June 22nd, 2009 - Dassault Systèmes (DS) (Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA), a world leader in 3D and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions and blueKiwi Software, pioneer of Enterprise Social Software, today announced a strategic alliance. As part of the agreement, blueKiwi Software will benefit from Dassault Systèmes’ technology and wordwide presence. Dassault Systèmes has also taken a minority stake in blueKiwi Software.
Today, blueKiwis’ proven software platform helps manage secure social networks with partners, customers and colleagues. Its software-as-a-service offering brings a flexible and cost-efficient solution to customers while integrating familiar Web 2.0 services, such as wikis, blogs, forums, RSS and tagging.
The blueKiwi conversation-centric solution perfectly complements Dassault Systèmes’ Social Innovation vision and V6 platform: The use of social networking in the professional world will revolutionize the way people work and interact. Today’s announcement illustrates Dassault Systèmes’ and blueKiwis’ joint believe in Social Innovation as a new way for industries to transform their business, improve performance and achieve sustainable development. A recent Gartner report confirmed this tendency as it forecasts the enterprise social software market to grow by 24.4% throughout 2010.
PLM Analyst Jim Brown, President Tech-Clarity confirms: “Social computing and Web 2.0 capabilities draw more innovative ideas and people into your product innovation, product development, and engineering processes. Social computing capabilities like chat, presence detection, threaded discussion and unified communication can help better enable companies to collaborate.”
“The current business environment reveals a growing disconnect between consumer requirements and available products, between employees and their companies. The new consumer buying behavior, as well as different employee working experiences, create new needs and require businesses to adapt. Social Innovation is about connecting individuals, ideas and virtual experiences, and leveraging social networking capabilities. We have imagined online services in order to connect both worlds, thus enabling people to become participants in the innovation processes, either in their role as a consumer or as an employee.” said Bernard Charlès, President and CEO, Dassault Systemes. “blueKiwi technology facilitates business social networking by using simple and easy-to-implement tools. We have been using blueKiwi technology in our own company and are happy to support its motivated and professional team.”
“Dassault Systèmes is for us a strong partner in many ways,” said Carlos Diaz, president and CEO, blueKiwi Software. “Not only do we share the same vision but we are also confident that Dassault Systèmes’ expertise in 3D and its global presence will help us democratize this technology across all sorts of industries and businesses wordwide.”
###
About blueKiwi Software
blueKiwi Software is the leading European provider of Enterprise Social Software. The solution enables people-centric organizations to create powerful and secure professional networks where employees, partners and customers can share conversations, ideas, skills, resources and best practice with one another. blueKiwi promotes a culture of collaboration and openness that helps businesses of any sizes increase their sales productivity, foster new ideas and increase staff satisfaction and retention. With operations in France and United Kingdom, the company has a track record of successfully enabling social and business networking for some of Europe’s leading companies.
www.bluekiwi-software.com
About Dassault Systèmes
As a world leader in 3D and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions, Dassault Systèmes brings value to more than 100,000 customers in 80 countries. A pioneer in the 3D software market since 1981, Dassault Systèmes develops and markets PLM application software and services that support industrial processes and provide a 3D vision of the entire lifecycle of products from conception to maintenance to recycling. The Dassault Systèmes portfolio consists of CATIA for designing the virtual product - SolidWorks for 3D mechanical design - DELMIA for virtual production - SIMULIA for virtual testing - ENOVIA for global collaborative lifecycle management, and 3DVIA for online 3D lifelike experiences. Dassault Systèmes’ shares are listed on Euronext Paris (#13065, DSY.PA) and Dassault Systèmes’ ADRs may be traded on the US Over-The-Counter (OTC) market (DASTY). For more information, visit
http://www.3ds.com.
CATIA, DELMIA, ENOVIA, SIMULIA, SolidWorks and 3D VIA are registered trademarks of Dassault Systèmes or its subsidiaries in the US and/or other countries.