How expensive will Solidworks get? And what about that cloud version?

Reporting on its Q3 financials, Dassault Systemes said that number of SolidWorks licenses sold fell by 6%, yet the revenues from the division rose by 6%. A financial analysts wondered how high the price will get -- and what the cloud plans are for SolidWorks.

Gerardus Vos (Barclays Capital): On the pricing of SolidWorks, it seems to be very strong in the third quarter. The pricing for your products are already at the higher end, if you compare it to the competition.

What gives you the ability to continue to push this up, and do you think these kind of rates are sustainable going into 2014 -- the rates of increase?

Thibault de Tersant: We are showing the value of the solution and the robustness of it by being able to increase the price per seat. Our plan is not to continue to increase it forever. We have done adjustments at the beginning of 2013, and these adjustments are the ones that you see today, in the average selling price of SolidWorks.

But the plan is not to continue to increase the price for the base product. The plan is to increase the portfolio for SolidWorks.

 

---

SolidWorks on the Cloud 

Unknown Analyst: So what are the plans for launching cloud for SolidWorks?

Bernard Charles: We are expanding SolidWorks -- what we call a user-centric PC-based, workstation activity -- so they can use this 3DExperience platform. And the plan is to have everything simultaneous [in the beta testing]. In fact, the customer tests going on now are going on for all application brands -- for SolidWorks, Delmia [and so on] -- because they are all based on 3DExperience platform.

So in January [2014], when we make it available for the PLM world or the 3DExperience world, it's going to be also available for SolidWorks.

New products of the SolidWorks family will take advantage of the 3DExperience platform online. And as a matter fact, since we introduced the customer test with 3DExperience last July, we also introduced this collaborative platform online -- I mean cloud -- for a certain number of SolidWorks customers.

We have a new product called Mechanical Conceptual, which is an add-on to SolidWorks, but should not be perceived as an add-on, it's much more than that. Because it's a way for a SolidWorks customer to use the cloud solution for collaboration, and connect with its own supply chain.

So this is an interesting evolution of how PC-based apps are becoming 3DExperience-powered on the cloud for an expanded scope of usage.

Source: http://seekingalpha.com/article/1768492-dassault-systemes-sa-management-discusses-q3-2013-results-earnings-call-transcript 

Comments

[JonBanquer]

I believe SolidWorks Mechanical Conceptual will be a very good product! What I don't like is that I see SolidWorks Mechanical Conceptual getting the powerful direct modeling tools that SolidWorks Corp. has for over ten years refused to add to legacy code SolidWorks. We can not blame Siemens for refusing to license Synchronous Technology as the sole reason for SolidWorks Corp refusing to add the needed direct modeling tools to legacy code SolidWorks.

Think about stuff like these facts for a moment:

Does it really make sense that SolidWorks latest 2014 release just got Bezier Curves? SolidWorks calls it a Style Spline. Other CADCAM products have had Bezier Curves for many years now!

How about all the ways SolidWorks has blown it with Sub-D modeling?

I can't wait to see what Belmont Technology has to offer because Jon Hirstick companies don't do business like DS/SolidWorks does. The best part is that Jon and his team learn from their mistakes and they are willing to take constructive criticism. For sure I've given it to them. :>)

DS/SolidWorks does not wish to deal with reality. Many of their quality employees have left and many of them are actively looking! SolidWorks 2014 looks like the first release in years that finally has gotten back to the business of fixing the many CAD areas that SolidWorks has lagged so badly in. One release like this from DS/SolidWorks isn't enough to change my mind. It's not even close to enough! Say the kind of truths I have written above on the SolidWorks Forum long enough and you will be banned. Too bad banning and censorship no longer work like it use to for CADCAM companies trying to hide from what they truly are/have become.

Jon Banquer
CADCAM Technology Leaders group on LinkedIn
Now at over 900 members strong and growing!

[Mark C.]

We also use Solidworks in my old company. We use it along with other expensive programs like CATIA and ANSYS. But we were able to cut back on the license cost by using software asset management tools. My former colleague uses Open iT ( www.openit.com )for monitoring license usage.He's an IT guy there, he's mainly using it for reporting and facilitating IT chargeback. They say the software also has license harvesting feature. I'm not sure if they have a free program, but i think they have free demo. Anyways the good thing about it is that, it works even without the license manager. Haven’t tried it yet, but i maybe evaluating the Open iT software soon. Will let you know if it works for me.