Draft Sight of Monaco

LEDAS has in Monaco a good customer whiсh can probably become very good but so far asked me not to mention in my blog a name of the company. So I can only show you a fragment of the office which is not enough to detect which company I visited:).  Some people might think it's a mirrow. No, it's a picture:

We finished our morning discussions and went for a lunch:

Here is an interesting part of the lunch, Sicilian vine and (an invention of our creative host) an ice cream with raisins and rum:

I walked around the restaurant trying to detect whether a yatch of a Russian-UK billionaire Abramovitch is here:) :

A friend of our host, Michael Klotz, a German pilot (Frankfurt-Tokio-Frankfurt) lives in Monaco and manages a local helicopter company ready to provide you a high-level service:

The lunch was very nice. When we came back to the office, I needed some rest:

and then tried to work (don't understand how people can work hard in such environment):

Then there was a dinner. Again - wonderful wine, interesting dishes, ice-cream (for me - without rum), and again we were happy to meet Michael Klotz...

Well, a very fruitful 15-hours-long day in Monaco... 

Paris, May 25-26

Yes, it's Paris:

Francis BERNARD, founder of Dassault Systemes and father of CATIA lives and works in Paris. Now he is talking to Dmitry Ushakov, CEO LEDAS:

My small interview with Francis BERNARD is here.

For various reasons, not everybody with whom we had meetings in Paris wished to be mentioned in my travel posts. But Phil Shapiro agreed. Phil is a mature expert in АЕС/BIM and an international trainer/reseller of Rhino and Rhino plug-ins. Says Phil: RhinoWorks, it's cool! :

Fortunately, Vitaly Telerman also has no concerns about personal confidentiality. In old acadimic times, Vitaly contributed a lot into background of LEDAS team and its technologies. It's enough to mention that he was a scientific adviser of a student and post-graduate Dmitry Ushakov. For a long time, Vitaly lives in Paris:   

Some more pictures.

Jean and Michelle:

It's +25C but beer is not something you want to drink here in Paris. On the foreground, one can see a pigeon as a main dish: 

Cheese with a true-cheese smell:

LEDAS Visits Bricsys at Gent

Gent is not only a world known touristic and university center, it is also the place where www.bricsys.com has its headquaters. In his comparatively recent interview, Erik de Keyser, Bricsys Founder and CEO, mentioned "We have already a close collaboration with the LEDAS Company, based in Novosibirsk". Yesterday with LEDAS CEO Dmitry Ushakov and LEDAS Director R&D, Applications Alex Kazakov, I came to Gent to spend couple days to better understand what actually Erik meant:).

Of course I cannot so far publicly explain which projects we are doing together. What I can do, is to assure you that Bricsys is a good and effective prospective partner, its team is very qualified and experienced, its plans are very ambitious, its offices are very nice, and Gent - the town where Belgian part of Bricsys is operating is VERY attractive - see my post of yesterday. (Bricsys has external big teams in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, and in Romania. There are also team members in US, China, and other countries).

So take a look at some pictures of today.

In several important aspects of its life, Bricsys is following a precept for minimalist design by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe: Less is More:

Erik demonstates minimalism of the Bricsys offices (minimal presence of the employees is explained by after-week-end morning):

and in particular minimalism of his personal office:

This is a minimalistic kitchen:

This is Vondle - one of the key products:

And this is one of two girls-developers (In LEDAS in R&D we also have only two girls ):

The meeting starts:

Erik explains the prospects of Bricsys:

Luc de Batselier, CTO Bricsys, explains technological prospects of the company:

The meeting was continued during the dinner:

When the dinner was finished, environment around the restaurant looked like this: 

With Rebranded Aeroflot to Gent, Belgium

Recently, Aeroflot decided to become orange:

Gent is a well-known touristic and university center:

Canon "Crazy Greta": trying to climb: 

Sunday, sun, beer:

What is the Strength of LEDAS?

In the last month, LEDAS was happy about two events related to academic domain.

