The demand for simulation is growing in almost all industries and in all regions. This generates sufficient momentum for the organic growth in CAE industry. Even during the last global recession (2008-2009), most CAE companies reported about a two-digit increase in CAE software business.
How to ride this wave to get a larger market share? Major CAE software players choose different approaches. Essentially, they bet on the ecosystem (CAD-CAE-PLM), or bet on disciplines (multi-physics, or multi-discipline, structural-mechanical-CFD-electrical-magnetic).
When the $413 million acquisition of Abaqus by Dassault Systems was announced in May 2005, it marked the new era in CAE industry: compete with an ecosystem. Before the acquisition, only UGS (later acquired by Siemens as Siemens PLM Software in 2007) had its own ecosystem. Apparently, Autodesk is positioned to enter CAE market based on their acquisitions of Algor, Moldflow and CFDesign in recent years.
For a CAD or PLM player, providing CAE solution is a natural expansion. Compared with pure CAE players, they have at least two advantages:
- Cross-selling. CAD market is far larger (in terms of the number of license, and users) than CAE market, and most new CAE opportunity lies in the CAD adopters.This means CAD vendors have