Commentary:

MCAD Industry View – A May 2009 Update

---

by Dr. Russ Henke and Dr. Jack Horgan
Henke Associates

---

This May 2009 issue of the MCAD Industry Commentary recounts the financial performances of a selected group-of-six MCAD/PLM vendors for the nominal FIRST QUARTER of 2009.

In the first MCAD Industry Commentary published May 2003 in MCADCafé.com, then-recent yearly and quarterly financial performances of a selected group of public Mechanical Computer Aided Design (MCAD) companies were analyzed and compared. Expectations of future financial performances of these same MCAD entities were documented.

The May 2003 MCAD Commentary was followed by twenty-three quarterly updates in MCADCafé.com, one for each subsequent calendar quarter. URL's on all past articles are available. The entities covered were ANSYS, Autodesk, Dassault Systèmes, UGS PLM, ESI Group, Moldflow, MSC.Software, PTC and Tecnomatix.

As a result of the acquisition of Tecnomatix by UGS that closed April 1, 2005, Tecnomatix was eliminated from coverage thereafter as a separate entity.

On May 7, 2007 UGS announced the close of its acquisition by Siemens AG effective May 4. Thereafter, the business went to market as UGS PLM Software (and later as Siemens PLM Software), a global division of the Siemens Automation and Drives (A&D) Group. Over the years UGS itself had bounced back and forth between being a public company and a private company under different ownerships. Regrettably, we have been able to gain very little insight into UGS’ performance itself from public Siemens 'corporate reports after the Siemens acquisition. Occasionally we will include Siemens PLM Software news items that bear on the industry as a whole, as in this May 2009 issue of the MCAD Commentary.

On June 25, 2008 Autodesk completed its acquisition of Moldflow Corporation, so thereafter Moldflow was eliminated here from separate coverage.

Accordingly, this twenty-fifth MCAD Industry article in the sequel recounts the financial performances of the remaining group-of-six (G6) MCAD/PLM entities for the nominal first quarter of 2009.

Recent MCAD News Highlights

On May 11, 2009 ANSYS announced several high-performance computing (HPC) milestones using ANSYS 12.0. The new release is said to deliver performance gains that enable product development teams to increase the value of simulation by considering large, high-fidelity models in shorter turnaround times. Some of the HPC achievements in the recent release include optimized parallel computing performance on multi-core processors, expanded support for large simulations, scaling breakthroughs, and support for parallel file systems.

On May 05, 2009 Autodesk announced that it will offer five new industry-oriented software suites to help students learn core design and engineering skills. The suites include the 2010 versions of 18 industry-leading Autodesk products including Autodesk Education Suite for Mechanical Engineering 2010.

On May 19, 2009 Dassault Systèmes (DS) announced the availability of Abaqus 6.9, its unified finite element analysis (FEA) product suite from SIMULIA. This release is said to deliver new capabilities for fracture and failure, high-performance computing, and noise and vibration, as well as improvements in modeling, meshing, contact, materials, and multiphysics. Users of Abaqus 6.9 can consolidate their nonlinear and linear analysis processes within a unified FEA environment.

On April 29, 2009 the ESI GROUP announced the advent of its new logo along with a new tagline: “get it right™”. These moves are said to be in alignment with ESI Group’s strategy to enable End-to-End Virtual Prototyping. With this new logo design, ESI says it has moved towards a simple, fresh look to embody modernity and dynamism. (In the vendor-by-vendor section of this MCAD Commentary below, readers can compare the previous and the new logos).

On March 12, 2009 MSC.Software announced that its Board of Directors named Ashfaq A. Munshi interim Chief Executive Officer and President of the Company. These actions followed the resignations of William J. Weyand, Chairman and CEO and Glenn Wienkoop, President and COO, after four years. The Board of Directors also named current board members Donald Glickman and Robert A. Schriesheim to serve as non-executive co-chairmen, effective March 12. The Board of Directors also retained a national firm to conduct a search for a permanent CEO. Munshi has been a Director of MSC since July 2005. Earlier, he was a corporate vice president at Applied Materials, responsible for software and automation. Previously he was VP/GM of the Enterprise Business Unit at Silicon Graphics and prior to that he was director of development and marketing at Oracle.

On March 05, 2009 PTC announced that C. Richard Harrison had been named chairman of PTC’s board of directors. James Heppelmann was named president and chief operating officer, reporting to Mr. Harrison, who continues as chief executive officer. Noel Posternak, previously PTC’s chairman, remains a member of the Board of Directors and serves as PTC’s Lead Independent Director. All changes became effective March 4, 2009.

