Enabling ESI’s Virtual Prototyping solutions for Cloud/SaaS offering

• Launching a powerful catalyst to democratize end-to-end virtual product development
• Responding to a strong demand for Cloud, On-demand products and services driven by the digital ‘Smart Factory’ paradigm and lower cost of ownership
• An opportunity to win the SME market with an offer at minimal transactional costs
• A progressive roll-out through a flexible adaptive business strategy

PARIS — (BUSINESS WIRE) — April 15, 2015 — Alain de Rouvray, ESI Group’s (Paris: ESI) Chairman and CEO states: “Riding the accelerated transformational wave of Information & Communications Technologies (ICT), Ciespace’s leading edge CAE Cloud based modeling tool will provide ESI with a quantum leap in its Go-to-Market strategy. Enabling a full Cloud/SaaS offering of our Virtual Prototyping solutions will create considerable additional value to our existing and future customers; substantially lowering the cost of ownership and the need for in-house expertise. The flexibility and affordability of the Cloud/SaaS business model is expected to progressively attract new types of technical SME users, beyond the traditional community of CAE specialists. Furthermore Ciespace’s high caliber engineering team will bring to ESI its advanced knowledge and proven experience in both CAE and Cloud technologies. The operation is well aligned with ESI’s strategy to “enable Virtual Prototyping for all”. After an initial integration phase, this acquisition should strongly accelerate the generation of new customers with an offer at minimal transactional costs.”

The Ciespace platform is a result of many years of pioneering development. It is the first commercially available CAE Cloud solution with modeling capabilities built entirely on an open, web services platform. It was intended from its inception to deliver a new paradigm of engineering design and analysis solutions by seamlessly leveraging the potential of the Cloud. This highly innovative approach addresses critical technical challenges and delivers a full CAE solution under a Cloud/SaaS model; namely, scalable High Performance Computing (HPC), multi-tenant architecture, open application framework, real-time collaboration, browser based visualization, and a high level of web security. Combining Ciespace’s Cloud technology with ESI Group end-to-end ‘Art of CAE Modeling’ will enable a new disruptive paradigm to transform how products are developed and manufactured in the engineering world. It will also allow ESI Group to easily and rapidly roll out all its offering on a Cloud platform accessible through the web on mobile and desktop devices.

Launching a powerful catalyst to democratize end-to-end virtual product development

This acquisition will also enable a new way to develop and deliver cost effective and reliable digital modeling for CAE solutions. The value of Ciespace’s technology and its collaborative approach will accelerate the democratization of CAE to all engineers and designers and gradually to non-technical users in both small and large enterprises.

Ciespace’s team of high level engineers will be integrated under the leadership of its most qualified and renowned CTO, Dr. Sanjay Choudhry, who will ensure the successful transfer and exposure of ESI’s virtual prototyping and modeling technologies and domain expertise on Ciespace’s engineering Cloud platform.

“Our team is very proud to be joining ESI Group as we share the same passion for innovation and technological excellence through the “Art of digital Modeling”. By leveraging ESI’s worldwide distribution and development network, Ciespace’s technology will be expanded and spread worldwide and in many new industrial sectors. We are confident numerous customers and prospects will appreciate the tremendous added value that will come from this combination of best in class physics, modeling and Cloud platform.” states Sanjay Choudhry.

Responding to a strong demand for Cloud, On-demand products and services driven by the digital ‘Smart Factory’ paradigm and lower cost of ownership

The digital ‘smart’ factory is expected to help manufacturers boost their competitiveness by rationalizing development costs, times and expertise, without sacrificing innovation. To pursue this goal, the key leverage is to re-think all the development processes to achieve a single digital model that is easily accessible and widely sharable in the Cloud. All engineers and technicians involved in each of the product development phases (design, simulation & analysis, prototyping and testing) should be able to collaborate and observe the impact of their iterative improvements within the framework of a holistic and highly accelerated interactive solution.

Adapting a Cloud/SaaS model for its products deployment will create for ESI a unique opportunity to grow its business with its current customers by expanding the number of active users from a limited number of CAE specialists to the much broader set of engineers, technicians, designers, marketers and others working simultaneously on the product development model.

An opportunity to win the SME market with an offer at minimal transactional costs