Morning coffee: SofTech partners, Bentley sells, World Cup & more

I still need to bring you up to speed on what I learned at HxGN Live, Hexagon’s user conference; at a session on hand-held laser scanners hosted by DotProduct and in the briefings squeezed into rare days in the office between trips. And I will. But, right now, it’s time for some headlines.

It’s the Economy …

Economic news is, in general, depressing. Even when it’s good, someone will pipe up with a comment about how it used to be better, how it is better in some other geo/industry/demographic … More of the same this week. In an article today, USA Today says that consumer spending fell 0.1% in May and 0.2% in April, mostly on health care and utilities, but household spending was weak, too. Why does this matter? When Americans don’t spend on discretionary items, the economy could tip into a weaker cycle with slowing production.

Japan, according to the BBC, saw consumer prices rise at an annual rate of 3.4% in May, the fastest pace in 32 years, and the 12 month of increasing prices. In most countries this would be a bad thing but in Japan, which has seen deflation for almost two decades, these price increases are seen as a way to re-ignite growth.

In sort-of-economic news, the US Supreme Court last week ruled that Aereo, the Internet provider of local television feeds, is too much like a cable TV provider to continue to operate without paying broadcasters for the right to retransmit their signals. While the Supreme Court ruling’s language is clear, with Justice Breyer writing,

We have not considered whether the public performance right is infringed when the user of a service pays primarily for something other than the transmission of copyrighted works, such as the remote storage of content” and “In addition, an entity does not transmit to the public if it does not transmit to a substantial number of people outside of a family and its social circle.”

some commentators feel that other cloud services could be at risk. “Remote storage of content” and “substantial” should keep a lot of lawyers busy for a while.

PLMish Deals, Earnings and Other News

SofTech announced that it received $1.3 million in new capital from EssigPR, Inc. and its primary owner, Joseph P. Daly. In addition, EssigPR is loaning SofTech $750,000. Softech expects to use these funds to repurchase shares and retire $1 million of short term debt. SofTech and Essig also entered into a partnership to market and deliver some of Essig’s specialized services to SofTech’s clients. Who, you ask, is Essig? According to the announcement, Essig was founded in 1993 to provide thermal and structural analysis to GE Aviation. SofTech CEO Joe Mullaney explains, “Essig is a world-class engineering services-only company that has been delivering their solutions to some of the largest manufacturing companies in the world for more than two decades. To be able to team with them to market and deliver those same solutions to our clients has the potential to strengthen our position in those accounts and increase our revenue and profitability.”

Bentley Systems, which often makes news for acquiring, recently announced that it sold the Aladon Network to Marius Basson, a Network member. Aladon is a community of reliability professionals whose members are certified by Aladon as “practitioners” and “facilitators” of advanced equipment reliability methodologies. Bentley acquired Aladon in 2012 with its purchase of Ivara. Sandra DiMatteo, Bentley’s Director, Applications Advantage, Asset Management & Operations told me that Bentley sees itself “more as a technology provider, and less as an impassioned owner, administrator and evangelist for Aladon … Bentley will continue to be the technology provider to the Aladon Network for RCM2 strategy tools.” Details of the transaction were not released.

Links of the Week

Are you paying attention to the World Cup? Yes, even with diving, biting, incredible heat and far too many empty seats, it’s still fun to be watching the same game as a big chunk of the rest of the world. We’ve even got a couple more PLMish tie-ins to report on:

Siemens PLM has a simulator that you can download and play with — apparently, cheering helps. The simulator shows that “Brazil has the highest probability of winning the world cup with 22.3% followed by Germany with 16.4% …. [the simulator] does not have good news for team USA.” Bummer.

Finally, this challenge from Autodesk: the TinkerCup. TinkerCAD, acquired by Autodesk a couple of years ago, created 32 penguins, one per qualifying World Cup team. Kids can use the penguins in designs to show support for their favorite team. Designs required, 3D printing seems optional. Check out these entries!

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That’s it for now. Have a great week! Go USA — prove that simulator wrong!