On May 26, 2009 Siemens PLM Software announced Solid Edge® software with Synchronous Technology 2. This release is the second version of Solid Edge to incorporate Siemens PLM Software’s synchronous technology, a history-free, feature-based modeling capability. Some details are included in the sequel in the vendor by vendor section of this May 2009 MCAD Commentary.


G6 MCAD Vendors' Financial Performances in Q1 2009

As a group, the G6 MCAD vendors generated combined revenues of “only” $1.26 billion, a significant decrease of almost 18% from the $1.53 billion reported in the first quarter of 2008, and a drop of over 13% from the $1.45 billion delivered in the just prior fourth quarter of 2008. On a year-over-year basis, as the worldwide economic slowdown deepened, Autodesk endured the largest percentage revenue decline at -29%. The rest suffered revenue drops in the low to mid teen percentage points. ANSYS was the only G6 firm to generate a year-over-year quarterly percentage increase (+6.2%) in dollar-denominated revenue. On a sequential quarterly basis, ESI Group was the only G6 MCAD vendor to see an increase in revenue. MSC.Software and PTC logged mid single digit percentage declines, while the others suffered drops between -13% and -20%. (Note: the Fourth Quarter of the MCAD calendar year is traditionally the strongest of the year revenue-wise).

Figure 1 below provides a bar graph showing the revenue trend for each of the covered vendors, for the periods mentioned in Table 1.


For the first quarter of 2009, Autodesk enjoyed the largest relative market share at 34%, Having overtaken Autodesk in Q4 2008, Dassault Systemes fell back to a close second at 32%, with PTC a distant third at 18%. Note that the Autodesk figure contains considerable revenue from outside the MCAD arena -- in AEC and Media/Entertainment. Also, all three of the leaders have some form of third party distribution that complicates comparisons. See Figure 2.


Table 2 reveals that the combined Q1 2009 earnings of the G6 MCAD vendors was a dismal $34 million, a giant 85% drop from the $223 million in the year ago quarter but an increase of nearly a factor of 10 from the even more dismal previous quarter. Autodesk had the dubious distinction of being the only G6 MCAD vendor to post a net loss for the first quarter of 2009, and Autodesk reported the largest year-over-year reversal from net gain to net loss. But all the G6 firms endured declining earnings relative to Q1 last year. Dassault Systemes showed the largest decline in absolute dollars, a year-over-year decline of 60%.

On a sequential basis Autodesk delivered the largest earnings improvement although still a net loss for the quarter. MSC.Software went from a net loss in the prior quarter to a nominal gain



Details on Individual Vendors' Q1 2009 Performances


On May 7, 2009 ANSYS, Inc reported financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2009. Total revenue for the quarter was $116 million, an increase of 6.2% from the $109 million in the first quarter of 2008, but a 14% drop from the $135 million in the fourth quarter of 2008. The $116 million in revenue was just below the lower end of the guidance range provided 3 months earlier. Software license revenue was $70 million accounting for 61% of total revenue. This was a dip of 4.6% year-over-year and a drop of 22% from the prior quarter. Maintenance and services revenue was nearly $46 million or 39% of total revenue. This was an increase of almost 28% from the year ago quarter and a rise of 2% from the previous quarter.

Net income for the quarter was $21 million, an 18% decline from the $25.8 million in the same quarter a year earlier, and a drop of 34% from the $31.9 million in the forth quarter of 2008.

Jim Cashman, ANSYS CEO, said, “"Overall, we had a challenging quarter, but we still delivered earnings at the upper end of our guidance, with strong gross and operating margins. As expected, we were highly impacted by the combination of the uncertain macroeconomic environment and stiff currency headwinds. Despite these obstacles, we remain encouraged by the continued interest in our product strategy and vision. However, as we have seen throughout the first part of this year, most of our customers were also impacted by the uncertainty of the global economy and are continuing to wait for the economy to show more signs of stability or improvement before committing to increasing their investment rates.”


On May 21, 2009 Autodesk, Inc announced financial results for the first quarter of fiscal 2010 ended April 30, 2009. Total revenue for the quarter was $426 million, a significant decline of nearly 29% from the $599 million in the same quarter a year earlier, and a drop of almost 13% from the $489 million in the just prior quarter. The $426 million in revenue was above the middle of the guidance range provided last quarter. License revenue was $243 million, accounting for 57% of total revenue. This was a decrease of over 43% from the year ago quarter and a drop of over 21% from the previous quarter. Maintenance revenue was $182 million, or 43% of the total. This was an increase of 9.4% year-over-year and an increase of 1.8% sequentially.

