, Chairman and CEO and Glenn Wienkoop, President and COO, after four years. According to The Sunday Indian, Chief Executive William Weyand and President Glenn Weinkoop resigned because the company moved its governance structure towards current best practices and sought to separate the roles of CEO and Chairman. The Board of Directors also named then-current board members Donald Glickman and Robert A. Schriesheim to serve as non-executive co-chairmen, effective March 12. The Board of Directors also retained a national firm to conduct a search for a permanent CEO. Munshi has been a Director of MSC since July 2005. Earlier, he was a corporate vice president at Applied Materials, responsible for software and automation. Previously he was VP/GM of...

That the bottom of the US recession that started in December 2007 has not yet been reached was argued in several previous blog entries in this space. See “Bottoming out?…” posted on May 25, 2009 and “Bottoming Out…Yet?...” posted on June 6, 2009, as the most recent examples. Well, the July 02, 2009 Labor Department report of jobs lost in June (minus 467,000) gave us a definitive answer, “No, the recession hasn’t reached bottom yet.” June’s minus 467,000 reversed the decline in lost jobs reported for the preceding month of May (minus 322,000), when hopes were beginning to be raised that the bottom was nigh. Still, June’s losses were far fewer than when the deepest job cuts of the recession came (January 2009, when 741,000 jobs vanished). And the financial situation in many states is adding to the recession. States are required to run balanced budgets, and many states are preparing draconian budget cuts. Here in California, the Republicans are blocking any tax increases, despite being in the minority....

Close on the heels of the blog entry in this space on June 21, 2009, entitled “More Solid Progress…”, comes a fresh news release from Autodesk (San Raphael, CA) dated June 24, 2009 that provides an update on Autodesk’s “Inventor Fusion Technology Preview.” As mentioned in the February 11, 2009 blog entry here entitled, “Solid Progress…,” Autodesk Inventor Fusion is new Digital Prototyping technology that unites the power and control of parametric, history-based modeling with the speed and ease of use of direct, history-free modeling. The June 24, 2009 Autodesk news release announces the availability starting today of a Technology Preview from Autodesk Labs, a download subject to the terms and conditions of the end-user license agreement that accompanies the download of the software. Autodesk says that this June 2009 preview is the first step toward Autodesk's goal of providing seamless bidirectional parametric and direct workflows to users by allowing them to adopt the modeling approach that best fits...

In a blog entry in this space on February 11, 2009, entitled, “Solid Progress…” the advancements being made in history-free, feature-based solid modeling CAD technology were discussed. This topic is surely of interest to COFES aficionados. Two then-recent articles were mentioned on February 11. First, on January 26, 2009 in MCADcafe Weekly, Contributing Editor and CAD veteran Jeff Rowe published an extensive article entitled, “NX 6 – Synchronous Modeling Promotes Design Freedom.” In the article, Jeff reviewed user design and modeling experiences with Siemens PLM’s NX 6 software product. Then on February 4, 2009, Autodesk (San Rafael, CA) unveiled its plans for “Autodesk Inventor Fusion Technology” that promises to unite parametric, history-based modeling with direct, history-free modeling. You may re-read the February 11 blog entry by accessing this URL: http://cofes.com/Blogs/tabid/272/EntryId/210/Solid-Progress.aspx But before you do that, make sure you make note of a new article Dr. Ken Versprille,...

COFES attendees and/or aficionados interested in the recent and future performances of key IP, MCAD and EDA public software vendors are invited to read the latest quarterly Commentaries published on MCADcafe and EDAcafe Internet portals. (An earlier blog entry in this space on March 13, 2009, provided access to similar articles for the previous quarter). The latest Electronics Intellectual Property (IP) Commentary was posted on May 10, 2009. It covers ARM, Ceva, LogicVision, MIPS, MoSys, Rambus and Virage Logic. Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://www10.edacafe.com/nbc/articles/view_article.php?articleid=691493 The latest MCAD Industry Commentary was posted on May 28, 2009. It covers ANSYS, Autodesk, Dassault Systemes, ESI Group, MSC.Software and PTC. Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://www10.mcadcafe.com/nbc/articles/view_article.php?articleid=700131 The latest Electronic Design Automation (EDA) Commentary was posted on June 04, 2009. It covers Altium, Cadence, Magma,...