One of our young specialists and effective managers, Egor Ermolin (29) got his PhD in mathematics. His thesis is named "Collision Detection and Resolution on Polygonal Models". Note that the methods and algorithms considered in Egor's work take into account relevant laws of physics - the feature which positively distinguishes them from the methods today used in computer games and makes them especially valuable in digital prototyping within CAD domain. It's worth mentioning that Egor has had a choice: to get his PhD either in computer science or in mathematical modeling. Unfortunately, in Russia (don't know how about in other countries) to get a PhD in math is traditionally more difficult than in computer science. In particular, because pure mathematicians (who vote for the approval of PhD) are often suspicious against people who came from industrial software development. However Egor has chosen a more difficult way and has won.

From 16 to 20 May, i.e. in parallel with COFES 2011, Novosibirsk University, together with some institutes of the Novosibirsk Research Center and other respectable organizations, has held the 49th (!) International Scientific Student Conference called “Students and Innovation Process”. Ivan Sysoev (23) from LEDAS was awarded by the 1st Prize for his work "A System for Editing 3D-geometry Based on Geometrical Constraint Solver”. Ivan is an active member of the RhinoWorks team, his important contribution is about creating some key algorithms of automatic recognition and maintenance of design intent of a history-free 3D-model .

Note that previous generations of the LEDAS people also actively took part in the above mentioned conference, including Dmitry Ushakov, today the LEDAS CEO and scientific adviser of Egor and Ivan.

The strength of LEDAS is probably it its permanent ability to attract young talented people and effectively include them into creative activities that favor the progress of individuals and the whole team.

I believe that if a company wants to have clear competitive advantages in the market of science-intensive software development, or simplier - in the market of solving very hard software-related problems, then it must possess a strong and broad scientific competence in relevant domains. When we speak about CAD/PLM, this seems to me absolutely obvious. Later, I want to discuss this topic in more details.

ESI Group Presented Its Solutions in Siberia

This Thursday ESI Group held its seminar in Novosibirsk Research Campus (Akademgorodok, TechnoPark, and other...) - just in the very building where LEDAS has its offices. Akademgorodok includes dozens of hi-tech institutions and enterprises that can potentially become ESI customers and even - partners in development of new solutions. At the announcement you can see the agenda and catch the domain of ESI Group products and solutions:

About ESI Group (from the company web site):

   ESI has developed an extensive suite of coherent, industry-oriented applications to realistically simulate a product's behavior during testing and real life use; to refine manufacturing processes for desired product performance, and to evaluate the effect of the environment in which the product is deployed. ESI's products represent a unique collaborative and open environment for End-to-End Virtual Prototyping.

    The company employs over 750 high-level specialists worldwide covering more than 30 countries. As announced on March 14 2011, consolidated annual revenue saw purely organic annual growth of +12.1% to 84.2 million euro. License sales increased by +14.4% to 61.9 million euro, services sales were up +6.2% over the year as a whole, to 22.3 million.

    Among recent (April ) noticeable news:

- ESI Group acquires Comet Technology Corporation's IP, including "COMET Acoustics" software for low frequency noise and vibration modeling,

- ESI named Company of the Year by the FACC, Recognizing outstanding accomplishments at fostering French-American trade.

In his presentation, Mr Stanislav Vondracek, Sales Director East Europe (who is operating from Czech Republic, Plzen city, known as one of the world beer capitals), not only gave an excellent picture of offerings but also demonstrated an outstanding competence in mathematic background of ESI products which was especially appreciated by the audience mainly consisted of mathematicians and developers of science-intensive software. In particular, this was explained to me by Alexey Ershov, LEDAS CTO, PhD in math.

My interest for ESI Group and Stanislav's visit to Novosibirsk was substantially heated by the fact that Francis Bernard (co-founder and former President of Dassault Systemes, with whom LEDAS is for a long time having fruitful and pleasant contacts) is currently a Board Director of ESI Group. Alexey Ershov discussed with Mr Vondracek possible domains of cooperation and then I was pleased to meet Stanislav in my office.

Many years ago, in the framework of academic partnership, I have very many times been in Czech Republic and believe that this is one of the most emotionally pleasant places I have ever visited.

An overview of automakers’ PLM systems: Siemens PLM Connection and Russian TV

Yesterday automotiveIT.com published an overview of automakers’ PLM systems. It's interesting to compare a table and comments from this article:

with a slide recently demonstrated at Siemens PLM Connection 2011 as likely a proof of a full victory in a PLM-race in automobile industry:

.

isicad.ru in its news (in Russian) complements the automotiveIT overview by the following comment.   

