You say tomato, I say tomahto ... *

Dear Miss Marple

I am sure your letter written on July 5th got slightly mangled by the technology of the Internet. Had you traveled regularly around Britain by train, or traveled to Paris by Eurostar, I am sure you wouldn't have written that the train from San Francisco to San Jose was "speeding." Perhaps you were misled by the stream lining of the "Baby bullet" but you must agree that the best phrase for the Caltrain is "amble."

Also, I fear you should come back to England soon, before your vocabulary, as well as sense of speed, is totally corrupted. "Parking lot" indeed! *

Dick Selwood

Eagleware-Elanix, in one form or another, has been around for about 20 years. It was bootstrapped by the founders and initially run out of a basement. Now it has thousands of customers at thousands of sites. Does that conjure up visions of a garage * in Palo Alto?

Last week, Agilent announced it's purchasing Eagleware-Elanix and this week I had a chance to talk to several representatives of the players involved. In the process, I discovered that the HP Way is still alive and well – you just have to peer into Agilent and Eagleware-Elanix to see it.

Neil Martin is a Marketing and Services Manager and long-time Agilent employee. Prior to Agilent, he spent years at HP – the company of course from which Agilent descends. Todd Cutler, CEO at Eagleware-Elanix, spent many years at HP as well, prior to his stint at Eagleware-Elanix.

Neil and Todd are both likeable guys and clearly get along; it's a congeniality that's apparently going to continue even after the acquisition is completed over the next several days. It was a pleasure to talk to them.

I asked them why this acquisition and why now? They told me that there are lots of reasons: The two companies have a lot of customers in common. Those customers have frequently expressed interest in a closer alignment of the technology coming out of the two companies. A merging of the companies will permit and encourage a more seamless interface between the technologies. And most importantly, Agilent has a huge market channel worldwide. Eagleware-Elanix will benefit greatly from access to that channel.

Neil Martin and Todd Cutler are two people from two companies that are seemingly well matched – both in the attitudes of the personnel and in the complementary nature of the technologies. From the point of view of the companies, Agilent is a leader in the high-end high-frequency EDA tools and Eagleware-Elanix is noted for products that are easy to use and for technological leadership in tools for high-frequency design synthesis. Very complementary – and very complimentary!

The geographical match ain't too shabby, either. Eagleware-Elanix is based outside of Atlanta – luckily, there are Agilent facilities nearby. Eagleware-Elanix also has facilities in Westlake Village, CA – luckily, so does Agilent. As a result, the 40 Eagleware-Elanix employees will all become Agilent employees in one locale or the other.

So about that HP Way ... Again, I would suggest that despite many wistful reports to the contrary, it hasn't disappeared after all. The HP Way may no longer dominate the culture at the current incarnation of Hewlett Packard, but the DNA of the HP Way thrives at Agilent and Eagleware-Elanix.

How to characterize that DNA? You know as well I do – it's a DNA and culture that's about reality over posturing, serious engineering over glitz and glam, attention to customer need over company messaging, and a commitment to innovation that respects established technologies. Newly enhanced in that DNA, particularly in Agilent's case, is also an increased interest in partnering in pursuit of technical progress. This is all great stuff – if only that we could hear more of it out of the high-tech sector.

Neil told me that over the last 20 years, Agilent EEsof has only done 3 acquisitions. This is the third. So please note that this is not all about Business as Usual, in the worst EDA sense of the word – it's about doing things the HP Way, in the best sense of the word. Eagleware-Elanix customers can be assured that the acquired technology will not be shelved at Agilent as a thinly veiled move to put the competition out of business.

In fact, there's a big product release pending out of Eagleware-Elanix, and Todd is assuring his customers that the work towards that release goes forward unimpeded. It will not be slowed or hampered by the acquisition. I think the guys in the basement – or the garage – would have approved.

Summer reading – Part 1
Da Vinci Code, The Book *

Taking dreck to a new high-art form, this thankless excuse for literature is fascinating in its endless mediocrity. The writing is sophomoric, the plot twists ponderous, and the characters suspended somewhere between cartoon purgatory and super-hero hell. It's hard to believe the whole mess is being marketed as the hottest hardbound of the new millenium.

However, given that Da Vinci Code, The Movie * is apparently already in production, who am I to pile sacrilege on top of critical sanctimoniousness (is that a word?)

Look – do you need something to fill out that oversized bag you're taking to the beach? Do you have a short attention span and prefer your chapters to average around 4 pages in length? Have you been searching for that special summer reading that works at the same level of sophistication as, say, Jurassic Park? Well then, have I got the book for you!

And besides, it's fun, it's stupid, it's inane, and it's got a cult following – what more could you ask of a best seller? Oh, go read it!

Then, go jump in a lake!

Peter Feist has just been named CEO of SIGMA-C, a German-based EDA company. I had a chance to speak with him by phone recently – he was visiting Silicon Valley. He told me he joined the company about a year ago, after spending a significant amount of time in his career on the design side. This is a good thing – somebody's who's actually done design now leading a company that's providing tools for designers.

Peter's career has spanned geographies and technologies. He told me: "I'm an electrical engineer who started my career working in signal processing applications for Airbus. Then I joined LSI Logic as an applications engineer – they sent me to the U.S. for 2 years. Then I went back to Europe and then I came back to the U.S. for 9 years to work for a company that was doing gate arrays and FPGAs. That company was sold to Actel, so I joined Quicklogic working on processor integration into FPGAs. Then I went back to Germany and now I'm with SIGMA-C."

From this thumbnail sketch, one could presume that what Peter doesn't know about a) technology, b) life on both sides of the Atlantic, and c) frequent flier miles, probably isn't worth knowing. I asked him if it wasn't very useful to have his background, given his current role as CEO.