The Platform segment, which accounts for about 37% of total revenue, includes AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT products that service multiple markets. Platform revenue was down 38% from the year ago quarter and down 22% from the prior quarter. Other segments are AEC (previously two segments: Building and Infrastructure) and Media/Entertainment (previously named Discreet). The Manufacturing segment (which includes the Inventor product lines) accounted for 22% of total revenue and dropped 21% year-over-year and dropped 17.5% from the prior quarter. A “guesstimate” of MCAD revenue for the quarter would be about $180 million.


Design segment revenues of $378 million decreased just over 28% when compared to the $527 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2009. This accounted for 89% of total revenue. Design revenue fell nearly 13% sequentially. Combined revenue from model-based 3D design solutions, including Inventor, Revit, Civil 3D, Moldflow, NavisWorks, and Robobat, decreased 14% over the first quarter of last year to $123 million and comprised 29% of total revenue for the quarter.

By geography, revenue from the Americas constituted 38% of total revenue, EMEA 39% and Asia 22%. EMEA revenue was $167 million, a decrease of 35% over the first quarter of Autodesk’s fiscal 2009 as reported, and a decrease of 24% on a constant currency basis. Revenue in the Americas decreased 15% compared to the first quarter of fiscal 2009, to $163 million. Revenue in Asia Pacific was $96 million, a decrease of 36% as reported and on a constant currency basis year-over-year. Revenue from emerging economies decreased 42%, compared to the first quarter of fiscal 2009 to $59 million and represented 14% of total revenue.

Combined revenue from Autodesk's model-based 3D design solutions decreased 16% compared to the first quarter of fiscal 2009 to $122 million and comprised 29% of total revenue for the quarter. Revenue from 2D horizontal and vertical products decreased 39% to $208 million as compared to the first quarter of fiscal 2009. Combined revenue from AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT, two of our important 2D horizontal products, declined 42%.

Net loss for the quarter was $32 million, compared to net gain of $95 million in the same quarter last year and a net loss of $105 million in the prior quarter. There was a $16.5 million charge for restructuring in the first calendar quarter of 2009.

Autodesk began implementing its new expense reduction plan, which was announced in April 2008. The plan is anticipated to result in pre-tax cost savings of approximately $120 million in fiscal 2010. Combined with the expense reduction initiatives, Autodesk anticipates achieving approximately $250 million in total cost savings in its fiscal 2010, as compared to fiscal 2009.

The new expense reduction initiatives will be achieved by reducing discretionary spending and contingent labor, and through a restructuring plan. The restructuring plan will result in a staff reduction of approximately 430 and the closure of certain facilities. The staff reduction will be partially offset by the hiring of approximately 100 key positions in select areas.

Carl Bass, Autodesk president and CEO, said “Our revenue results for the quarter continue to reflect the global economic downturn, which is impacting our business on almost every front. We made significant progress in our continued effort to improve our cost structure and ongoing efficiencies, which resulted in lower than expected operating costs for the quarter and greater than expected earnings per share and cash flow.”


On April 30, 2009 Dassault Systemes reported financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2009. Total revenue for the quarter was $402 million, a drop of 12.7% from the $461 million in the first quarter of 2008 and a decline of over 20% from the $505 million in the fourth quarter of 2008. The $402 million in revenue was below the lower end of the guidance range provided last quarter. Software revenue was $353 million, a decrease of 12.5% year-over-year and a decrease of 19% sequentially. This accounted for 88% of total revenue. New license revenue of $84 million was down about 44% compared to both the prior year and the prior quarter. New license revenue accounted for 24% of software revenue. Recurring revenue was $269 million accounting for 76% of software revenue. Service revenue was $49 million or 12% of the total. Service revenue was down 14% compared to the year ago quarter and down 28% compared to the previous quarter.

Dassault Systemes, a French company, reports its financial results in euros but provides average conversion factors to dollars for each quarter and year. These factors were used to calculate US dollar numbers. Revenue growth for the quarter in terms of constant currency GAAP was up 6% versus the first quarter of last year.

