| Type | Société Anonyme (Euronext: DSY) |
|---|---|
| Industry | Software |
| Founded | 1981 |
| Headquarters | Vélizy-Villacoublay, France |
| Key people | Bernard Charlès (President and CEO), Charles Edelstenne (Chairman) |
| Products | Product lifecycle management and 3D design software |
| Revenue | €1.564 billion (2010)[1] |
| Operating income | €322.0 million (2010)[1] |
| Profit | €220.5 million (2010)[1] |
| Total assets | €3.072 billion (end 2010)[1] |
| Total equity | €1.789 billion (end 2010)[1] |
| Employees | 9,020 (end 2010)[1] |
| Parent | Dassault Group |
| Website | www.3ds.com |
Dassault Systèmes S.A. (French pronunciation: [daˈso], Euronext: DSY) is a leading company specializing in 3D and PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) software.
Dassault Systèmes develops and markets PLM application software and services that support industrial processes and provide a 3D vision of the entire lifecycle of products from conception to maintenance to recycling. Its customers include companies in aerospace, automotive, construction, consumer goods, consumer packaged goods, energy, high-tech, industrial equipment, life sciences, shipbuilding and services industries.
Dassault Systèmes share is listed on the Euronext Paris stock market. 43.13% of the share is owned by Dassault Group. The company is headquartered in Vélizy-Villacoublay, located in the south-western suburbs of Paris, France.
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Dassault Systèmes was created in 1981 but really started in 1977 with 15 engineers of Avions Marcel Dassault who were in charge of helping the plane building process. While they were initially supposed to develop a 3D Computer-aided Design software (CATIA, then called CATI) to help designing planes only, the engineers brought it up to another level to provide help to other industry sectors.
At the end of 1980, the CATIA rumor reached the very top of the company and Marcel Dassault, then aged 88, asked for a demonstration of the software capabilities.[2] The company management understood the engineers’ vision and started to debate on how to leverage such an innovation. [3] They quickly realized they could not afford to keep and develop this invention internally and decided to create a new company to explore the Computer-aided Design and Computer-aided Manufacturing market (CAD/CAM).
Dassault Systèmes thus got started in 1981 with only one customer (Avions Marcel Dassault). They were only 25 engineers and didn’t know how to sell and market their product.[4] As a result, since the Dassault Group was one of IBM major clients in France, they negotiated a deal so that IBM markets CATIA. It was a non-exclusive, 50/50 revenue share agreement where CATIA would be sold by IBM as an IBM product. This deal had been extremely successful for both companies and it is considered as “one of the fundamental drivers of the Dassault Systèmes success story”. [5]
CATIA started getting noticed in other sectors than the initial plane manufacturing one mainly with the automotive sector (BMW, Mercedes and Honda). This was a step by step approach that was used to progressively address all the other industries such as consumer goods, machinery and shipbuilding. IBM also became a customer in the mid 1980’s and deployed CATIA in its engineering and manufacturing plants. [6]
Over the years, Dassault Systèmes improved its software and expanded to the US, Japan and Germany. This rapid growth triggered a chain of products, acquisitions, and partnerships beyond the company's core 3D CAD/CAM software and led to what is known today as Dassault Systèmes.
By the end of the 20th century, CAD/CAM had become too restrictive to identify the Dassault Systèmes products. Then, in the early 2000’s, it was replaced by PLM, the acronym for Product Lifecycle Management.[7] New brand names were added to address the full PLM spectrum: DELMIA to support the manufacturing plant, ENOVIA to support the collaboration internally and with the extended enterprise of customers, SIMULIA for Analysis and Simulation, SolidWorks for 3D modeling and 3Dvia for 3D visualization.
In 2007, along with the creation of the new brand 3DVIA, Dassault Systèmes started to get into online applications, what is now called PLM 2.0, as a reference to the Web 2.0. The company took advantages of the Internet possibilities and introduced online PLM with its Version 6 platform.[8] This strategy has been followed by many other acquisitions such as the 2011 Exalead purchase to dive deeper into Internet search technologies.
1981: Dassault Systèmes creation.
1992: Dassault Systèmes acquires CADAM, a 2-Dimensional CAD/CAM software from IBM and from it creates Dassault Systèmes Americas Corp.