He said, "It's true that I bring complementary capabilities to this job. To be a CEO, you need organization skills, but you also need to [understand the technology] that your experts are working on. And, [it helps] to have experience in dealing with international companies. This company is based in Germany – our headquarters are in Munich – but we're often traveling in the U.S. We also have a subsidiary in Japan, so [my challenge] is to be sure that the company is well integrated across geographies and technologies."

"[Of course], it's also a challenge to be involved with a growing company. We need to integrate the different cultures of the various people who work for us. Also we need to [pay attention] to business issues that are project oriented versus product oriented. Our employees are definitely enthused about working for this company – and I'm enthused about working for a company with a strong and unique customer base."

"We have technology that covers the whole lithography process. We're trying to tear down the walls between designers and manufacturing by assuring customers that the models they're using are accurate. We work with customers – they need to explain to us what their issues are, and then we articulate a solution. It's complex technology, but we're seeing increasing reception in Korea, Japan, and the U.S. It's very rewarding to see the company grow this way."

"It's the CEO's job to travel – I'm in the U.S. at least six times a year, and in Asia at least four times each year – and to assure the customers that they can count on us. It's my job to build that trust. Then it's my job to take that experience and bring it back to the people in the company. Then it's all of our jobs together to be sure that the customer gets everything they've been promised."

Lucky SIGMA-C.

Summer reading – Part 2
e - A novel *

Not surprisingly, this literary bit was published back in the halcyon days of 2000. It's awash in all the zany optimism of the dawn of the new millenium.

Were you around between 1995 and 2000 and did you:

a) Work in the digital age?
b) Live in a cubicle?
c) Thrive on e-mail?
d) Traverse office politics?

Then this is the book for you – it's hilarious. It's also saucy, rude, riotous, and irreverent. The icing on the cake? It's British. It's also the closest parody I've seen to everything I saw when I was:

a) Working in the digital age,
b) Living in a cubicle,
c) Thriving on e-mail,
d) Traversing office politics ...

... way back in the days when dot.com was delicious, money was everywhere, we weren't at war, and anybody who'd been in a job longer than 18 months was a "legacy employee."

So go get this book, the sunscreen, a hat, some sunglasses, and a beer. Then head out to the beach and have some fun – you'll be a better person for it. I promise.

* Warning to Parents –
The book is rated X for sexual content, language, and some violence.

John Fleming is Senior Vice President and General Manager at MatrixOne's Electronic Business Unit. He's got 20+ years in marketing and sales with experience at both start-ups and larger companies in the software space. He's also a good guy, great to talk to, and very high on his company and their prospects for the future.

I talked to John on the phone a few weeks back. Here's what he told me:

"I run our electronics business. MatrixOne's been in business for over a decade with customers across a range of industry. High-tech represents about 25 percent of our customer base, so it's a relatively small part of our business. [Nonetheless], about two and a half years ago, we decided to help companies who make products with high electrical content in them. That's when we started our notable collaboration with Cadence."

"One of the keys [to that process] was our feeling that more and more of the content of electronics was being pushed to the chip level – customers needed better solutions control over their design data. That led to the partnership with Cadence, and what have been a pretty successful several years for MatrixOne."

"As you know, we acquired Synchronicity last year, which brought us some unique technology to help solve the data control problems for our customers. We got some great new employees [by way of the acquisition], people with excellent expertise in the industry, plus a terrific new customer base. Now we're seeing that 20 percent of our overall revenue is in the semiconductor industry – Synchronicity has definitely pushed that number!"

"Today, companies like Xilinx are using our products to help them bridge to their fabs – companies are seeing our technology as complementary to their internal capabilities. We've taken our traditional products for data control and project management and created [a portfolio] that's semiconductor specific and [crucial] to IP management. People are using our products for IP distribution, and internal and external IP catalogs. Fabless companies are also using our data structures to support DFM. We see the DFM guys focusing on the scientific part, but we don't see anybody focusing on how to move all of that data around."

Stay tuned. John and his compadres at MatrixOne have got that problem in their crosshairs. You should have them in yours.

Summer reading – Part 3
The Calligrapher *

My best friend growing up eventually went off and earned a PhD in English. Her thesis was based on a critique of the poetry of John Donne. For all the years since then, I've meant to sit down and plow through her thesis in hopes of better understanding why all the perennial hoopla about Donne and his work – tolling bells and islands notwithstanding. So imagine my delight when I got to kill two birds with one stone, in a manner of speaking.

In The Calligrapher, you can both savor an exquisitely written novel and also pause to ponder the poetry of Donne. This book is as literate as The Da Vinci Code is not, and as complex and dark as Donne's artistry is.

At face value, the story is simple and accessible – it's about obsession. But on closer inspection, I think it's far more than that.

It appears to be a modern re-telling of the philosophies and proclivities that informed Donne's work. Even more subtly, it seems to sketch a contemporary re-embodiment of the muse that drove Donne to his highest accomplishments and deepest despair.

This is not the book for the quick read, the sunscreen, the beer, or the beach. This is the book for the long summer evening and the chilled white wine. The language is tantalizing. The poetry sublime.

Park the dictionary next to the bottle and trust that, "Inconstancy unnaturally hath begot a constant habit."

After all, isn't that what summertime is all about?

Now, go jump in that lake!

* Sly & the Family Stone – circa 1969
* George and Ira Gershwin
* Car Park
* The Garage
* Dan Brown, 2003
* Starring Tom Hanks
* Matt Beaumont, 2000
* Edward Docx, 2003

August 12, 2005

Peggy Aycinena owns and operates EDA Confidential. She can be reached at peggy@aycinena.com

Copyright (c) 2005, Peggy Aycinena. All rights reserved.