Susan Smith On Nemetschek'sAcquisition of Graphisoft

In her newsletter, editor Susan Smith asks good questions about Nemetschek's shock acquisition of Graphisoft, questions like:

Will the three disparate software lines be integrated? No.

Then why acquire Graphisoft? (1) it makes us stronger in architecture (2) more revenue (3) ability to sell to into real estate industry.

Are you going to expand more into the USA? Into the whole world.

What is the overlap of customers between VectorWorks, allplan, and ArchiCAD? We don't know.

You can read the full questions and answers in AEC Weekly.

I think what drove the acquisition is Revit's recent and surprising strong performance after several years of floundering. Nemetschek hints at that when it says, "At the moment, we believe there are four important CAD platforms on the AEC market. Three of these come from Nemetschek -- Allplan, Archicad and Vectorworks."

Comments

[Wes Macaulay]

Revit's success is not surprising: once people figure out how to use it, they realize that there's no better way to work. Revit has long been ready for prime-time use but it's taken this long for the industry to build up a user base. Any software is valueless (to both developer and potential client firms) without knowledgeable users! Knowing how to use software is possible more valuable than the software itself...