Delcam getting out of dental business?

[Joe]

Has anyone else heard this?

 

[charles007]

I did last month...
True, or false, no clue

 

[Joe]

We've got two DentalMills that run off delcam and our distributor says this may be our last chance to upgrade before they stop supporting dental solutions. Maybe it's time to look at a new CAM solution.

 

[charles007]

Maybe another company will buy out their dental Cam division.

 

[cadfan]

Maybe another company will buy out their dental Cam division.

Depended how much money they get from Delcam

 

[KentPWalton]

It's true. They're no longer selling the Dentmill product, but they will continue to support customers that

do have Dentmill with service packages. I think it was a company decision based on the progress that the FDA is

starting to have in the dental field. That's just my 2 cents though.

 

[eyeloveteeth]

there's no way to move dentmill to something else?

 

[CoolHandLuke]

you mean re-integrate a different CAm program? oh that's plenty possible.

 

[cadfan]

in german to dent müll

 

[KentPWalton]

Sure you can...no problem...just purchase the software and get your

machines set up in that system and get properly trained on the new

software.

 

[oscar102624]

It's true

 

[eyeloveteeth]

so what's the big deal? sounds like a good time for CMC or CAP to tackle this and offer a subscription service

 

[KentPWalton]

I think it's a foreshadowing of what's going to take place in the future with the FDA and

the dental manufacturing worlds. The FDA doesn't have to bandwidth to be able to cover

all of the dental labs out there, so they started with the software that a majority of the

labs use. We've seen it already happen this year to 3Shape. In my opinion, it's just

now starting to roll down hill and Delcam has seen the writing on the wall. They've made

their choice it seems.

 

[French Cadman]

As it was written 7 years ago on my computer,
"it encountered a problem then it must close ...."

Never in the target but always nearby !

Au revoir Delcam !

Sincères condoléances !

 

[eyeloveteeth]

i love your posts...LOL

 

[EGE]

As a respect to the big community of Delcam dental CAD and CAM users, they should have made an official announcement. One year after the acquisition of Delcam by Autodesk for 280 M$, the management decided to stop the dental division. You are too small business for them and they don't even want to spend time to explain it to you who gave your confidence and $$$. Now either stuck with them or change...check us www.go2cam.net before making your decision. Small is beautiful.

 

[brayks]

Having been deeply associated with Delcam since 1994, I know this company, its products and people extremely well.

It's important to differentiate between Autodesk and Delcam here. Autodesk is a $2B publicly traded company that needs to meet projected revenue and profitably targets

The decision to exit the Dental business and the method by which the decision was announced to the public (and its own people) was a Autodesk decision. Based on Autodesk's behavior (relative to their at minimum, 50 or so acquisitions over the last 20 years),the way it was executed looks to be in classic Autodesk form.

A study in Mergers and Acquisitions theory and an knowledge of Autodesk's behavioral characteristics would lead one to believe the exit was based on the former (entirely on economics and the bottom line) and the details of the execution based on the latter.

My opinion is that Autodesk, being a publicly traded company needs to not only meet targets, but needs to make their stock attractive. With their current market capitalization being $12B and their revenue being around $2.5B, the market cap-to-revenue ratio would make Autodesk stock so overvalued many investors would stay clear.

Additionally Autodesk (like many software companies) looks to be moving in the direction of subscription and cloud based packaging/licensing. Dental applications have a significantly higher service content to them making the Dental vertical market a poor candidate for that corporate strategy to protect and realize steady, predictable growth.

So after looking at the revenue associated with the Delcam Dental product line and comparing it to the development, service, marketing, etc. costs and determining it is not a good candidate for the "New Paradigm" the decision was made to kill it.

Again, this is just my speculation, I have no inside knowledge of any kind; just one guy's thoughts. Who knows what the reasons or motivations are. Only a few know what's really going on; heck it could merely be an impulsive thing of some of the upper echelon...or not. The expression I once read: "never assume conspiracy when incompetence will do." comes to mind.

Relative to the way forward for existing DentMILL customers, I have many thoughts on this. Please contact me if interested.