Earlier this month private equity firm Ampersand Ventures made an offer to acquire RAND Worldwide, one of the world’s largest value-added reseller of CAD and PLM software. Today CADCAMNet has learned that a Canadian investment bank has acquired a 10% interest in RAND and intends to oppose the Ampersand acquisition bid.
Full details later today at CADCAMNet.
Regular readers may have noticed that our descriptive and informative images have mysteriously been replaced with stupid ‘upload limit exceeded’ icons. As a paying customer to blog.com, I was somewhat surprised and immediately assumed Randall had been uploading massive graphics. (Well, he may have but we’re not sure.)
So on Monday 13th August I put a support request in. And repeated on Wednesday 15th. And although blog.com proudly states ” We are committed to address 99% of all tickets in a maximum of 3 business days.” I am still waiting for either ticket to be solved.
So in the meantime, the wonderful, edgy, 3D CAD News will continue on, without its image-happy stance of before. Apologies to all.
The Publisher
There’s an interesting video interview of Autodesk VP Andrew Anagnost now online at CCNtv. Anagnost is responsible for the manufacturing division’s R&D. During the course of the five minutes on camera he explains why only residents of North America can download Inventor, why functional design is important to Autodesk, and why Autodesk now has a direct sales force for the automotive industry.
There is also the obligatory Autodesk bashing of “big iron” PLM and a push for digital prototyping. Coors Field in Denver is an interesting backdrop for the interview. Irrelevant, but interesting.
It is a dog-eat-dog world, they say, so today your economic geography lesson is about the portion of that world known as PLM. Some of the inhabitants are names familiar to CAD users, including Dassault Systèmes, UGS (now Siemens PLM Software), and PTC. There are other inhabitants, like Agile Software which is currently being eaten alive—pardon me, acquired—by Oracle. And there are smaller players like ARAS Software and Arena Solutions (the former BOM.COM). And then there is SAP. (Autodesk is considered by professional analysts as a PLM firm, but in this dog-eat-dog world Autodesk is a cat and refuses to acknowledge the dogs.)
Oracle takes a $495 million liking to Agile.
Look at total revenue and you realize quickly that Oracle and SAP are the true big dogs of the territory. The CAD firms are Chihuahuas nervously treading beneath the feet of Irish Wolf Hounds. Thus we must pause and note when one of these big dogs marks his territory. That’s what SAP did today in announcing its PLM road map.
Over at CADCAMNet I’ll do a more complete (competitive analysis and all that), less doggy explanation of what SAP has in mind, but here we cut to the chase. Here’s what SAP will do to make you sit, roll over, and beg:
2008 (Sit): Simplify the SAP PLM user interface with role-based presentations.
2009 (Roll Over): Offer a “new enhancement package” for the bean-counters to ram down engineering’s throat.
2010 (Beg): Assimilation of real-world information such as RFID data.
[Editor’s Note: The prohibition against yawning is now lifted.]
We tried to get everybody together for a portrait, but only SAP and Dassault Systemes showed up.
The statement says PTC “intends to defend itself vigorously against claims made by GE Capital Leasing Corporation (“GELC”) in a lawsuit filed August 2, 2007. PTC’s review has found no basis for GELC’s claims.”
Speaking for the company, CFO Neil Moses says, “We deny that PTC is somehow responsible for GELC’s alleged losses. We are surprised that GELC has brought this claim against PTC and believe GELC’s claims are without merit.”
Neil Moses goes on the offensive for his beloved PTC
GELC claims that an employee of Toshiba Corporation fraudulently induced GELC to provide over $60 million in financing for purchases of third party products, including PTC software, during the period from 2003 to 2006. All of these alleged transactions occurred in Japan. GELC alleges that PTC was involved. GELC claims damages of $47 million and is seeking three times that amount ($141 million).
GE Leasing intends to put some serious firepower behind its accusations.
This is a case of really big guns (GE Leasing) against your ordinary everyday big guns (PTC). If it were up to the lawyers for each side, the dispute would drag on for years until they could all buy Aruba and retire. But now that GE Leasing has made a federal case out of it, things will get settled pretty quickly. Federal court judges, by and large, don’t want stuff like this clogging up the docket.
