( SNUG 10 Item 15 ) --------------------------------------------- [03/26/10]
Subject: What 39 Synopsys RIVALS would change about Synopsys
FIVE MAIN CONCERNS: Sales arrogance, keeping innovation, not killing the
competition, and fixing the general EDA business model were all hot topics
for the Synopsys rivals -- with occassional "neutral" advice on which
specific technologies to 1.) buy, 2.) get out of, 3.) work on thrown in for
good measure. Some legit warnings with some self-serving bits mixed in.
A voodoo priestess formerly from New Orleans swaps your soul with
Aart de Geus, CEO of Synopsys. Even though you were a Synopsys
RIVAL before, *you* are now the CEO of Synopsys:
What 2 or 3 Synopsys things would you DEFINITELY change?
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I'd kill the arrogance of the Synopsys sales force. Customers
and partners definitely see it and are talking about it. It's
not good.
- [ An Anon non-SNPS EDA Employee ]
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1. If I were the CEO of SNPS I would definitely roll out a software as a
service (SAAS) business model. All of my customers (with the exception
of former Synplicity customers) are on a subscription license anyway,
and this gives us added licensing flexibility (pay per use, pay per
CPU cycle, pay per total runtime).
2. I would buy Magma for their DRC/LVS technology.
3. I would buy Mathworks to enhance our ESL capability.
- [ An Anon non-SNPS EDA Employee ]
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1. Change the current culture of arrogance towards customers.
2. Drive synergy between R&D groups to go beyond point tools.
3. Actually be "open" with formats, databases, and standards
instead of just claiming it
- [ An Anon non-SNPS EDA Employee ]
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a. Refocus their sales organization on value selling. Maybe if Synopsys
did this, others would follow???? Maybe not, but with Voodoo, anything
is possible.
b. As the dominant player in EDA, Synopsys is seen by its customers as
being arrogant. This is because, as the dominant player, they are less
willing to drop price and are arrogant in their approach to supporting
customers. The holding price part is good for the industry. I would
try to change the arrogant approach to supporting customers.
c. Increase private investment in new EDA companies. Tech innovation in
this industry is deteriorating due to lack of investment in start-ups.
- [ An Anon non-SNPS EDA Employee ]
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Get out of Verification IP, too much R&D, and not enough "pie" for another
player - especially if its limited to Synopsys verification flows.
Get out of Physical Design IP (PHY's) - too much R&D, too much dependency
on process technology (sell the tools for designing it, though.)
- [ An Anon non-SNPS EDA Employee ]
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Take away the arrogance associated with "Synopsys" - eliminate it.
Stick always with the truth and stay commited to true standards.
- [ An Anon non-SNPS EDA Employee ]
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1. Synopsys needs to listen to it's customers rather than telling them
how to do things. Unless you are one of the Top 10 customers,
Synopsys tends to say "well other customers don't do things this way".
Point is if you don't listen to your customers you eventually lose
your business. It's just a matter of time.
2. Synopsys has too many products with only a few driving the majority
of the revenue. They need to focus on their core businesses and do
those well and they would be far more profitable. Aart tends to keep
products/projects that aren't making around for far too long.
3. Synopsys is bloated with sales people. You can't have a meeting with
them without them bringing an army. Just isn't needed.
4. Although Aart denies it, Synopsys is willing to buy the business to
prevent small companies from getting in. When a customer goes for
this, they just hurt innovation in EDA.
5. Due to Synopsys' release structure means if you miss getting a bug
report in, it could be close to 18 months before you get a fix if it
all. This is of course if you aren't one of the Top 10 customers.
- [ An Anon non-SNPS EDA Employee ]
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Make Chi-Foon the CTO and hire an aggressive, ass-kicking COO. Their
hallways are full of acquisitions that have no unifying strategy. SNPS
needs some new blood at the top so that the difficult and sometimes
ruthless process of integration can get into high gear.
Replace the upper management of the Analog/Mixed Signal Group. The AMS
work is not developing the competitive threat to Cadence that it needs to.
Also recent management changes in this SNPS group make no sense at all.
Time for a new leader.
- [ An Anon non-SNPS EDA Employee ]
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ESL focus. After the two recent acquisitions, maybe this doesn't need
changing now. I think I can argue that they gained good control of the
front end with the acquisition of VCS, and cemented it with SystemVerilog.
That franchise has lasted 12 years, and is responsible for their
dominance of the industry. The front end will move up in abstraction,
which is all that ESL really means. By putting the right pieces together
now, Synopsys can dominate the next 5-10 years.
- [ An Anon non-SNPS EDA Employee ]
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SNPS is sitting on over a billion dollars in cash, in the ball park of
$10 per share. Their product line is relatively narrow compared to
Cadence and Mentor. If I were Aart, I'd go looking for acquisitions
that would move me out of my niche... or I'd do a monster buyback of
stock. But I sure wouldn't sit on that war chest...