Just 12 days ago on May 25, 2009, we discussed in this blog space the search for signs that the current economic recession might be bottoming out. For weeks, optimists had been suggesting that the May 8, 2009 Labor Department report of “only” 539,000 jobs lost in April was a sure sign that the worst was over. The revised figure for April is even better – only 504,000 jobs were actually lost, said the Labor Department on June 5, 2009. More striking is the Labor Department report for jobs lost in May 2009, released yesterday – only 345,000! Yes indeed – a definite improvement! But the damage done since the recession began in December 2007 is very much still with us, as set forth in the May 25, 2009 blog entry previously mentioned and as articulated soberly and comprehensively in a June 5, 2009 article in the New York Times by Peter Goodman & Jack Healy, entitled, “Hints of Hope Even as Jobless Rate Jumps to 9.4%.” Just copy and paste to your browser the following URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/06/business/economy/06jobs.html?th&emc=th

The economic recession plaguing the world has been a frequent topic of discussion in this blog space. Closer to home, the US recession that began in December 2007 has naturally received special attention. The last blog entry on the latter appeared here on April 3, 2009, cleverly entitled, “Economic News…circa April 3, 2009”. Even on April 3rd, we were searching for any news that might indicate that the country’s economy “just maybe could be bottoming out.” However, the US jobs report for March 2009, released by the Labor Department that very day, did not indicate a bottoming out at all, as the nation's unemployment rate in March jumped to 8.5%, the highest since late 1983, as a wide range of employers eliminated a net total reported at first as 663,000 jobs. (Worse, this figure was revised upward a month later to 699.000 jobs lost in March). Finally, the “sign” of bottoming out could arguably have appeared in the numbers indicated by the Labor Department’s May 08, 2009 report. While another 539,000 jobs...

As the years roll by, I have come to loathe Memorial Day. All three men in my immediate family served honorably in the US Armed Services. My father in WWI, my brother in WWII, and my other brother in post-WWII Europe. My father and oldest brother survived the wars, but their lives were both cut short by the long-term effects of wartime injuries they suffered. My father was gone before I was 10 years old. The good memories are fading now. For my spouse and me, virtually every family member older than we, are gone. So too for many teachers, college professors, former bosses, and even some co-workers. Lots of memories to go around. But worst of all, one of our sons is gone. Gone at age 23. It’s been 17 years, but the hurt is still raw. We remember. We grieve. We give thanks for our two other children who are thriving. We also acknowledge the grief of millions of our fellow citizens with similar or worse stories, but somehow we remain strangely discomforted by that acknowledgment. Alas, grief and remembrance...

On January 22 and January 30, 2009, related blog entries appeared in this space that discussed the impact of the general US economic collapse on a small EDA IP supplier (Virage Logic) located in Silicon Valley. If those two January blog entries were of any interest to you, you may have also read the then-latest overall financial report & commentary on seven key Electronics IP Providers (including Virage Logic), posted in EDAcafe.com on February 20, 2009, by copying & pasting the following URL contained in the February 20 blog entry here: http://www10.edacafe.com/nbc/articles/view_article.php?articleid=656383 Nearly three months have passed since that February Commentary was published. A brand new one with the latest reports on the seven key Electronics IP Providers may now be seen at the following URL as of today May 10, 2009: http://www10.edacafe.com/nbc/articles/view_article.php?articleid=691493 Enjoy!

...

The “Simulation Driven Product Development ™” approach favored by ANSYS these days has been more closely linked to the Autodesk solution for Digital Prototyping, through the certification of some five ANSYS products for Inventor ® 2010 software from Autodesk, Inc.

While partnerships between and among MCAE and MCAD vendors are not new, these two companies have emerged in recent years as leaders in their respective niches.