Revenue from North America was $127 million or 31% of total revenue. This was a 10% decline year-over-year and a 19% decline sequentially. European revenue was $179 million accounting for 44% of the total. European revenue was down 14% from the year ago quarter and down 24% form the prior quarter. Revenue from Asia was $97 million or 24% of the total. Asian revenue dropped over 13% year-over-year and more than 14% from the previous quarter.

The Enovia brand which includes Enovia, MatrixOne and SmarTeam generated $44 million in the quarter or 11% of total revenue. This was down 22% year-over-year and down 37% sequentially. Note that MatrixOne was acquired in May 2006 for $410 million. Dassault has now combined SolidWorks and CosmosWorks into Mainstream 3D. This category generated $92 million accounting for 23% of total revenue. This represented a decrease of 8.3% year-over-year and a decrease of 6.6% sequentially. CAD generated $151 million or 37% of total revenue. This was down 17.5% year-over-year and was up 24% sequentially. See Table 3.


Net income for the quarter was $37 million which included a gain of $22 million in the sale of company headquarters. Earnings were down 56% from the net income of $86 million in the year ago quarter and a 60% drop from the $95 million in the prior quarter.

Bernard Charlès, Dassault Systèmes President and Chief Executive Officer, commented, “As previously announced, the first quarter brought further deterioration of the economic environment which led to a significant decrease in our new license activity across brands and geographic regions. Despite this, first quarter earnings and margin results were well in line with our objectives, thanks to our cost savings.




Readers may see above the previous and the new ESI Group logos referred to in Recent MCAD News Highlights at the start of this May MCAD Commentary.

On April 29, 2009 ESIGroup reported financial results for its fourth quarter and for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2009. Total sales for the quarter were $35.8 million, a drop of 15.8% from the $42.5 million in the same quarter a year earlier, but an increase of 102% from the $17.7 million in the previous quarter. License revenue was $28.9 million or 81% of total revenue. This was a drop of over 19% from the year ago quarter, but an increase of 140% sequentially. Services and other revenue was $6.9 million, an increase of 2.1% year-over-year, and an increase of 21% from the previous quarter.

For fiscal 2009/2008 total revenue was $103 million, a 9.3% increase over the $94 million in fiscal 2008/2007. License revenue was $77 million accounting for 74% of total revenue. This was an increase of almost 5%. Service and other revenue was $26 million, an increase of 26%.

Excluding the new acquisitions of the Vdot team and of Mindware, consolidated since October 15, 2008 and December 16, 2008, respectively, sales would have been down -4.6% in actual terms and -8.7% by volume compared to the same period of the previous year.

For Licenses, the drop in activity over the fourth quarter “was essentially a result of the substantial fall of -35% in new business associated with the brutal slowdown in investments within the context of the economic crisis,” according to an ESI Group spokeman. However, the installed base remained stable, and “lays witness to the solidity of ESI Group’s business model, which is based on annual rentals and leads to substantial repeat License revenue,” per the same spokesman.

For Services, as in previous quarters, organic growth remained “buoyant” at +9%. Once external growth is taken into account, Services activity for the 4th quarter of 2008/09 came to €5.3 million, the highest level of quarterly activity ever recorded by the ESI Group.
The breakdown by geographical region was almost unchanged, with 49% of sales recorded in Europe, 35% in Asia and 16% in America. 82% of sales were recorded outside of France.

By business sector, 40% of booked orders came from the automotive sector, 24% from heavy industry, 8% from aeronautics and 6% from defense. “This stable split by sector highlights the necessity and advantages of using ESI Group solutions for major car manufacturers and their subcontractors, despite the economic context that is hitting them hard.”

Alain de Rouvray, ESI Group’s Chairman and CEO, said, “Although the current context of a global economic crisis reduces visibility on the increasing adoption of our solutions, and in particular regarding new orders, it also highlights the solidity of our activity’s recurrent nature and amplified client confidence. In a rationale of heightened competitiveness and given the need to innovate whilst reducing costs and delays, our End-to-End Virtual Prototyping solutions allow to manage with remarkable efficiency the virtual prototyping of industrial products from creation through to end development, to limit its complexity and risks, resulting in the successful validation of real prototypes “to get it right the first time”. Backed by a solid financial structure and by the proven pertinence of our strategic and commercial positioning, notably amongst our major corporate clients, we remain fully confident in ESI Group’s development and in the pursuance of the improvement in our profitability.”


