Dassault Buying MatrixOne
Once again, I have been asleep at the wheel. I spent 2.5 years working closely with MatrixOne, helping create an ad hoc collaboration platform based on their core engine — and I don’t even notice the buzz going around about Dassault Systemes zooming in with a merger.
According to Sramana Mitra
MatrixOne, the provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) tools, is being acquired by France’s Dassault Systems in a cash deal valued at roughly $408 million.
The basis for the deal, besides consolidation, is Dassault’s motivation to diversify in segments other than Aerospace and Automotive, their main strongholds, as well as the fact that PLM is a higher growth market than CAD, Dassault’s mainstay.
Jason Wood does an excellent job of breaking down the deal, piece by piece:
MONE has been struggling as a stand alone company for years, and has allegedly been on the market for some time. On today’s conference call, Dassault CFO Thibault de Tersant acknowledged that it was a competitive bid…"It was an organized process, yes, with other bidders obviously."
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is a huge space, although most people in high-tech don’t know many details about the space. For those in the manufacturing sector, its the core technology used to collaborate on the creation of the electronics and hardware we use every day. It’s also used to organize massive teams to design and build things like, oh, say, fighter jets and the space shuttle. These tools are not your team-collaboration lightweights, and this is no small deal.
More on this deal from Red Herring and Reuters.
