By Steve Wolfe on 10/28/2009 4:58 AM

Late on the evening of October 26, IBM announced its intention to sell its "IBM sales and client support operations encompassing DS's Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software … customer contracts and related assets" to Dassault Systèmes. Since 1982, IBM has sold and supported Dassault Systèmes CATIA and related software. The announced sale, which is expected to close in the first half of 2010, ends that relationship.

 

IBM will receive $600 million in cash for its PLM business. Approximately 700 IBM employees, including PLM general manager Al Bunshaft, will join Dassault Systèmes.

Dassault Systèmes' competitors, Siemens PLM Solutions, Parametric Technology, and Autodesk, are likely to blow the current transaction out of proportion, claiming that Dassault Systèmes has lost a major sales advantage. In reality, this deal is likely to have modest impact on both companies.

 

IBM will be shedding a relatively small part of its software business that doesn't fit with its main strategy....

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By Brad Holtz on 10/27/2009

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

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By Russ Henke on 10/14/2009 4:01 PM

In this space on September 30, 2009, the then-latest news on MSC,Software appeared, in a blog article entitled, “MSC.Software…in the news again…”.

As of today, October 14, the company posted a Press Release on its website announcing that Symphony Technology Group (STG) had successfully completed its acquisition of MSC.Software Corporation.

Under the terms of the deal, Maximus Holdings Inc., an investment vehicle of STG and co-investor Elliott Management Corporation has purchased all outstanding shares of MSC stock for a price of $8.40 per share in cash, a total purchase price of approximately $390 million. Moreover, industry veteran Dominic Gallello joins MSC as CEO. Gallello comes to MSC from Graphisoft, a Budapest-based architectural design software developer, where he was CEO. In addition, Jim Johnson joins MSC as CFO. Johnson was most recently CFO of VG Holdings, a videogame producer that was acquired by Electronic Arts in 2007. You can access the entire Press Release by copying & pasting...

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By Russ Henke on 10/8/2009 6:14 AM

Siemens PLM Software just announced the latest release of NX™ software, the company’s flagship digital product development solution. With NX 7.0, Siemens PLM Software introduced HD3D, a visual environment to help global product development teams unlock the value of PLM information.

In addition, NX 7.0 included enhancements to synchronous technology – the computer-aided design, manufacturing and engineering analysis (CAD/CAM/CAE) productivity software introduced by Siemens PLM Software last year. (See blog entry in this space dated February 11, 2009, entitled, “Solid Progress…”).

The NX 7.0 enhancements are aimed at helping accelerate a variety of product development tasks and expand the ability of NX to work with data from third party CAD applications.

The announcement of NX 7.0 was made October 7, 2009 in Paris at the Siemens PLM Connection Europe annual users conference.

By Russ Henke on 9/30/2009 6:22 AM

Back on July 9, 2009 in this blog space, a report appeared that MSC.Software had entered into a definitive agreement with affiliates of Symphony Technology Group (STG) under which a company controlled by STG would acquire all of MSC's outstanding shares in a one-step cash merger transaction valued at approximately $360 million. Under the terms of the agreement, MSC's stockholders were to receive $7.63 in cash for each share of MSC common stock. That price per share represented approximately a 13% premium to the closing price per share of MSC's stock prior to this announcement and approximately a 24% premium compared to the 90 trading-day trailing closing average price per share. Within days of that definitive agreement, several law firms around the country launched class action suits, alleging that the “deal appeared to be unfair, given the fact that on June 1, 2009, MSC Software shares were trading at the exact price now offered, and that throughout 2008, MSC Software traded at significantly above the offer...

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By Russ Henke on 9/4/2009 5:09 AM

 

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By Russ Henke on 9/3/2009 10:44 AM

 

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By Russ Henke on 9/2/2009 2:31 AM

 

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By Russ Henke on 8/20/2009 9:48 AM

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,...

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By Brad Holtz on 8/15/2009

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.

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By Brad Holtz on 8/15/2009

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.

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By Russ Henke on 8/7/2009 4:46 AM

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."

By Russ Henke on 8/2/2009 6:39 AM

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. ...

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By Brad Holtz on 8/2/2009

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...

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By Brian Seitz on 7/14/2009 8:42 AM

Windows 7 may become the test for Ballmer and crew as more users infer skipping an upgrade.  This maybe more of a rejection of Microsoft strategy than technology.  The recent survey quoted in eweek suggest 6 of 10 will not be upgrading.  This sounds similar to the numbers of those that have stayed on XP vs. Vista. It maybe the strategy to not have an upgrade path from XP to Windows 7 has created that doubt that Microsoft should continue to be in most computing futures.  Add the recent push to Cloud and Microsoft focus on Enterprise and Cloud, they may be creating their own prefect storm as IBM did in the 80s

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By Russ Henke on 7/9/2009 5:30 AM

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...

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By Russ Henke on 7/5/2009 4:09 PM

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....

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By Jack Ring on 7/2/2009

 A look at MBSE and SysML in the context of COFES

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By Brian Seitz on 6/25/2009 11:22 AM

Microsoft Windows 7 upgrade and migration strategy may kill off purchases as XP users have no real upgrade path to take.  Will engineering shops using XP go through the pain of migration or wait till they need a hardware refresh before making the leap? 

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By Russ Henke on 6/25/2009 7:51 AM

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...

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By Russ Henke on 6/21/2009 5:33 AM

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,...

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By Russ Henke on 6/7/2009 3:21 AM

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,...

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By Russ Henke on 6/6/2009 6:36 AM

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

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By Russ Henke on 5/25/2009 7:25 AM

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...

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By Russ Henke on 5/24/2009 11:32 AM

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...

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By Russ Henke on 5/10/2009 11:35 AM

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!

...

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By Russ Henke on 5/6/2009 4:11 AM

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=

By Brian Seitz on 4/29/2009 5:15 AM

PLM has yet to mature much past PDM with a new interface.  A rethink of the purpose of PLM in context of a Enterprise Class Application that engages the total corporation rather than a subset of geometry creators is needed.  For PLM to reach its infered objective to manage the life cycle of a product it must bring other disciplines into the product dialog beyond discussing geometry.  PLM must declare itself as the manager of products not the administrator of data files. 

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By Russ Henke on 4/20/2009 4:04 AM

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,”...

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By Russ Henke on 4/9/2009 6:08 AM

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...

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