To read the complete May 6, 2009 ANSYS news release, copy and paste this URL into your browser:

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=118715&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1284943&highlight=

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., April 20, 2009 -- Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) and Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) announced today they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Oracle will acquire Sun common stock for $9.50 per share in cash. The transaction is valued at approximately $7.4 billion, or $5.6 billion net of Sun’s cash and debt. “We expect this acquisition to be accretive to Oracle’s earnings by at least 15 cents on a non-GAAP basis in the first full year after closing. We estimate that the acquired business will contribute over $1.5 billion to Oracle’s non-GAAP operating profit in the first year, increasing to over $2 billion in the second year. This would make the Sun acquisition more profitable in per share contribution in the first year than we had planned for the acquisitions of BEA, PeopleSoft and Siebel combined,” said Oracle President Safra Catz. “The acquisition of Sun transforms the IT industry, combining best-in-class enterprise software and mission-critical computing systems,”...

In a March 13, 2009 blog entry in this space, COFES attendees were invited to check out the latest financial performance numbers of the leading MCAD, EDA and IP vendors for Q4 2008, by downloading the three most recent quarterly Industry Commentaries from the IBSystems’ website. In those reports, only the small IP category defied recessionary forces by posting a combined revenue increase for Q4 2008, while both the covered MCAD and EDA categories posted revenue declines. To supplement those numbers, the EDA Consortium (EDAC) this week released its revenue report for the entire EDA Industry for Q4 2008. On April 7, 2009, the EDAC Market Statistics Service (MSS) announced that total electronic design automation (EDA) industry revenue for Q4 2008 declined 17.7% to $1318.7 million, compared to $1602.7 million in Q4 2007. This 17.7% decline for the whole EDA industry was smaller than the 24% decline for the five selected EDA vendors covered in the March EDA Industry Commentary, including the Big 3. Note that...

Has the bottom of the recession in US car sales been reached? The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that despite “another major sales decline in March 2009, auto makers expressed a rare bit of optimism on April 1, 2009, saying they see signs the industry's downturn might be near bottom and a recovery could be starting.” All of the “big car makers suffered sales declines of 36% or more in March 2009 compared to March 2008. Industry-wide, US sales totaled 857,735 cars and light trucks, down 37% from a year earlier, according to AutoData Corp. But that's up from 688,909 vehicles sold in February 2009 and was the highest total since September 2008.” The “annualized sales pace, a closely watched indicator, came in at 9.86 million vehicles, well below the 16 million or more the industry typically logged a few years ago, but up from February's pace of 9.12 million.” USA Today reported that while “more cars and trucks usually are sold in March than in February, the jump this year was 24.5%, the biggest February-to-March...

 

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...

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....

In recent blog entries in this space, the impacts of the general US and worldwide economic collapse on Electronics IP Providers were discussed. For example, on January 22 and 30, 2009, recent financials were presented for a small EDA IP supplier (Virage Logic) located in Silicon Valley. Then on February 20, 2009, Internet access was published here to the latest overall financial reports & commentary on seven key Electronics IP Providers, just posted that day in EDAcafe.com: http://www10.edacafe.com/nbc/articles/view_article.php?articleid=656383 Electronics IP Providers form a subset of the overall Electronics Design Automation (EDA) software & services industry, the “CAD” of modern electronics devices and chips. The detailed saga of one of the BIG 3 EDA vendors (Cadence Design Systems) over the last six months was also updated here in a blog entry on February 22, 2009. But the worlds of MCAD and MCAE are also...

The ups and downs (mostly downs) of one of the Big 3 Electronics Design Automation (EDA) vendors Cadence Design Systems have been frequent topics in this blog space since the autumn of 2008. The last update occurred here on January 9, 2009, when it was announced that Cadence had given up its search for an outside CEO and had appointed Lip-Bu Tan as president and CEO the day before. Tan had been the interim vice chairman of the Board of Directors and member of the Interim Office of the Chief Executive. For the record, Cadence stock closed regular trading on January 08 at $4.12, up $0.09 or 2.23%. In after hours trading, the stock lost 2.36%, trading at $4.02, implying a Market Cap just north of $1 billion. In early February 2009, Cadence reported actual Q4 2008 revenue of $227 million, less than 50% of the revenue of $458 million reported for Q4 2007. On a GAAP basis, Cadence suffered a net loss of $1.64 billion, or minus $6.57 per share in Q4 2008, compared to net income of $120 million in Q4 2007, or plus $0.41 per share. After the Q4 2008 results were announced on February 4, Cadence shares closed at $3.65, although the shares rebounded the next day to close at $4.20 each. ...