1997: Dassault Systèmes acquires SolidWorks, developer of mechanical design solutions.[9]
1998: Dassault Systèmes purchases IBM Product Data Management (PDM) assets and establishes Enovia Corp.[10]
2000: the DELMIA brand is launched in order to address the digital manufacturing domain following a series of three acquisitions, including (i) Deneb Robotics, a U.S. company specialized in robotic simulation, (ii) Safework, a Canadian company specialized in human modeling technology, and (iii) EAI-DELTA, a German company specialized in manufacturing process management software. In the same year, Dassault Systèmes also acquires Spatial Technology, a U.S. company developing and selling software components, including ACIS.
2005: Dassault Systèmes acquires Abaqus Inc. [11] and from it creates the SIMULIA brand. On the same year it also acquires Virtools SA.
2006: Dassault Systèmes acquires MatrixOne Inc. to create the next generation of its ENOVIA brand.[12] On the same year, Dassault Systèmes also acquires Dynasim AB, a Swedish company specializing in modeling and simulation software for embedded systems, in connection with the development of its CATIA Systems strategy.
2007: Dassault Systèmes launches the 3DVIA brand. It also acquires Seemage,[13] a leader in the creation of 3D interactive product documentation, and from it launches the 3DVIA Composer product line. Virtools is added to the 3DVIA brand and becomes 3DVIA Virtools. On the same year, Dassault Systèmes also acquires ICEM Ltd, a UK company well known in the automotive industry for its styling, surface modeling and rendering software.
2010: Dassault Systèmes acquires Exalead Inc.[14] On the same year, it also acquires IBM's sales and support force (all support contracts and around 700 employees) for PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) software business
2011: Dassault Systèmes acquires Intercim LLC and Enguinity PLM.[15][16]
CATIA is Dassault Système's initial product(which stands for Computer Aided Three-dimensional Interactive Application). It is its PLM solution for 3D collaborative creation. CATIA addresses the product development process, from early product concept specification through product in service.
SolidWorks products span 3D mechanical design software, simulation, product data management and design communication and collaboration. They are generally offered as a suite of products, scaled to the customer’s needs. Customers can choose to add other SolidWorks products providing additional simulation and PDM capabilities. They are used by companies in the machinery, medical, consumer, mold, tool and die, electrical and power sectors and by suppliers to the aerospace and automotive industries.
DELMIA covers the Company’s PLM digital manufacturing software. It allows manufacturers to virtually define, plan, create, monitor and control all production processes, from the early process planning and assembly simulation to a complete definition of the production facility and equipment.
SIMULIA automates standard simulation processes, deploys them across organizations, distributes workloads across computing resources and manages the simulation results to improve collaborative decision making. It is designed to meet companies’ need for realistic product and process simulation software and to make realistic simulation more readily accessible through integrated and collaborative simulation applications.
ENOVIA provides the collaborative framework for the Company’s PLM software. It is an online environment that involves creators, collaborators and consumers in the product lifecycle.
3dvia’s objective is to bring 3D technology to new users, businesses and consumers. The Company’s 3DVIA portfolio includes, among other software: 3DLive, a suite of products designed to help individuals across the enterprise to search, navigate and collaborate in 3D in real-time over the Internet; 3DVIA Composer, which enables users to deliver assembly procedures, technical illustrations and marketing materials utilizing 3D images and other 3D data that remains consistent with product data. The Company also launched 3DVIA.com, a community Web site dedicated to 3D enthusiasts and digital content creators to showcase 3D interactive experiences.
Exalead is a global provider of information access software for the enterprise and the Web.
DraftSight is a 2D CAD program that is free to individuals that is compatible with the .DWG format. It runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX.
Passion for Innovation is a corporate patronage which aims at giving free access to Dassault Systèmes’ software to non-profit organizations and individuals.[17]
The program started with a disabled employee who couldn’t drive a sports car because of his physical issue.[18] He developed his own clutch idea but needed to test it virtually beforehand: driving with such a vital part of a car modified being very dangerous. He was granted a free access to CATIA and designed his idea which allowed him to eventually drive a sports car.
Such a story fomented the creation of Passion for Innovation and since then it helped on several projects such as Xplorair, Khufu or Ice Dream for example.[19][20][21]
Dassault Systèmes headquarters are in Vélizy-Villacoublay, located in the south-western suburbs of Paris, France. With most of its employees under 40, the actual number of buildings (4) and green areas (11.12 acres (45,000 m2)) within the complex, it is often referred as the Dassault Systèmes campus, an allusion to its look and feel. [22]
Each building is named after one of the four main elements (water, earth, air and fire) and these represent 57,000 square meters of office space. They house what is called the “LIVES” (Lifelike Immersive Virtual Experience Space) which is a demo center equipped with virtual reality technologies.[23]
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