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Issue #631 | January 30, 2010 | English Edition
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From the Editor: This issue of the newsletter is a few days early and shorter than usual, because I will be at SolidWorks World 2010 in Anaheim Sunday-Wednesday. I will be blogging the event live at worldcadaccess.typepad.com and tweeting about it on @ralphg
In This Issue
1. Sorting Through the Third-party Developer Dilemma
2. PTC Execs Back in Fine Form
- Beating Dassault and Siemens
- Windchill PLM 2x the Size of Dassault's PM
- On the Mood of Dassault Customers
- Selling PLM to Autodesk and SolidWorks Customers
- And the Fun Stuff
3. Out of the Inbox, and our other regular columns
Sorting Through the Third-party Developer Dilemma
One of the problems of being a third-party developer in the CAD world is that sooner or later, you will tread on the toes of your targeted CAD package, and the CAD vendor in turn will stomp on you. (I had that happen to my best-selling Visio book when Microsoft Press generated its own.)
Chris Dixon has a solution in "How To Deal With The Incumbents In Your Startup's Industry." He says, Ask yourself if your product is disruptive or sustaining:
- If it's disruptive, you most likely will go unnoticed by the incumbents for a long time (because it looks to them like a toy).
- If your technology is sustaining and you get noticed early, you probably want to try to sell (and if you can't, pivot).
I would place most third-party CAD software in the sustaining category.
Source: http://cdixon.org/2010/01/26/incumbents/
PTC Execs Back in Fine Form
For those of us who follow quarterly conference calls, executives from Parametric Technology Corp last week were back in their natural habitat, unloading on the competition. I have some choice quotes from last week's Q1 call to share with you:
Beating Dassault and Siemens
Analyst: "Are there some dynamics that's leading to a better win rate versus [Dassault and Siemens]?"
President Jim Heppelmann: "...the GE healthcare account, which was a major displacement of the Siemens incumbent position, which obviously we're pretty happy about. There were a couple of others, Otis, for example, ...These are actually customers turning off the Siemens software and switching to the PTC software. But what we talk less about is the fact that in the EADS benchmark, Siemens was there and competed like crazy, and we walked out with the win there, too.
"I think we're doing very well against both. I think that Dassault is very vulnerable at this point and we're capitalizing on that."
CEO Richard Harrison: "We have separated ourselves from the competition. ...We talked about GE Healthcare just a little bit. ...they had an incumbent, Siemens, for 25 years in the engineering department. ...we begged them to include us in an evaluation because they wanted to make a consolidation decision. I personally met with the CTO who told me, 'I'll let you in, but you have no chance.' A year later, we displaced Siemens [with] Pro/ENGINEER and Windchill."
Windchill PLM 2x the Size of Dassault's PM
Harrison: "The Windchill business...has a run rate of a $500 million enterprise business."
Heppelmann: "...to put that into perspective, $500 million is... twice the size of Dassault PLM products all put together. It's really a situation now where we have the number one [PLM] product out there in front by a considerable distance, and moving at twice the velocity [pun intended?] of everybody else."
Harrison: "... we don't get the Siemens [PLM Systems] results; they're not public. But we think overall, they're going to have negative license revenue like most software companies."
On the Mood of Dassault Customers
Analyst: "...your win rate against Dassault is perhaps better than Siemens. Are you essentially giving them no credit or little credit the V6 that would allow them to at least protect their base, if not necessarily grow their PLM business?"
Heppelmann: "I think our win rate against both is high. I think that Dassault has a customer base, which is frustrated and very vulnerable. A lot of them are in the mood to switch products. They feel like they bought something from Dassault trying to get an advantage in the business, and now look at it, they say, 'This is not an advantage. It's a disadvantage. And we need to switch to something that is an advantage again...'
"I had not seen any material evidence that suggests V6 is a magic wand. In fact, it'll be interesting to see what Dassault's PLM numbers look like when they come on to you on February 11... If their PLM numbers have the same spring in the steps that PTC does, well maybe the customer base is listening to the V6 story."
Selling PLM to Autodesk and SolidWorks Customers
Analyst: "...do you need to sign up some material part of either the Autodesk or SolidWorks channels for them to carry [PTC's SharePoint-based] ProductPoint as a kind of complementary product to their CAD businesses?"
Heppelmann: "...you're right, there's a huge, huge base of Autodesk customers who basically have no PLM solution, but certainly would be interested in a SharePoint solution for PLM. And there's a huge base of SolidWorks customers who are in the same boat... We'll maybe unveil [our strategies] bit down the road... with some new ways to potentially take our products directly into their base and capitalize on this open window of opportunity to become the main PLM supplier in those types of customer bases."
