Computer-aided engineering software supplier Viewlogic Systems Inc was in London last week to announce its arrival into Europe with a new holding company, and to make a series of product announcements. Marlborough, Massachusetts-based Viewlogic supplies the Workview series of computer-aided engineering tools for system, ASIC and analogue design; versions of Workview run under Unix on Sun Microsystems, DEC and the IBM RS/6000, and operate in the MS-DOS environment on IBM PS/2s and 80386-based machines. Viewlogic reckons its main competitors are firms such as Daisy Systems Corp that are also involved in computer aided design, and has for some time been making a concerted effort to promote itself as a company whose strength lies in its CAE-only specialism. Now, in the attempt to exploit the European computer aided design market, Viewlogic has used $4.5m of venture capital to set up Viewlogic Europe BV, which will have its manufacturing and distribution headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands, and run operations from Basingstoke, Hampshire; subsidiaries of the new company are being established in West Germany, France and Italy. Most of the venture capital for the new company comes from Netherlands-based Atlas Ventures, Genes of West Germany and French investors Partech; Atlas Ventures is the lead investor, and will be the largest shareholder in Viewlogic Europe. Revenues from Europe, which at the moment come through licensed distributors and OEM customers, are currently at $2.8m, and Kanti Purohit, president of Viewlogic Europe, is aiming to up this by 100% a year, with the final goal of having Europe account for 25% of Viewlogic’s total turnover; this, he admits, is bound to take some time, as sales in the US are presently increasing at some 60% a year. Purohit is intent on positioning the new company as a computer-aided engineering specialist supplier to large end-users such as Toshiba, IBM and Plessey, which are Viewlogic’s three largest customers at the moment, and is claiming that Viewlogic Europe will be strongly committed to local customer support – training centres have already been established in West Germany and France in addition to the main one in Basingstoke. Purohit also said Viewlogic Europe is on the look-out for more alliances to market its tools as part of silicon design and printed circuit board design packages. It is set to announce a variety of new products at the Design Automation Conference in Orlando, Florida: in the meantime it is shipping the latest version of its Workview series of computer aided design software. Release 4.0 includes a new analogue waveform generator, a logic synthesis tool and the ability to create schematics from synthesised logic. Workview Release 4.0 is also available in a network licensed environment. – Mark John