On May 7, 2009 MSC.Software Corporation reported financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2009. Total revenue for the quarter was $53.6 million, a decrease of 12.4% from the $61.2 million in the first quarter of 2008 and a 5.8% drop from the $65 million in the fourth quarter of 2008. Software revenue was $17.4 million accounting for 36% of total revenue. This was a 21% decrease from the year ago quarter and an 11% decline from the previous quarter. Maintenance revenue was $31 million or 54% of the total. This was a 6% decrease year-over-year but a just over a 1% dip from the prior quarter. Services revenue was $5.2 million or 10% of the total revenue. This was down 16% from the first quarter a year earlier and down 5.8% sequentially.

On a geographic basis the Americas accounted for over 31% of total revenue, EMEA and AP each for over 34% of the revenue. See Table 4 for more details.


Net income for the quarter was $47 thousand compared to a net loss of $2.2 million in the year ago quarter and to a net loss of $22.4 million in the previous quarter.

On March 12, 2009 MSC.Software announced that its Board of Directors named 47-year-old Ashfaq A. Munshi interim Chief Executive Officer and President of the Company. These actions followed the relatively sudden resignations of William J. Weyand, Chairman and CEO and Glenn Wienkoop, President and COO, after four years. According to The Sunday Indian, Chief Executive William Weyand and President Glenn Weinkoop resigned because the company moved its governance structure towards current best practices and sought to separate the roles of CEO and Chairman. Photo of Mr. Munshi below.


The Board of Directors also named current board members Donald Glickman and Robert A. Schriesheim to serve as non-executive co-chairmen, effective March 12. The Board of Directors also retained a national firm to conduct a search for a permanent CEO. Munshi has been a Director of MSC since July 2005. Earlier, he was a corporate vice president at Applied Materials, responsible for software and automation. Previously he was VP/GM of the Enterprise Business Unit at Silicon Graphics and prior to that he was director of development and marketing at Oracle.

Ashfaq Munshi said of Q1 results, "In line with our guidance, total revenue decreased 12% in the first quarter versus last year. While software declined 21%, we achieved profitability and delivered $1.5 million of operating income. As a consequence of cost containment measures, we continue to see favorable trends in our cost structure." He concluded, "My focus as interim CEO is to evaluate and allocate resources consistent with a performance-driven approach to managing the business, while at the same time making sure that our products and the way we do business is aligned with our customers' requirement."


On April 29, 2009 PTC reported financial results for its second fiscal quarter ended April 4, 2009. Total revenue was $225 million, a drop of 12.6% from the $258 million in the same quarter a year earlier and a drop of 6.3% from the $240 million in the previous quarter. The $225 million in revenue was just exactly in the middle of the guidance range provided three months earlier. License revenue was $42 million or 19% of the total. This was a decline of 46% from the year ago quarter and a drop of 17% sequentially. Maintenance revenue was $123 million or 54% of total revenue, a 0.5% increase year-over-year and a 6.3% drop from the prior quarter. Service revenue was $61 million, a nearly 27% increase from the same quarter a year earlier and a 2.7% increase from the previous quarter.

On a geographic basis North America accounted for 35% of total revenue, Europe 40% and Asia Pacific for 25%. See Table 5.


Income from resellers was $57 million, down 16% year-over-year and down 12% sequentially. Direct revenue was $169 million or 75% of the total amount.

There were 965 new customers in the quarter compared to 1,115 a year earlier and 1,289 a quarter earlier.

Net income for the quarter was $7.18 million, a 61% decline from the $18.8 million twelve months ago, but a 54% increase from the $4.7 million in the prior quarter.

The net income for the quarter included a $10 million restructuring charge, $7 million of stock-based compensation expense, $9 million of acquisition-related intangible asset amortization expenses and $15 million of income tax adjustments.

On March 05, 2009 PTC announced that C. Richard Harrison had been named chairman of PTC’s board of directors. James Heppelmann was named president and chief operating officer, reporting to Mr. Harrison, who continues as chief executive officer. Noel Posternak, previously PTC’s chairman, remains a member of the Board of Directors and serves as PTC’s Lead Independent Director. All changes became effective March 4, 2009.

C. Richard Harrison, chairman and chief executive officer, commented, “On a constant currency and non-GAAP basis, our total Q2 revenue was down 10%, or approximately $25 million, compared to last year. While constant currency license revenue was down 44% in Q2, as expected, our results highlight our maintenance and services businesses, which both grew on a constant currency basis in Q2 and currently represent approximately 80% of our revenue base.”


