UGS: Billions in Grants

"UGS Grants $1 Billion in Software to Help the South Rebuild through Universities Across the Five States Directly Impacted by Last Year's Hurricanes Katrina and Rita"

With another press release from UGS announcing a billion dollars worth of granted software, I began to wonder about it. I checked through my archive of press releases:

- $13.2 Million Software Grant from UGS Enhances Human Factors Instruction at Binghamton University
- UGS Grants US$1.1 Billion in Software to Chinese Colleges and Universities; Value of Grants is Largest-ever Announced in China
- Hampton University to Receive $58 Million In-kind Software Grant from UGS for Architecture, Engineering Programs
- Ferris State University to Receive Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Software from UGS [commercial value of $21.8 million]
- Technology group makes largest-ever in-kind contribution to NMSU [$112.7 million in-kind donation of PLM software and hardware by General Motors, EDS, Sun Microsystems and UGS]
- UGS Signs Worldwide Partnership Agreement with F1 in Schools [value not stated]
-Jilin University partners with UGS to establish Digital Manufacturing Education Centers in Changchun and Zhuhai for Next Generation Automotive Engineers [The grant to JLU is being made through UGS Global Opportunities in Product Lifecycle Management initiative; commercial value of the in-kind grants is more than US$2 billion in 2004]

Here's a CAD vendor granting BILLIONS of dollars of software. UGS has a range of software prices, from free to NX's $20,000 (I think), with Solid Edge being around $5,000. Let's take an average commercial price of $7,000 -- that's 142,000 software packages per billion dollars.

What's the motive? The primary one is to seed education and other markets with UGS software. The theory is that school kids get used to using Solid Edge or NX, and then want to use it when they graduate. Frankly, I don't find the argument compelling. Graduates don't tell their bosses which CAD software to use.

Here's some other possible other motives:

+ UGS gets a huge tax write-off, important for a company that still over $1.5 billion in debt (due to the cost of its buyout from EDS). I've asked UGS PR for the charitable donation implication of donating billions of dollars of software, but did not hear back.

+ UGS gets to up the seat numbers. CAD vendors need to boast about how large their installed base is, and one way to drive up the numbers is to give software free to schools. They all do it. It's not untypical for a CAD vendor to have 60% of its total seats in schools, because schools are keen to get new software for free, or nearly free.

+ And UGS gets to issue feel-good press releases.

Comments

[Scott Hucke]

progeSOFT has been supplying free progeCAD IntelliCAD software to schools for some time. Can we claim Billions in Grants? No, but our software costs $260 retail and so we can't boast of $7000 a seat either. :-)
Any school in North America can apply at our free for schools page and receive not only AutoCAD DWG compatible software for their computer labs, but students can utilize the software at home for non-commercial use! Schools not located in North America can apply at www.progesoft.com
With the funding crisis in most North America School Districts it seems like a perfect fit. Students can get aquainted with the Industry Standard CAD platform while we get to send out some "feel good press releases"! Seems like a fair trade.

[Victor Ferreira]

Regarding your statement that "Graduates don't tell their bosses which CAD software to use" i wanted to say that sometimes they do, even if not directly. In my experience has CAD teacher in an University for 12 years i saw many architectural offices chosing what CAD to use in function of the available know-how. Here in Portugal the ateliers use "graduates" has Cad operators, and they don't stay for long (small salaries!)so many times the "boss" ends up using the software that the "working force" available knows. If every student knows how to use "X", it's easier to go along and don't "waste" money and time teaching them other brand (anyway they are not staying for long...)! That's why i think Cad software should be free to schools anyway.

[Stefan Boeykens]

Currently Graphisoft does the same with ArchiCAD. Schools and students have limited budgets. In a time where students need to learn several programs (CAD, 3D, DTP, WEB), instead of only one, free availability can be an important argument in choosing the applications to use.