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Brad Holtz
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Author: |
Brad Holtz |
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4/25/2006 |
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My thoughts on topics of interest to COFES and COFES attendees |
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Cimatron acquires Gibbs |
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By Brad Holtz on
1/5/2008
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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?
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Cyon Research Stock Index Updated |
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By Brad Holtz on
1/2/2008
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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.
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Bill Buxton's "Sketching User Experiences" |
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By Brad Holtz on
12/9/2007
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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-In ...
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Bruce Sterling's short story from COFES |
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By Brad Holtz on
12/6/2007
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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!
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Siemens to buy UGS for $3.5b |
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By Brad Holtz on
1/24/2007
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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 ...
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The Globalization of Engineering |
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By Brad Holtz on
1/18/2007
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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 entertai ...
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Autodesk to Miss Filing Deadline, Gets SEC Request for Info |
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By Brad Holtz on
9/6/2006
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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.
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