And the Fun Stuff
Analyst: "For Neil first... [and goes on to ask a question]."
Heppelmann: "Yes. Hey, Neil, at the risk of stepping on your toes here. I want to comment on the first piece as well, and then I'll turn it over to you [and then carries on for quite some time]. So I'll let Neil comment more on the magnitude of it [and then continues on for quite some time]."
CFO Neil Moses: "Okay. I've been patient."
Analyst: "And then my final question would be, you mentioned your share-shifting in the markets who are favoring, obviously looking at that 2x2 matrix in your growth rate for the enterprise still in business. One easily can follow that.
"But I take it that your comment really implies for all the four quadrants specifically. So it's not just for one, it really is for each and every one, right?"
Heppelman "I'm not sure I understand the question."
Out of the Inbox
Cadsoft Corporation releases Envisioneer 6.0 for residential and light commercial construction with SmartView that updates drawing views automatically when the 3D model changes; import, scale, and convert PDF and 2D DXF files; integrated quote generator for link to point of sale systems, and more.
In addition, the software now links with ILevel Javelin (engineered wood design and analysis), MiTek TrussFramer (truss and component design), 2020 Design (specialty kitchen and bath design), Keymark KeyBuild (whole home structural design and analysis), and Luxwood Quote Generator Pro (merges multiple quotes from 3rd party BOMs). http://www.cadsoft.com
IMSI/Design ships Version 2 of its free DoubleCAD XT alternative to AutoCAD LT. New features include viewports whose contents can be exploded to flat 2D geometry, improvements to multitext and text, new architectural, transform, and selection tools, as well as support for index colors and AutoCAD CTB print styles. DoubleCAD XT users have 30-day access to all features found in DoubleCAD XT Pro v2 ($695). http://www.DoubleCAD.com
Extensible CAD Technologies announces Office2PDM add-in for Office that brings SolidWorks Enterprise PDM's document management functions into Word, Excel and PowerPoint. http://www.office2pdm.com
Autodesk integrates its Alias Sketch technology into AutoCAD 2010, adding sketching, illustration, painting, and editing. The no-charge 30-day beta is available from http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/alias_sketch_for_autocad
CAD International purchases the intellectual property of DRCauto, and offer immediate assistance to those needing new authorisation codes. More information here: http://www.cad.com.au/drcauto
Open Design Alliance partners with Aftercad Software to develop software prototypes using technology from both companies for Software as a Service (SaaS) technology. http://www.opendesign.com and http://www.aftercad.com
And Tekni Consulting launches The Creative Inventor e-magazine for users and managers of Autodesk's manufacturing software. Subscribe at http://www.teknigroup.com
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These were some of the news items posted during the last week at the WorldCAD Access blog <worldcadaccess.typepad.com>. now with 4,400 daily readers:
- Archway Systems' second annual Bentley Bash
- First screen shot: NaviCAD simulated on the iPad
- Enovia CTO asks, "When (not how) do we get content onto the iPad?"
- Heppelmann wants 20% earnings growth: what could possibly go wrong?
- No mention of CAD for Apple's new iPad
- Bricsys releases another alpha of Bricscad Linux
- Wahoo! PTC triple profits; revenues up 7%; stock up 9%
- MFGWatch portends continued gloom for manufacturing industry
- Solido to launch first salvo in 3D printer price war next week
Hardware News
Matrox's DualHead2Go and TripleHead2Go Graphics eXpansion modules now support up four or six monitors on one computer. http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/press/releases/2010/gxm/multi_gxm_support
WorthWhile Web
http://gapingvoid.com/2010/01/21/linchpin-ten-questions-for-seth-godin/
linchpin: ten questions for seth godin
by Hugh MacLeod
http://andrewhy.de/committing-location-based-service-suicide/
Committing Location Based Service Suicide
by Andrew Hyde
Spin Doctor of the Moment
[Google in China] They've done nothing and gotten a lot of credit for it... If Google ever chooses to pull out of the United States, then I’d give them credit.
- Bill Gates
Notable Quotable
“I hope they [other airlines] charge $100 a bag. That would be terrific. We'll have 100 percent load factors.”
- Gary Kelly, ceo Southwest Airlines
http://blogs.wsj.com/middleseat/2010/01/28/which-airlines-made-lost-money-last-year
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