BEAVERTON, Ore. -- Two of the best-known providers of Windows-based tools have assumed new identities through small, strategic acquisitions. OrCAD Inc. purchased the EDA Bridge component-management technology from Team Corp. (Oakville, Ontario), while PADS Software Inc. (Marlboro, Mass.) agreed to acquire signal-integrity analysis provider HyperLynx Inc. (Redmond, Wash).

While Team and HyperLynx offer very different products, both have pioneered Windows-based software in areas that have been dominated by expensive Unix-based tools. Team last year left its value-added reseller business to focus on component-information management systems, while HyperLynx has become the best-known provider of low-cost signal-integrity analysis tools.

For OrCAD, the EDA industry volume leader, the acquisition marks a significant turning point, said Mike Bosworth, president and chief executive officer. "We feel we have achieved what we set out to do, which was world leadership in desktop EDA," he said.

PADS Software, meanwhile, saw high-speed analysis tools as a requirement for competition in the board design market, said Richard Finigan, president. "It's strategic in that it removes our dependency on pc-board [CAD] alone," he added. Dataquest Inc. has forecast 13.7 percent compound annual growth for signal-integrity analysis tools over the next five years, compared to 9.3 percent for pc-board layout tools.

Each of the acquisitions is small, involving 11 people in the case of Team, and seven with HyperLynx. Financial terms were not disclosed for either purchase. The Team Corp. purchase is OrCAD's first as a public company. PADS is privately held.

Crossing the bridge
Strictly speaking, OrCAD did not acquire Team Corp.--it bought the company's only product and hired 11 of its 15 employees, including Team's president Ward Thomas.

EDA Bridge is a Windows-based component-information management product that works with schematic software from OrCAD and Viewlogic, and with board-layout systems from PADS Software and Cadence. Team recently announced a client/server implementation that links to corporate parts databases, including an interface to the CapsXpert database from Information Handling Services. EDA Bridge claims 2,500 licensees.

But the product is just one of three reasons Bosworth cited for the acquisition. The others are Team's distribution capability, and its connections to engineering and CAD managers who make larger purchasing decisions than the individual engineers who tend to buy OrCAD tools.

Thomas decided to sell Team, he said, because customers were demanding a tight integration with OrCAD tools. He emphasized that EDA Bridge will continue to work with software from other EDA vendors, and will add other interfaces "that make sense," even ones involving OrCAD competitors. Thomas will become general manager of OrCAD's new Enterprise Group.

PADS Software, a key OrCAD competitor in pc-board layout, had a falling out with Team, its former VAR, after Team started selling Cadence's Allegro software. Not many PADS users bought EDA Bridge, and ViewDatabook has taken away the demand for that product, Finigan said.

Finigan views his own acquisition as a logical follow-on to the technology and OEM agreements PADS has already signed with HyperLynx. About 35 percent of PADS customers are already using signal-integrity analysis, mostly from HyperLynx or from Viewlogic's Quad Design subsidiary, said Rick Almeida, vice president of product marketing at PADS.

Founded in 1988, HyperLynx was one of the first companies to offer signal integrity-analysis in the under-$10,000 range. HyperSuite, its most popular package, bundles pre-route and post-route analysis along with electromagnetic compliance checking; it costs $8,995 under Windows.

HyperLynx will remain a semi-autonomous subsidiary operating in Redmond, Wash. under its own name, and will maintain its existing OEM and technical relationships with other EDA vendors. Kellee Crisafulli, president of HyperLynx, will retain that title.

HyperLynx enjoyed 300-percent growth last year, said vice president of marketing Steve Kaufer, who declined to reveal HyperLynx's revenues or the size of its installed base. About 75 percent of its customers are engineers and 25 percent are pc-board designers, he said.

Representatives of Accel Technologies, OrCAD and Protel all said that low-cost signal integrity analysis hasn't yet seen a high demand. "Signal integrity is certainly an area that people talk about, but we haven't seen significant follow through," said Walt Foley, president of Accel Technologies (San Diego).

Protel (San Jose, Calif.) is a HyperLynx OEM, but that relationship "hasn't been a huge source of income," said president Bruce Edwards. Edwards said he wasn't sure what will happen with the Protel-HyperLynx relationship in light of the PADS purchase.

OrCAD's Bosworth said he didn't think the PADS purchase will have much impact, provided HyperLynx continues to partner with other companies. "After-the-fact analysis isn't what we've seen people go after," he said. "We've seen more people who want to build with constraint-driven design up front."

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