Acquisition Changes Product Lifecycle Management Landscape
Michael Bittner - March 27, 2006

Background

Given its size as the largest product lifecycle management (PLM) vendor worldwide and its status as a major force in Europe for 3D computer-assisted design (3D CAD) as well as PLM, Dassault Systèmes does not seem to garner North American media/analyst attention and respect equivalent to its global position. From a marketing perspective, it is one of those situations where the sum of the parts does not necessarily equal the whole. One clear reason for this is the fact that the Americas represent only 30 percent of the company's total revenues for fiscal year 2005, while Asia represents 23 percent, and Europe represents 47 percent. Additionally, most of the competition, including second-ranked UGS, as well as Agile, Arena, MatrixOne, and PTC, are all US-based software companies, and thus capture headlines more frequently...