Agile announced today, 3 February 2005, the acquisition of Cimmetry Systems. CIMdata believes that this acquisition will have a positive impact on both Agile and Cimmetry as well as on the overall visualization tool market. By this acquisition, Agile has clearly demonstrated their view of the importance of visual collaboration as a key component of a full PLM solution. They have committed to both incorporating Cimmetry’s technologies and knowledge base into Agile’s suite of offerings, and to maintaining Cimmetry as an independent business operation. Cimmetry will continue to build and develop its supplier and partner relationships with a wide-ranging set of companies throughout the industry; companies that utilize the Cimmetry suite of technologies in their own offerings – this includes many companies that are direct competitors of Agile.
We have been supporters of the concept that product data visualization is a key technology that rapidly delivers very substantial benefits to companies when implemented in as part of a PLM strategy. When combined with real-time collaboration, those benefits grow and accrue to the extended enterprise of partners and customers as well. Agile’s move is consistent with this belief, and represents their commitment to more fully incorporating these technologies into their own offerings. In addition, Cimmetry’s knowledge and skills in this arena should prove valuable to Agile in future development and evolution of their technology offerings.
Cimmetry Systems has been a major independent supplier of visual collaboration solutions for many years and has created a strong product suite and built a large customer base. In addition to providing viewing of hundreds of 2D and 3D CAD and document formats, Cimmetry has recently added viewing of ECAD data. In addition, their product suite provides the ability to combine components created in different mechanical CAD and ECAD systems into unified digital mockups that allow analysis of the complete physical product. Their support for ECAD data viewing and analysis fits very well with Agile’s historical presence in the high-tech and electronics industries. The intent to maintain Cimmetry’s product development organization should assure that the technology advances that have been accomplished over the past several years will continue.
Agile has been a reseller of Cimmetry’s products for a number of years. We expect Cimmetry’s growth to be further invigorated by the market presence, sales force, and financial resources that Agile will provide as well as further leveraging Cimmetry’s strong set of channel partners. One of Agile’s early challenges will be to demonstrate their commitment to maintaining Cimmetry’s relationships with its current partners, especially those partners that are direct competitors of Agile. As with all acquisitions, the proof is in the execution. We look forward to future growth as both parties take advantage of the synergies inherent in this acquisition.
