There has been a lot of speculation around here about what Microsoft and Dassault are going to announce. Most of the scuttlebutt falls into these categories:
• Dassault may make a commitment to “Longhorn;”
• A similar commitment to .Net, perhaps at the expense of IBM's WebSphere;
• Microsoft showcasing the technically savvy and complex Dassault as proof that the Microsoft technology strategy (fill in the blank) is fit for the toughest applications; or
• a fluff announcement that the companies agreeing that they will play nice together.
I have tried to get some direction from the players involved but they have remained fairly tight lipped - in any case - we only have to wait until Wednesday to hear the real announcement.
What is interesting is that several other things are happening in close proximity to this announcement. PTC announced that IBM will be hosting Windchill on a per-user subscription basis using IBM's On-Demand service center. [http://go.cadwire.net/?36571,1,1]
I expect that other Dassault competitors will be announcing similar agreements with IBM very soon.
Two and a half years ago I wrote an article in Engineering Automation Report that describing the changing relationship between IBM and Dassault [http://www.cadwire.net/to?EAReport/2002/July/IBM] . The gist of the article was that the Venn diagram of the business directions of IBM and Dassault, while extremely close, were not entirely congruent and with time, their paths seemed likely to drift so as to be even less congruent as time passes.
With developments like these, as well as Dassault's channel development, this trend looks to be strengthening.
Don’t get me wrong, the Venn diagram is still 98% overlapping. And the Dassault relationship drives about $2B of business for IBM. But what was once a very tight and exclusive relationship seems to be embarking in the direction of an “open marriage”.
Time will tell.