On May 26, 2009 Siemens PLM Software announced Solid Edge® software with Synchronous Technology 2. This release is the second version of Solid Edge to incorporate Siemens PLM Software’s synchronous technology, a history-free, feature-based modeling capability.

Solid Edge is a core component of the Velocity Series™ portfolio and combines the speed and flexibility of direct modeling with the precise control of dimension-driven design. The latest release extends synchronous technology deeper in the product with improved part and assembly modeling as well as a new sheet metal application. With this release, Siemens PLM Software also announces a new built-in FEA tool and PDM integration leveraging the latest Microsoft SharePoint platforms. Solid Edge with synchronous technology 2 is scheduled to ship in the summer of 2009.

For more discussion about Siemens PLM Software’s “Synchronous Technology” and Autodesk’s plans for “Inventor Fusion Technology”, readers are invited to click on the URL below, which will take them to a blog entry on the COFES website published on February 11, 2009, entitled “Solid Progress…”:

http://cofes.com/Blogs/tabid/272/EntryId/210/Solid-Progress.aspx


G5 MCAD Vendor Stock Performances

By the end of the first calendar quarter of 2009, the combined stock prices of the G5 MCAD vendors had fallen in absolute terms some 40% year-over-year and almost 18% sequentially from the just previous quarter. On average the stock prices fell nearly 37% year-over-year and 16% relative to the just prior quarter. See Table 6 below for the bad news.

The stock prices of all the G5 MCAD vendors tumbled at least 30% year-over-year. The steepest decliner was MSC.Software at -58% followed by Autodesk at -52%. PTC dropped 40% while ANSYS and Dassault Systemes dropped over 30%.

Things were somewhat better sequentially but again all the MCAD stocks dropped by double digit percentages. ANSYS had the smallest percentage drop at nearly -11%. PTC was the largest decliner at -25% with Autodesk a close second at -22.5%.


The G5 MCAD stock performance compares to a year-over-year decline of 37% for the average of the major indexes and to a decline of 10.6% versus the previous quarter. See Table 7.


Figure 2 may tell the story best of all. See below.


The valuations of the G5 vendors have each improved over the last two months. See the chart below which compares Market Caps of each vendor on March 31, 2009 and May 26, 2009:


Forecast Guidance from Individual MCAD Providers

Of those MCAD vendors giving guidance for the next quarter, only ANSYS is projecting a revenue increase (+13.5%). Autodesk is the most pessimistic at -33%. Both Dassault Systemes and PTC forecast a drop of around -17%. See Table 8.


Comments? Feedback? Tell us what you think about this topic, or share any additional information you may have on the subject! Submit your comments to: Email Contact

About the Authors:

Since 1996, Dr. Russ Henke has been president of HENKE ASSOCIATES, a San Francisco Bay Area high-tech business & management consulting firm. The number of client companies for Henke Associates now numbers more than forty. During his corporate career, Henke operated sequentially on "both sides" of MCAE/MCAD and EDA, as a user and as a vendor. He's a veteran corporate executive from Cincinnati Milacron, SDRC, Schlumberger Applicon, Gould Electronics, ATP, and Mentor Graphics.

Henke is a Fellow of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) and served on the SME International Board of Directors. He is also a member of the IEEE and a Life Fellow of ASME International. In April 2006, Dr. Henke received the 2006 Lifetime Achievement Award from The CAD Society, presented by CAD Society president Jeff Rowe at COFES2006 in Scottsdale, AZ. In February 2007, Henke became affiliated with Cyon Research's select group of experts on business and technology issues as a Senior Analyst. This Cyon Research connection aids and supplements Henke's ongoing, independent consulting practice (HENKE ASSOCIATES).

An affiliate of the HENKE ASSOCIATES team since 2001, LA-based Dr. John R. (Jack) Horgan co-authored this May 2009 MCAD Industry Commentary. Dr. Horgan's prior corporate career has included executive positions at Applicon, Aries Technology, CADAM and MICROCADAM, as well as a stint at IBM. Dr. Horgan is also an editor of EDAcafé Weekly.

Since May 2003 the authors have now published a total of seventy-seven (77) independent articles on MCAD, PLM, EDA and Electronics IP on IBSystems' MCADCafè and EDACafè. Further information on HENKE ASSOCIATES, and URL's for past Commentaries, are available at http://www.henkeassociates.net. March 31, 2009 marked the 13th Anniversary of the founding of HENKE ASSOCIATES.