“RICO, Smeeko. I want this settled now!”
It seems the axiom “when it rains, it pours” also applies to acid rain—at least for PTC. We reported recently on their missteps in the marketplace and the resulting spanking at the hands of the stock market. Now it seems PTC is accused of faking sales in Japan.
GE Capital Leasing Corp. is suing PTC for $141 million, alleging fraudulent purchases and deliveries of software in Japan. The complaint alleges that PTC committed fraud, made negligent misrepresentations, and violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. That’s the same body of law used to put mobsters behind bars. Pretty serious stuff.
When RICO calls, you always listen.
As the Boston Globe reports:
The saga allegedly began in 2003, when GE Capital Leasing agreed to finance electronics company Toshiba’s purchase of software made by a company called Japan Novel, according to the complaint. An employee at Toshiba returned the software and used the money to pay for an earlier software purchase from PTC that had been made without his company’s approval, the complaint said. Fraudulent transactions allegedly occurred 10 other times, ending in April 2006.
“For more than three years PTC participated in a scheme to defraud GELC by faking numerous large sales and deliveries of its CAD software to Toshiba while knowing and concealing from GELC that Toshiba had not authorized any of these large purchases,” the lawsuit stated.
“PTC pretended to sell a lot of valuable equipment to Toshiba and induced GE to send the money for it,” [said John Markham, lawyer for GE Capital Leasing.] “It turns out many of these supposed sales—according to the complaint—were not actually made, but GE paid the money.”
PTC President “Rocco” Harrison
carefully ponders the company’s next move.
Full details on Thursday in CADCAMNet
Related items in 3D CAD News:
UGS PLM Software announced today that Tilo Brandis, who was appointed President when UGS became a division of Siemens Automotive and Drives,must step down from the position due to family health issues in his native Germany. Brandis had started to relocate to UGS HQ in Plano, Texas, but is returning to Germany.
Tilo Brandis,
outgoing
UGS PLM Software
president
Brandis will be replaced by Dr. Helmuth Ludwig, who joins UGS PLM Software from Siemens Systems Engineering, a division of A&D, where he has served as president since 2002. As created when UGS merged with Siemens, the office of president reports to UGS CEO Tony Affuso, and is responsible for overseeing the integration of UGS into Siemens. Ludwig has already started relocating to Plano.
Helmuth Ludwig,
incoming
UGS PLM Software
president
UGS also announced to its staff today that effective October 1, 2007 the name of the division will change from “UGS PLM Software,” to “Siemens PLM Software.” The name “UGS” will continue to be used in front of product suite names.
More details later today at CADCAMNet.
In today’s marketplace, if you want to buy a top-selling mid-market MCAD product, you can choose from a variety of constraint-driven, history-based products. SolidWorks, Inventor, SolidEdge, and several others all work on the same principle. The geometry on the screen is a reflection of the steps listed in the history (or structure) tree. Every modeling step is recorded, in order, in the tree.
A typical history-based modeler, relentless in its ability to log every piddling detail of how the model came to be; just don’t suggest changes at the last minute.
History-based models have been leading the market for more than a decade, and to a large degree they have defined MCAD. But in recent years 3D modelers that do not rely on a history tree, but allow users to directly define and edit geometry, have been gaining momentum. These products are described by various terms. Rhino uses the phrase “free form modeling;” KeyCreator says “geometry-based design;” and CoCreate says it is “dynamic modeling.”
A typical history-free modeler, a tireless crusader for free geometry. History tree? We don’t need no stinkin’ history tree.
In editing the CCN series, I realized I have a personal bias in this matter. I understand the importance of locking down design intent with a structure tree, but it still comes across to me as control-freak behavior. Give me a free form modeler any day. Unless I’m designing a brake assembly. Or a motor. Or a 10’ mining auger. Or a jet.
Good CAD? Bad CAD? It never ends.
See the problem. It doesn’t matter if I have a personal bias, there is no one tool for the job. No wonder Black Spy and White Spy fought for years, and there was no clear winner. They must have worked for enemy CAD companies.
