Businessweek

efits to various levels of a company, enabling an organization to address the critical issues associated with simulation data, including backup and archival, traceability and audit trail, process automation, collaboration and capture of engineering expertise, and intellectual property protection. High-Performance Computing (HPC) The company's HPC product suite enables enhanced insight into product performance and improves the productivity of the design process. The HPC product suite delivers cross-physics parallel processing capabilities for the spectrum of the company's simulation software by supporting structural, fluids, thermal, and electromagnetic simulations in a single HPC solution. Geometry Interfaces The company offers geometry handling solutions for engineering simulation in an integrated environment with direct interfaces to all major CAD systems, support of additional readers and translators, and an integrated geometry modeler focused on analysis. Meshing The company's meshing technology provides a means to balance the requirements, obtaining the right mesh for each simulation in the automated way possible. Academic The company's academic product suite provides a portfolio of academic products based on various usage tiers, such as associate, research, and teaching. Each tier includes various noncommercial products that bundle a range of physics and advanced coupled field solver capabilities. The academic product suite provides entry-level tools intended for class demonstrations and hands-on instruction. The company also provides a low-cost, problem-size-limited product suitable for student use at home. Sales and Marketing The company distributes and supports its products through a global network of independent channel partners, as well as through its own direct sales offices. Strategic Alliances and Marketing Relationships The company has technical and marketing relationships with major CAD vendors, such as Autodesk, Inc.; Dassault Systèmes; Parametric Technology Corporation; and Siemens Product Lifecycle Management Software Inc., to provide direct links between products. The company also maintains marketing and software development relationships with major EDA software companies, including Cadence Design Systems, Inc.; Synopsys, Inc.; Mentor Graphics; Zuken; and Agilent. These relationships support transfer of data between electronics design and layout packages and the ANSYS electronics simulation portfolio. The company has established relationships with major suppliers of computer hardware, including Intel, AMD, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Dell, Cray, Mellanox, and other major regional resellers and system integrators. The company has a software license agreement with Livermore Software Technology Corporation (LSTC) whereby LSTC has provided LS-DYNA software for explicit dynamics solutions used in applications, such as crash test simulations in automotive and other industries. The company has a software license agreement with SpaceClaim Corporation that provides direct modeling geometry creation and editing capability through the ANSYS SpaceClaim Direct Modeler application, utilizing the open architecture of the ANSYS platform. The company also has a software license agreement with HBM that provides the advanced fatigue capabilities of nCode DesignLife, a durability software from HBM. Product Development The company's product development strategy centers on ongoing development and innovation of new technologies to increase productivity and to provide engineering simulation solutions that customers could integrate into enterprise-wide product lifecycle management systems. During 2012, the company completed various major product development activities and releases, such as the release of version 14.5 of ANSYS software; the release of ANSYS Academic Student; and the release of Apache's RedHawk-3DX. The company's total research and development expenses were $132.6 million in 2012. Seasonal Variations The company's business has experienced seasonality, including quarterly reductions in software sales resulting from the slowdown during the