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Dassault Systemes held their annual Analyst Event on October 8th & 9th in Boston. Bernard Charles kicked off the event with his customary visionary view of Dassault’s PLM solution strategy, future directions, and an overview of recent technologies, products, and services being offered by DS.

With a message of “Collaborative Innovation”, Charles’ vision was that of a pervasive 3D PLM environment that will enable all stakeholders in the product lifecycle to virtually imagine, share, and experience across and within this environment. Charles pointed out that the consumer will increase their influence on the market by having direct access to the product development process through virtualization and real time image marketing. Additionally, he maintained that intellectual property (IP) is the last remaining investment for companies to create value. He characterized the virtualization of concept, product, and market presence as a “First Life Experience”, verification of the physical world. He cited five primary industry trends that DS is responding to: 1) Virtualization, 2) Interaction, 3) Globalization, 4) IP Capitalization & Reuse, and 5) People Care.

As an extension to the DS vision of 3D from creator to consumer, Charles introduced the latest DS product, 3DVIA. The primary focus of 3DVIA is to offer a 3D virtual experience to the consumer domain of the product lifecycle. Within the context of the DS PLM innovation spiral, 3DVIA represents the consumer end of the product lifecycle that begins with concept, creation, and design of the virtual product (CATIA, Solidworks), virtual testing (SIMULIA), virtual collaboration (ENOVIA), through virtual production (DELMIA). 3DVIA completes the virtualization of all aspects of the product lifecycle from ideation to consumer experience where product development begins with the creator (imagine), through collaborators (share), to consumer (experience). The 3DVIA brand will be available on a software as services model with the intent to initiate 3DVIA online communities to enhance the consumer experience.

Pascal Daloz, Executive VP for Business Strategy presented an overview of the PLM market opportunity. Daloz projects the overall market opportunities for PLM through 2011 to be around $67B with a growth rate of around 2.5 percent. He projects the addressable market for DS to be $14B with a forecast of $1.9B in revenues for DS by 2011, at a robust 15 percent growth rate. Both Daloz and Charles noted that their customers were focusing more on their business processes rather than enterprise software boundaries created by ERP, SCM, and CRM suppliers. DS clearly sees a more direct link between their PLM design/build solutions and production operations.

Dassault Systemes’ growth model is divided into three specific strategies: 1) Cover their core industry verticals of Automotive, Aerospace & Defense, Heavy Equipment, and Industrial Fabrication & Machinery; 2) Expand their growth markets of High-Tech & Consumer Package Goods (CPG); and 3) Penetrate emerging markets of Life Sciences, Shipbuilding, Power & Process, and Architecture & Construction.

A notable acquisition announced at this event was Seemage, a 3D product documentation and publishing solution set that fits in well with the DS V5 environment and overall 3D strategy of 3DVIA and ENOVIA 3DLive. This acquisition positions DS well in the PLM market sector of content management and will provide 3D documentation, product maintenance, service bulletins, technical training, and marketing and sales. It will be available to customers with 3DVIA online product documentation authoring and broadcasting services.

Dassault highlighted major enhancements and upgrades for the entire V5 environment with the R18 release for the CATIA, ENOVIA, and DELMIA brands. The common thread across all domains of V5 and the R18 release was leveraging 3D as a universal medium to provide design/build PLM information to all the stakeholders and participants involved in the product lifecycle. R18 for CATIA provided more than 300 new enhancements and upgrades for product design. This included PLM Express, a V5 PLM solution set targeted to the fit the needs of the small to medium sized companies (SMB), in terms of functionality, cost, and platform footprint. The intent is to offer tailored PLM solutions that are simple, affordable, and powerful. PLM express would be organized into six common job related roles across eight industrial verticals (A&D, Auto, Shipbuilding, High-Tech, CPG, Power& Process, and Industrial Fabrication & Machinery).

ENOVIA CEO, Joel Lemke, presented an overview of Dassault’s collaborative PDM brand. ENOVIA provides an enterprise wide collaborative design/build/support/maintain environment through the combination of ENOVIA Smarteam (targeted to the SMB space), ENOVIA MatrixOne, and ENOVIA VPLM. ENOVIA 3DLive provides a common 3D-based platform for search, navigation, and design/build collaboration for product development and production processes. Lemke reported that ENOVIA is expanding successfully into new markets, such as Apparel & Retail, High-Tech & Telecommunications, Semiconductor, and Consumer Products.

Patrick Michel, VP of DELMIA Solutions, highlighted the current state of the Digital Manufacturing market and the adoption of this technology by several industrial verticals. DELMIA has been well established in the A&D and Automotive space, and is penetrating several other industries including Shipbuilding, Power & Process, and Architecture & Construction where companies are successfully leveraging DELMIA’s 3D simulation capabilities. DELMIA covers all aspects of the manufacturing process, which includes complete integration with product design models, process & production planning, factory concept & layout, 3D work instructions, workstation ergonomics, robotic simulation, workflow simulation, quality assurance simulation, and automation & controls simulation and validation.

DELMIA appears to be well positioned in response to the current trend of merging mechanical and controls design, brought to the forefront with the recent acquisition of UGS by Siemens A&D. Dassault is responding to this situation with the DELMIA Automation Platform which enables control engineers to accurately simulate controls design and logic for production systems, generate control code, and virtually validate the control process. They have partnered with automation suppliers such as Schneider Electric, Omron, Fanuc, Rockwell Automation, Honeywell, Emerson, ABB, and Mitsubishi to enable their Automation Platform to work with these suppliers’ automation products.

At the recent DELMIA Users Conference held in Dearborn Michigan, a common theme was the significant value of virtual commissioning by manufacturers in the implementation and launching of new production lines and workstations. Manufacturers are realizing significant savings in terms of time to launch and cost where they are able to virtually design, validate, and commission production systems prior to product launch.

Overall, the 2007 Dassault Systemes Analyst Event was comprehensive and covered all the DS PLM products across the V5 environment. They appear to be progressing well in their vision of a pervasive and collaborative 3D experience extending from product concept and design, through manufacturing and automation, product documentation and support, to the consumer.