Cadalyst - February 2008 - (Page 10)

cadcentral By Kenneth Wong Saved by iPod The Structure of an Acquisition It took Autodesk two tries — once in 2006 and again in 2007 — to bring Robobat into its fold. Based in Grenoble, France, Robobat develops and markets a line of software products for analyzing and designing steel and concrete structures. In June 2005, when Autodesk launched Revit Structure, the company made sure its new software was capable of bidirectional data exchange with industry-standard structural analysis packages, including Robobat’s ROBOT Millennium. Pushing the Revit platform further down the construction workflow is consistent with Autodesk’s building information modeling (BIM) vision, centered on the use of a single 3D model for all phases of the building lifecycle. Autodesk made its first move in September 2006, tendering $33 million for Robobat. Jay Bhatt, vicepresident of Autodesk Building Solutions at the time, said, “We are pleased to welcome Robobat, their industry-leading software and techAutodesk’s recent acquisition of ROBOBAT promises nology and their community of custighter integration between Revit and ROBOT Millenium, tomers to Autodesk.” But the deal shown above. fell through. In November 2007, Autodesk made another move, this time offering $42.5 million. Bhatt, now senior vice-president of Autodesk’s AEC Solutions, explained, “Over the past year, Autodesk and Robobat have continued to work closely on product integration and to resolve the business issues that prevented Autodesk from completing the acquisition in 2006.” On January 15, 2008, Robobat officially became part of Autodesk. For the near future, nothing is about to change. But over time, “Autodesk will integrate Robobat technology into Autodesk structural engineering products such as Revit Structure and the AutoCAD Revit Structure suite, and the Robobat products will be marketed under the Autodesk brand,” says Autodesk’s FAQ on the acquisition. Your teenage daughter’s portable MP3 player may be more useful than you think. Hugo Riveros is an ArchiCAD user and an associate at ML Design (www.mldesign.com.au), a multidisciplinary, architectural design firm. When his employer’s project server crashed in the middle of a deadline rush, Riveros found out just how useful an iPod could be. No one was able to access the project files for a $300 million office tower. The only reference available was an ArchiCAD draft file saved on Riveros’ computer. So he created an ArchiCAD Teamwork file in his iPod for collaboration. “I had the idea that if one person could sign in multiple times for different people, and then save those respective drafts onto the iPod, we could possibly take the iPod to another computer, copy the draft for them onto their machines, and allow them to continue work. We had seven people working on a teamwork project without a server!” said Riveros. After discovering that an iPod could be an efficient fileswapping mechanism, Riveros began carrying around sample works, templates, and libraries on the portable device. “Whenever I meet with a client, I always have what I need in the palm of my hand,” he said. CAD Central continues on page 12 The New Face of Mid-Market SaaS The next time you meet Craig Livingston at a conference, he may be handing you a new business card. Out with the old card from Agile, which touts him as the vicepresident and general manager of SME [small and medium enterprises] Solutions. He’s just been named CEO of Arena Solutions, one of Agile’s biggest competitors. Agile’s on-demand licensing (offered under Agile Advantage) and Arena’s software as a service (SaaS) model appealed to the small and medium-sized businesses with limited IT budgets looking for alternative product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions. Last year, database giant Oracle snatched up Agile in May 2007 for $495 million. So what’s the fate of Agile Advantage, Agile’s SMB-friendly offering? Oracle’s FAQ document for Agile Advantage customers (as it stands in January 2008) reads, “Oracle has made a significant commitment to the SaaS and on-demand segments . . . We will provide more information soon on our Agile On Demand plans.” In its open letter to Agile customers, Hardeep Gulati, Oracle’s vice-president of PLM and product information management (PIM), assures, “We plan to deliver even more of the leading features of our emerging and mid-size customer solution, Agile Advantage, into Agile 9, now called Agile PLM.” As the new corporate steward of Arena, Livingston invariably will find himself battling some of his former colleagues from Agile, now marching under the Oracle flag towards the SMB territory. 10 February 2008 | cadalyst | www.cadalyst.com http://www.mldesign.com.au http://www.cadalyst.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Cadalyst - February 2008

Cadalyst - February 2008 Contents Editor's Window CAD Central Tech Trends More than Meets the Eye — A Look at Today's CAD Viewers IronCAD v10 — 3D Modeling Software AcceliArch with AcceliCAD — Add-In Architectural Drawing and Modeling Software CAD Manager MCAD Modeling AEC Insight CAD Cartoon Issue Indexes Hot Tip Harry

Cadalyst - February 2008

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