On January 22 and January 30, 2009, related blog entries appeared in this space that discussed the impact of the general US economic collapse on a small EDA IP supplier (Virage Logic) located in Silicon Valley.

If those two January blog entries were of any interest to you, you may like to read the latest overall financial report & commentary on seven key Electronics IP Providers, posted in EDAcafe.com on February 20, 2009.

http://www10.edacafe.com/nbc/articles/view_article.php?articleid=656383

As a welcome antidote to chronically depressing economic news, two recently-published articles caught the eye of this mechanical computer aided design (MCAD) veteran (1). Appearing within 10 days of each other, the two articles discussed progress in the often-esoteric world of 3D MCAD solid modeling. First, on January 26, 2009 in MCADcafe Weekly, Contributing Editor and CAD veteran Jeff Rowe published an extensive article entitled, “NX 6 – Synchronous Modeling Promotes Design Freedom.” In the article, Jeff reviewed user design and modeling experiences with Siemens PLM’s NX 6 software product. Then on February 4, 2009, Autodesk (San Rafael, CA) unveiled its plans for “Autodesk Inventor Fusion Technology” that promises to unite parametric, history-based modeling with direct, history-free modeling. More on this announcement below. Based in Plano, Texas, Siemens PLM had announced the pending release of its NX 6 digital product development software on May 20, 2008 in conjunction with its annual industry...

On February 3, 2009, The CAD Society announced that it had appointed an Interim President and interim Vice President to take the CAD Society forward into the new year. Rachael Dalton-Taggart, 20 year industry veteran and Director of Marketing with Lattice Technology, will be Interim President until later this year. Ken Feitz, 18 year industry veteran, and Marketing Manager at TransMagic Inc. will take on the roles of Vice President and Treasurer for the same term. The CAD Society was formed in 1990, as part of the NCGA (National Computer Graphics Association), and it split out on its own when the NCGA ended. Since then, the CAD Society has been best known for its annual awards recognizing the achievements of CAD industry leaders. Those awards have been presented at the annual COFES since 2000. Retiring President Mike McGrath commented on the change, "Rachael and Ken have both been actively assisting the CAD Society for some time now, and they have been responsible for several changes to the CAD Society...

The legacy lingers if not the man. Already 14 months old and counting, Bush 43’s second recession in 8 years dealt another body blow to the staggering US economy in January 2009.

The US labor department reported just this morning that US employers eliminated 598,000 more jobs in January, the most since 1974, and drove the US unemployment rate to 7.6%, further proof that the nation's job climate continues to deteriorate at an alarming pace with no end in sight.

The latest net total of actual job losses for January 2009 was far worse than the eye-popping figure of 524,000 that economists had been predicting. Job reductions in November and December also were deeper than previously reported, and no doubt January’s numbers will increase as well.

Think we need a Stimulus Bill passed quickly? Think tax cuts alone will do the trick?

On January 22, 2009, a blog entry in this space discussed the impact of the general US economic collapse on a small EDA IP supplier (Virage Logic) located in Silicon Valley. We promised the following: “Virage Logic's management will announce first-quarter fiscal year 2009 results on Wednesday, January 28, 2009. We’ll keep an eye on them for ya.”Well, Virage Logic followed through and on January 28, 2009 did report its financial results for the first fiscal quarter ended December 31, 2008. Total revenue for the first quarter of fiscal 2009 was reported as $11.3 million, compared with $14.1 million for the first quarter of fiscal 2008 and $15.5 million for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008. The $11.3 million was right in the middle of the revised revenue range estimated on December 30, 2008.As reported under US generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), Virage Logic’s official net loss for the first quarter of fiscal 2009 was reported January 28 at $2.6 million, or ($0.11) per share, compared with net income...

For those who may not make it a regular practice to read Frank Rich’s New York Times op-ed piece every Sunday, please allow me to recommend it to your attention.

Yesterday’s Frank Rich column (“No Time for Poetry”) was especially important, as it contained a concise explanation of the challenge to all Americans (of all political stripes) that was inherent in President Obama’s Inaugural Address of January 20, 2009. It helps set the stage for the cooperation that will be required for us to pull ourselves out of the deep and dangerous economic quagmire of 2008 – 2009.

Copy and Paste this URL into your browser:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/opinion/25rich.html?_r=1&th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print