    "We calculated the number of references of products from every PLM-vendor:
- Siemens PLM (NX, Teamcenter, Tecnomatix): 34 systems at 15 automobile companies
- Dassault Systemes (Catia, Enovia, Delmia): 21 --- at 12 
- PTC (Creo, Windchill): 7 --- at 5.

    Siemens PLM is actually the leader however Siemens PLM and Dassault Systemes have comparable number of customers. Moreover if we consider CAD domain, CATIA has 10 customers against 8 of NX and 5 of Creo. The slide from Siemens PLM Connections is of course not lies but its relation to the reality and selectivity can be compared with a news from today's Russian state TV".

I do not believe and do not insist that such technology of seleciton and presentation is a unique invention of Siemens or Russian TV:) 

Constraint-based parametric modeling with RhinoWorks from LEDAS: Webinar, June 8

What it's About
Register Now, Attend, and Get a $100 Discount on RhinoWorks 2.0 
  
The picture below is a fragment of the full cover from isicad.ru #81(Russian edition) which says "Rhinoceros is ploughing. RhinoWorks - Revolution in Direct Modeling" (NB: plough in colloquial Russian also means work very hard, ~ as a dog,...): 

250% annual growth of smartphone sales in Russia

A number of smartphones sold in Russia in Q1 2011 is about 1.5M while in Q1 2010 it was 0,6M.

Among the reasons: devices became cheaper (as considered in Russia:)), quality and set of services became much higher (there are at least three big and really competing providers).

In Q1 2011 average price of a smartphone was about 11 000 RUB (today ~ 400 USD).

Mobile Internet is today very popular. 

Nokia (Symbian) is definitely leading.

Source: VEDOMOSTI, May 4

Marina Korol is Responsible For All Autodesk Partners in a 15 000 km Region from Vladivostok to Cape Town

I think that any competent and honest actor of the Russian CAD/PLM market, regardless of his or her corporate affiliation, knows that Marina Korol is one of the avatars of not only of "Autodesk-in-CIS", but also of all the engineering software of the domestic industry. Those who do not know may agree with me after reading Marina's fascinating autobiography at the end of the interview just published on isicad.ru.

Marina Korol is Channel Development Manager, Emerging countries (Russia, CIS, Middle East, Africa, Mediterranean countries). This means that she is responsible for contacts with Autodesk partners from Vladivostok (close to Japan) to Cape Town (!). Saudi Arabia also belongs to this region but Marina could not so far get a visa to this country. Why? Marina mentioned this episode in a long interview which mainly gives a lot of detailed answers characterizing partnership policy of Autodesk, so I hope you will read it in Russian or in English (Google translation with a funny title).

I strongly recommend not to miss Marina's biography: it is not a standard reference, in a sense, it is a description of the history of the Russian CAD industry in Russia through the life and career of the individual. In my Russian blog, I mentioned that such biography can be naturally screened and asked who in such movie can play a role of Marina. One of the comments proposed Sharon Stone...

BWT, Korol in Russian means King.

How Extreme Sport Help in Organizing PTC Innovation Forums in Russia

All I ever heard about marketing managers (at least in Russia) proved my impression that they are the most busy people, constantly organizing something important, moving in space-time with cosmic speed. Last week I was lucky to interview Elena Krasnikova, Marketing Manager, PTC Russia, and this confirmed my impression once again. A formal reason for this interview was an invitation to isicad.ru to become the main information partner of the 7th (in Russia) Annual PTC Innovation Forum , but I also wanted to better understand the nature of work in marketing, difficulties, joy, motivation, etc.

In May-June the PTC Forums will be held in four cities of Russia and CIS: Elena gave a lot of details about their agenda, participants, and speakers. PTC plans to start distribution of localized Creo in Russia already in June. Besides the Forums we spoke about relationships with partners and competitors. Elena made her comments on a planned COFES-Russia-2012. It turned out, btw, that Elena is a fan of extreme sports...

This big interview was published in Russian, a Google translation is here.