Dassault Set to Acquire RTT

As the year draws to a close, Dassault Systemes is making a move to acquire RTT, a visualization software powerhouse. When the transaction is completed, Dassault will own 84% controlling stakes in RTT's interest.

“Our clients express a growing need to fully exploit their 3D digital assets, to transform their marketing and sales as part of their ultimate customer experience. The people at RTT have demonstrated remarkable talents in delivering innovative solutions to their clients,” said Bernard Charlès, President & CEO of Dassault.

With its product DeltaGen, RTT offers CAD users a way to generate high-end visuals and work in ray-traced scenes interactively. The workflow is particularly attractive to the automotive industry, which seeks to replace physical mockups with digital models to cut cost. The company counts Fiat, Ford, GM, Harley-Davidson, and Mercedes Benz among its customers. The visuals in RTT software are realistic enough for many of its customers to rely on them for design review and decision making.

With DeltaPowerhouse, RTT dabbles in cloud-hosted rendering, targeting those who seek browser-based, on-demand solutions for visualization. Furthermore, the company continues to delve into augmented reality, by finding creative ways to project interactive digital models into physical environment. All these are areas where Dassault hopes to expand its market share. The acquisition of RTT gives the PLM giant a shortcut into these territories.

The two companies' emphasis on real-time visualization -- for example, Dassault's ongoing partnership with GPU maker NVIDIA to bring interactive ray-tracing to CATIA software, and RTT's partnership with NVIDIA to offer GPU-driven acceleration in DeltaGen -- makes their products complementary. RTT's technology also supports Dassault's vision to empower product design, sales, marketing, and decision making with widespread use of digital visualization.

One thorny conflict Dassault may have to manage is RTT's existing relationship with Siemens PLM Software, a major rival of Dassault. RTT currently offers DeltaGen for Teamcenter, a tailor-made visualization solution for those who use Siemens' Teamcenter software for data management. When asked to comment on the potential conflict during the investor conference call, Dassault's Charles replied, "It's not a risk. I see it as an opportunity.