- [ An Anon non-SNPS EDA Employee ]
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Crunch the dilapidating internal politics and infighting inside SNPS
sooner, they do get squashed eventually, but not soon enough.
- [ An Anon non-SNPS EDA Employee ]
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1. Worry less about trying to drive the competition out of business and
more about satisfying customer needs.
2. Abandon highly discounted "all you can eat" deals for the big guys in
favor of developing and sustaining best-in-class capabilities.
3. Stop trying to push inferior products into package deals and focus on
areas of strength.
- [ An Anon non-SNPS EDA Employee ]
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Abolish the "all-you-can-eat" deals. Cadence went after it, and look what
happened to them. It's bad for Synopsys, and surely bad for the industry.
- [ An Anon non-SNPS EDA Employee ]
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What I would change:
The EDA business model. This is very hard to do, but Synopsys is now in
a position to do it, if anyone can. The industry has to get paid based
on customer success, not license use. That means some sort of royalty
arrangement. The current business model of selling licenses works to
everyone's disadvantage. If I had a new tool that took no time to run
and it gave great results, the license model would result in getting no
revenue for it. Unless the business model changes, EDA has a dim future.
- [ An Anon non-SNPS EDA Employee ]
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Definitely change their turn around time. Some activities that could
be quick take too long.
- [ An Anon non-SNPS EDA Employee ]
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The number 1 thing I would change about Synopsys is to make it less
conservative. Synopsys has become very conservative in its product and
business strategy. They might be patting themselves on the back because
of the problems Cadence got into, but SNPS conservatism leaves major
opportunities for competitors. Their product road maps are very
incremental while their customers are struggling to meet the challenges
of designing and verifying 100M gate chips. The bigger the gap between
their customer's needs and what Synopsys can provide, the bigger the
opportunity for their competitors.
The other thing I would change is that as the EDA leader, Synopsys has a
responsibility to provide leadership to the entire EDA industry. Synopsys
has no vision of where EDA needs to go. All it pushes out are press
releases of what is in the next release of their existing product lines.
Finally if Synopsys has nothing exciting to say about EDA, it should find
growth opportunities outside EDA. Lots of companies like HP and Apple
have found growth by entering new businesses. Instead all Synopsys does
with the cash it generates is buy some of its stock back. Maybe it needs
leaders who can grow new businesses?
- [ An Anon non-SNPS EDA Employee ]
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Great idea! Certainly made me think a little. The challenge here was to
think in terms what changes will be good for Synopsys and NOT what changes
at Synopsys will be good for my company.
Adopt a ROI driven approach to products/solutions offered.
Basically, the EDA business model is all messed up. These volume deals
are not growing in size. At the same time, there are multiple products
being carried on the product list that are old pieces of software. These
are no longer providing quality value to the customer. The worse thing
is that continuous investment is required to keep these offerings alive.
I would recommend a ROI analysis to eliminate product offerings that are
not adding value, thereby reducing costs and improving profitability.
This will also increase the opportunities for the now endangered EDA
eco-system and, hopefully, will improve the health of the industry.
- [ An Anon non-SNPS EDA Employee ]
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Each the Big 4 needs to put a lot more effort into moving out of their
comfort zones. Not just by invading each other's spaces but by making
the whole space bigger. This means going out and finding lateral areas
to spread EDA into, e.g. what could be done to aid in the design of
solar panels, LEDs, MEMs, plastic semiconductors, biosensors, energy
harvesting etc etc where the EDA expertise that has been focussed on
high speed digital could be leveraged into new markets.
Only by doing this will EDA move out of being a stagnant pond.
- [ An Anon non-SNPS EDA Employee ]
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Stop their contribution to price erosion for entire EDA industry (and
denying it...)
Encourage stronger fab relationships.
- [ An Anon non-SNPS EDA Employee ]
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Test the water with customers to see when/if it'll be time to get revenue
closer to the value EDA provides, either through higher prices or
additional revenue from profit-sharing royalties (not royalties in lieu
of licensing, which is just yet another discount). As the number of
customers shrink, the volume per customer continues to skyrocket.
- [ An Anon non-SNPS EDA Employee ]
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There are too few opportunities for people to grow and advance - get rid
of the deadwood at the first and mid-management level
- [ An Anon non-SNPS EDA Employee ]
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The Synopsys Careers page. Way too hard for employees of other EDA firms
to find what they're looking for. Marketing category doesn't even exist.
- [ An Anon non-SNPS EDA Employee ]
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I were Aart, I'd listen to what the *customers* ask be done differently.
- [ An Anon non-SNPS EDA Employee ]
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