lectronics industry solution provider expanding portfolio into mechanical simulation and analysis solutions.
On Wednesday, 28 June 2023, Keysight Technologies, Inc. announced its intention to acquire the entire share capital of ESI Group SA. ESI Group SA is celebrating its 50th year of existence this year and has a broad range of virtual prototyping solutions for automotive and aerospace end markets.
While Keysight is a relative unknown in the traditional Simulation and Analysis software industry as tracked by CIMdata, they do in fact provide software solutions for electronics design, development, and validation based on their PathWave portfolio (https://www.keysight.com/us/en/products/software.html). This acquisition is part of their strategy to provide more complete software-centric solutions to their current customers as well as customers in new industry segments. Automotive industry solutions should be an area in which the combined companies will find the most synergies in terms of customers, but future solution portfolios can be expected to address Keysight’s strengths in EDA applied across a broad set of verticals including aerospace, defense, space systems, and high-tech electronics.
CIMdata is not all surprised by this Keysight acquisition and sees it as continuation of the trend in convergence of mechanical design and electronics systems design domains, particularly in the strategic role of simulation and analysis applications. The acquisition of ESI by Keysight is one of a series of recent acquisitions and partnerships in the mechanical CAD/CAE domain undertaken by traditional EDA software providers including Cadence, Synopsys, and Zuken. CIMdata expects that this trend will continue with the ever expanding need for smart products, interconnected systems in the world of Industry 4.0, and simulation driven systems engineering processes such as MBSE.