Comment & Analysis
Simulation software company MSC celebrates its 50 year anniversary this year. At its annual user conference at the Heritage Motor Centre in Gaydon, Warwickshire, the company’s president and chief executive Dominic Gallello waxed lyrical about its heritage.
Viewed by many as one of first software companies to exist in the world, the company was formed in 1963. In 1965 it was awarded a contract from Nasa to perform structural analysis on computers for the Saturn V rocket for the moon landing. The code from the research was available in public domain, but when MSC went on to commercialise the Nastran software in 1971, it assumed a leadership position in the CAE simulation market for decades to come.
It’s easy to understate the importance of simulation software like Nastran, in the way it has shaped the engineering design process and ultimately society. Nasa itself put the value at $10 billion in 2003. For industry veteran Gallello, speaking to the audience of slightly pale simulation software users, there is plenty of opportunity for hyperbole on stage.
Starting with the moon landing, he describes the software’s influence through fifty years of products, ending his presentation with the triumphant landing of the Curiousity Rover on Mars using the Skycrane system. “It’s been a remarkable fifty years,” he enthuses. “Developing new engineering methods with our customers is what makes us a great company. When engineers create something that never existed before there’s a story behind it, and that’s also the story of MSC.”
He’s only slightly off-beat with the audience, most of whom are die-hard MSC users who use the company’s software every working day of their lives. Speaking to some of them, it’s clear that the software hasn’t changed much in the last decade. Indeed, even a complete novice such as myself can notice that the user interface looks out-dated by today's slick standards elsewhere in the engineering software industry.
And this is the reason the users have attended. Competition in the simulation space of CAE is fiercer than ever before, with products such as Simpack encroaching on the market that MSC has had cornered so effectively for the last fifty years. MSC software has promised to disclose details of its response, a secret codenamed project, to its loyal customer base in the UK at the event.
Three years ago, MSC Software was bought by US private equity firm Symphony Technology. Analysts expected the company and its products to be broken up and sold, but instead Gallello was recruited to head up the company. Updates to the software since 2010 have been more substantial than in the past, but still have not addressed the software’s fundamental issues.
We were shown the results of the project and suffice to say there is a big surprise coming to users of MSC’s simulation software. In CAE terms, a game-changing shift that most would agree is long overdue.
However you won’t learn about it from this blog post. As a proviso of attending the conference, I had to sign an embargo – the company wants to test it with its biggest clients over the next few months before officially rolling the software out. If this enough to pique your interest, more can be found here, where you can register for more information.
From the MSC Software Users Conference 2013, it’s clear that its 50 years of use makes the software relevant today. But its also clear Gallello and the rest of MSC Software are pinning their hopes that their latest project keeps it relevant for the next 50 years too.