From Several Fathers and Many Homes, Dassault Acquires ICEM
Dassault Systemes told the world today that it is buying ICEM, which makes a surface modeling tool that runs with CATIA V5. No big surprise there; the two have been working closely together for a while.
What is a bit interesting, unless you are totally wet behind the ears and don't give a rat's toe about history, is that ICEM has been the proverbial red-headed foster child of the design software industry. It started out as a unit of Control Data Corporation, back when CAD computers required teams of worried-looking weenies in white coats to operate correctly. The hardware was the central sales focus then, and companies created software to drive sales.
For a while it was part of a CDC/SDRC joint venture. That deal went sour, and eventually UGS bought part of the venture, but not the part that became ICEM. (Just think how different things might be today if UGS had acquired the technology that became today's ICEM.) Later, EDS acquired SDRC and UGS, but that's another story.
From CDC it went to PTC, who sold it to investors, who sold it today to Dassault. PTC paid $45 million in 1993 dollars for ICEM, and probably sold it for less. Today Dassault paid 51.4 million Euros for ICEM. Somebody has made a nice bundle of money on all that churning.
In parallel universes, the software that created these lines belongs to UGS, PTC, EDS, and the Ferengi Alliance.
