> You also will learn how the top vendors are doing their VeriBest :) > to drive prices up and how there are no new entrants
And that in the face of the rising Free and/or Open Source phenomenon. Sometimes I get the feeling that it's just a last-minute money grab: Grab all the cash you can while you can, because [Software Industry] Judgment Day is coming soon. But the escalting cash grabs are causing people to look harder for alternatives. Analogy: it's like teetering on the edge of a cliff. The harder you try to jump backwards to safety, the more force you exert on the crumbling cliff edge... I have not tried, nor do I endorse any of the alternative products, but there are low cost alternatives such a Eagle, Boardmaker, etc. And I saw an ad for another low cost EDA package last week, AutoTrax. IIRC, that was the forerunner to Protel. It seems to be a separate product by a different company (Kovac Software) now. I don't know how it compares to Protel in terms of features and design capacity (i.e. how big a design it can handle). But you can get it for $95. Yeah, that's right, 1/100th the price of Protel. Now that's what I call The Right Price! Of course, at that price, the revenue from the product cannot support a large hierachical organization. And that shows the obsolesence of the old "big company" business model as it pertains to the Software Industry. I think that in many niche tech businesses, when a company gets big enough to go public, it's too big for the targeted market. And Electronics EDA is a niche business. > I don't know how many people Altium has but these days $12 mil > gross revenue is not a huge number for an international going > enterprise Why does it have to be huge? Good things come from small businesses too. Being profitable is the most important thing. I like to joke to my stock broker and banker relatives that Bagotronix was more profitable than amazon.com, MCI Worldcom, Invensys, and Xerox all put together last year ;-) That said, I like Protel 99SE. It's a good EDA package in general, and could use some bug fixes (SP7). But it's way more expensive than it should be, IMO. And so is it's successor (DXP), and it's "competition". Best regards, Ivan Baggett Bagotronix Inc. website: www.bagotronix.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dennis Saputelli" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Protel EDA Forum" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, November 01, 2003 1:03 PM Subject: Re: [PEDA] State of PCB (aka EDA) tool business > for those interested in such things... > > i just read a very interesting article in > EETIMES magazine Oct 27 2003 (an actual paper printed copy) > "Gentrification hits pcb tools" > > Among many other things they show a chart (source: Gartner Dataquest) > > "TOP 20 pcb/MCM/hybrid software companies 1996 vs. 2002" > > http://img.cmpnet.com/eet/news/03/october/NF1293_TABLE.gif > > as you can see and as they also point out the gap between > #3 and #4 in 2002 is HUGE > > You also will learn how the top vendors are doing their VeriBest :) > to drive prices up and how there are no new entrants > > I don't know how many people Altium has but these days $12 mil > gross revenue is not a huge number for an international going > enterprise > > ominous sub headings > "Consolidation squeezes board tools" > > also some interesting history re CCT & Orcad acquisitions > > full article link > http://www.eedesign.com/story/OEG20031027S0069 > > Altium may be able to sit at this level but it seems to me > that a more likely scenario involves the ongoing > dramas of swallow or be swallowed > > Dennis Saputelli > > ========= send only plain text please! - no HTML ========== > _______________________________________________________________________ > Integrated Controls, Inc. www.integratedcontrolsinc.com > 2851 21st Street tel: 415-647-0480 > San Francisco, CA 94110 fax: 415-647-3003 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * To post a message: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * To leave this list visit: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/leave.html * * Contact the list manager: * mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * Forum Guidelines Rules: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/forumrules.html * * Browse or Search previous postings: * http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
