In May and June this year Cadence issued 9 press releases each month, which felt to me like the right amount of “newsworthy” items.
After withdrawing their hostile bid for Mentor in August it seems like Cadence has returned to press releases with a fury. Here it’s only the 10th of September and Cadence has already issued 9 press releases, that’s almost one a day. At this rate we’re going to see a record of 20+ for the month.
What do you think?
Is this too much news?
I was intrigued by the Software as a Service (SaaS) release because it appears to offer more tools for a short period of time at a lower price than leasing or time-based-licensing. Smaller companies should be attracted to that kind of deal while larger companies tend to protect the location of their IC designs.
Maybe the flurry of PR is because CDNLive (Cadence conference) is this week?
On a related note, Cadence has been getting a lot more web-savvy with their Cadence Community, etc. I wrote about it in a
blog post.
John,
Let’s see what happens with CDNLive is over, that should reduce the clutter.
Cadence does have a wide community however it is sparsely commented on in the Custom IC design category that I watch. I’m wondering if Cadence customers “get it” yet?
Company communities … I’ve been asked several times in the last few months about why these communities just don’t take off. And I’ve been asked by PR firms for some of the largest players in both EDA and semicon world. Company communities have their place, but they are no a substitute for the larger company-agnostics sites. Most folks don’t want to be tied to a specific company site for their blogs. But more on this topic next week. Stay tuned
Thanks Daniel. I had missed the Cadence Saas announcement until you mentioned it here. That is, as you say, the most intriguing move by Cadence.
I had predicted that this was going to happen eventually, but did not think this soon. Customers are demanding more licensing flexibility, and this is just a reflection of the overall trend towards cloud computing and SaaS business models.
It should be interesting to see how/if Synopsys responds since they have had their own hosted infrastructure (DSA) and design environment (Pilot) for several years. Still, they need to be willing to adopt a SaaS business model vs. longer term deals and consider the impact on revenue. More on that on my blog.
Harry,
The SaaS offering from Synopsys seems to have gone dormant or been de-emphasized.
Hi Daniel,
As you know, SaaS is one of those terms that can have different meanings. As I view SaaS, most often, the licensing model is pay-per-use(PPU). I could not find anywhere specifically and unambiguously that the Cadence offering includes pay-per-use pricing, but let’s assume it does.
Short of pay-per-use pricing, Synopsys has implemented the SaaS model for some of its customers on a tactical basis. The real question is if Synopsys is ready to embrace PPU pricing with mainstream customers with all it’s potential ramifications on revenue. The other pieces (DSA and Pilot) are in place and more customer proven.