Product Strategy

  The Company feels that the CAD component of an engineering workstation will succeed only if it meets the following criteria:

• It must run on the hardware the purchaser selects. The computer will not be primarily selected for the software; the software will be selected for the computer. Standard, hardware-independent software almost always supplants software tied to proprietary hardware.

• It must work with the other software components of the workstation. The workstation can deliver its promised productivity only if all the software forms an integrated design tool, as opposed to a set of distinct applications. The displacement of separate business application programs with integrated packages foreshadows this trend.

• It must be extensible and adaptable to the user's environment. No software vendor can anticipate the needs of all users, nor expend the effort to optimally customise the package for all applications. Instead, by providing users the appropriate tools, intelligent users or systems houses will do this in the field.

• The software must support third party vendors who wish to build applications based upon it. Open architecture systems usually displace vendor-controlled systems.

• The software must be general purpose and have no designed-in limits not imposed by the computer hardware itself. Users make a large investment in learning a package. They would rather spend 10% more time learning one package that meets all their needs than learn four packages which must be combined to solve the same problems.

• The software must communicate with mainframe computers and the corporate databases they contain. The engineering workstation does not exist in isolation. Designers work together, exchanging data, especially on large projects which can be managed only on mainframe systems. Also, large installed CAD systems benefit from the offloading of work which can be done effectively on desktop machines.

• The purchaser must be confident the software will continue to be available on new machines. A user makes a large investment learning a CAD package and adds to that investment with every project completed. Users must be guaranteed they will not have to learn a new system or throw away their drawings done on the old system when new hardware is selected.

• The system must be easy to learn and provide on-line assistance. Full time drafters have the time to attend multi-week training courses in CAD. Engineers and architects don't.

   

• The engineering and design business is of worldwide scope. To compete in the international market, a package must be available in the native languages of its users. People won't learn English to use a computer program.

The Company's products have been designed to meet all these criteria.