Dassault Systèmes to acquire MatrixOne

3D CAD and PLM (product lifecycle managment) software giant Dassault Systèmes is to acquire loss-making PLM rival MatrixOne for $408 million in cash. It’s yet another chapter in the saga of consolidation that’s rampant among the big enterprise level software developers and implementers across ERP and PLM systems. The deal won’t complete until around the end of this year, but has been approved by both companies’ boards of directors. It means that Dassault’s existing top end Enovia and lower end Smarteam PLM offerings now get a powerful mid range addition, albeit in need of technical rationalisation for ongoing support and integrated R&D. That done, the company will be able to expand faster into the mid-market collaborative engineering tools and systems market where MatrixOne plays – and particularly into the high tech, consumer products and medical devices industries. Some 850 companies and hundreds of thousands of users currently work with MatrixOne solutions, including Alcatel, Celestica, GAP, General Electric, IBM, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Nokia, Philips, Procter & Gamble, Qualcomm, Sony Ericsson, ST Microelectronics and Toshiba. Bernard Charlès, Dassault Systèmes’ president and CEO, says: “The acquisition of MatrixOne will extend our reach, enabling us to bring the value of PLM to a significantly expanded audience across a broader range of industries. The combination will enable a new level of collaboration and will leverage the best-in-class technologies, products and skills of both companies.” He claims “significant benefits” for customers, partners and employees across the companies and systems. “We will be well positioned to offer customers the most advanced vision and most comprehensive offering in the marketplace,” he insists. And Mark O’Connell, MatrixOne president and CEO, is unsurprisingly similarly upbeat: “Together we will extend our technologies, industry solutions and deep understanding of our customers to enable them to maximize their new product innovations,” he says.