"We look forward to developing hi-tech industry in Russia": interview with Laurent Couillard, Dassault Systèmes

The number of industries Dassault Systemes is working in has increased from 4 to 11, because we have seen the demand for our solutions not only in such industries as automotive, aerospace, industrial equipment and shipbuilding, but also expressed by consumer goods, consumer packaged goods, life science, hi-tech, construction, energy and business processes in general. Now we are to deliver the whole portfolio of our solutions for those industries.

One of the reasons why we can address the demand is definitely business processes that we are supporting now with ENOVIA. Moreover we announced the extension of 4 to 11 industries, when we bought MatrixOne, which brought that environment.

We have no limitation on the solutions localization, so there is no reason why we shouldn’t go into the Russian market. Everything will depend on the demand, on whether it fits the development in Russia, or not. For example, we see energy sector developing a lot – that was mentioned in a presentation recently made to the Russian president. Energy is one of the new industries for DS, but we have already achieved good results and hope to proceed in the future with the energy sector development. We will definitely develop all the line of business here. The demand will be covered in Russia as in any other country.

ENOVIA V6 has two main aspects. It is robust and scalable. We have all the ingredients to deliver an online platform for ENOVIA V6 probably before the end of the year. The conditions and the type of services that will be delivered with ENOVIA V6 will be developed on time, when the announcement will be made.

These products have a great future.

There are two lines of business there. What we do is that is called professional solutions. That is SolidWorks, Cosmos and Enterprise PDM, which fits to a given market. Our strategy is always to go to the entry market with those professional solutions. And the entry market is still developing a lot, so we are growing, and there is no reason to quit this kind of business.

Then there is the second line of business mentioned here, that is ENOVIA SmarTeam that addresses a non-free level for small and midsize enterprise for the PLM, including the first lay of collaboration and multisite item based approach for the product development. We have about 8,000 customers running ENOVIA SmarTeam at the moment. So, there is no reason why we should stop all the development there.

The convergence of those solutions will be made upon V6 at a given point of time. Entry customers, the ones who are using SolidWorks and Enterprise PDM, will be able to grow on a higher level of collaboration and grow their environment to higher level of PLM will evolve to full PLM V6 platform, where SolidWorks could be connected to V6, or SolidWorks will exist in the environment of V6. And for those, who are working on ENOVIA SmarTeam with CATIA or SolidWorks, or in a multi-CAD environment again the decision to grow on V6 would be based on the collaborative aspect and the interest for the company to extend the business processes not only for engineering to manufacturing, but usually to other departments of the company.

There is no end of life defined for those kind of products. Every year the new releases are delivered in order to evolve, synchronize all the versions and make sure that partners and customers, who have invested in those technologies, get the best return on investment for the long term.

Let’s get back to the first question, where we are serving 11 vertical markets. In Russia we commonly had a four market structure: automotive, aerospace, industrial equipment and shipbuilding. But we see the energy sector growing a lot, probably construction will grow also, and we look forward to developing hi-tech industry in Russia. Globally it is difficult to say, which one is growing the most. I believe it depends on the maturity of the industry for the PLM-standpoint. Industries like construction are dealing with such issues as cost, delay, environment and these are prohibitions that PLM conserves. If we look at life science and pharmaceutical, the last cycle of the medicine is very complex, and very long. There is a lot of data to manage, a lot of virtualization of the environment to make and once again the level of maturity is medium, in terms of the capacity of the existing PLM. Which industry is going to grow the most? I think we’ll do our best to ensure 11 growing. But for sure some will grow quicker, and the fact that they are starting from low level will make more business for us.

The first challenge is to virtualize the product and to enable collaboration between the engineering and manufacturing and control versioning of the product development. That is the first level of PLM. And then, there is a second level of PLM, where from that virtual definition of the product information will be used across the company in order to accelerate again the development and the decision on the product. The main challenge is the customer communications to reorganize the processes and connect people that weren’t directly connected before for the purpose of accelerating the processes. This is to accelerate innovation development of every company.

By the way, we have made an acquisition in order to help people to search for the information in the company. That is Exalead (www.exalead.com), whose technologies are going exactly in the direction of helping companies to accelerate access to the information and develop new services inside.