Dassault Systèmes extends experience portfolio to high tech electronic enclosures

HT Body combines elements from various Dassault technologies. Selling solutions instead of products allows DS to pitch higher in the organization.

Dassault Systèmes has introduced another in its new series of “industry solutions” which combine elements from various parts of its deep technology portfolio. HT Body is designed to help electronics manufacturers accelerate the design and delivery of high-quality, differentiated enclosures and chassis of electronic devices, and to ensure the enclosure design process is closely coordinated with the development of the device interior.

Dassault Systèmes is pitching HT Body as a way to bring consumer input into the design of cutting-edge high-tech electronics enclosures. In this hypothetical example, the process of designing a helmet-mounted digital camera unites both supply and design chains. (Source: Dassault Systèmes via Business Wire)

HT Body is more of a dashboard than a production tool. It provides a real-time look at design information, consumer input, and internal communications related to the design process. Dassault describes HT Body as a way to capture and use all intellectual property, formal and informal, needed to fully inform “that first moment of truth” in design. Designers who currently use Catia or Simulia-based products would continue to do their work as before, but the results and the communications associated with their work are captured and organized in HT Body.

Our take

In essence, Dassault is offering a social media dashboard for creating high-tech electronics enclosures. Like other products in the 3D Experience line, Dassault is opening a new frontier for PLM by adding product development social communications as a trackable asset. This next level of product development software is the go-to-market justification for acquisitions such as Exalead and Netvibes, acquisitions that seems far afield from PLM to many market observers.

Packaging bits and pieces of the vast technology portfolio as “industry experiences” and “3D Experience” is consistent with how Dassault has always preferred to sell its products. The aim is to sell business transformation, not a set of engineering tools. The strategy allows Dassault to talk to the boardroom instead of the engineering team, with a promise of delivering a partnership for innovation as opposed to electronic toolboxes for manufacturing.

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