Design

Simulation

ESI Group Acquires Analytical Numerical CAE Software

Early development scientific and engineering programming language, Scilab, comes to ESI users.

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Virtual prototyping solutions company ESI Group has announced its acquisition of Scilab Enterprises. Scilab Enterprises is best known for its publication of Scilab, the open-source alternative to MATLAB. Scilab is a multiplatform analytical numerical computation software and scientific and engineering programming language. It currently has over 1 million engineering users and development partners in industry and education. The presence of Scilab in the educational community worldwide is expected to increase ESI’s footprint in that sphere.

Figure 1: Scilab coding environment.(Image courtesy of Scilab Enterprises.)

Figure 1: Scilab coding environment.(Image courtesy of Scilab Enterprises.)

The acquisition of Scilab expands ESI Group’s footprint in the product pre-design stage and early analytical phase. This builds on ESI’s acquisition of ITI and its SimulationX (0D-1D) system modeling software last year. These expansions are part of ESI Group’s focus on front loading the power of computer modeling to everyone involved in the product development process.

“This acquisition fits perfectly with ESI Group’s technology investment strategy,” Vincent Chaillou, ESI Group’s COO said.“It is aligned with our objective to expand our user base to include all stakeholders involved in the industrial product creation process, starting from the earliest stages of analytical modeling. It paves the way towards the more elaborate 3D-4D numerical simulations of the full virtual prototyping and eventually of the all-encompassing “immersive virtual engineering” transformative solutions of Industry 4.0.”

In addition to publishing Scilab and offering Scilab consulting services, Scilab Enterprises offers Scilab Cloud for the web deployment in software as a service (SaaS) mode of scientific and engineering applications. This enables organizations and individuals to publish and manage the web-based use of their Scilab applications.

Scilab can also serve as a single scientific and technical computing platform. Scilab Enterprises now offers a scientific and technological “platform as a service” (PaaS) to enable public and private enterprises, as well as individual engineers and scientists, to monetize applications written in different programming languages by facilitating their distribution, backup and use.

“We are very enthusiastic about joining ESI, a numerical simulation and virtual prototyping global leader, to bring Scilab to a wider range of industrial, academic and research players,” Raphaël Auphan, CEO of Scilab Enterprises, said.“Our shared vision will provide the engineering community with the latest generation of analytical solutions to meet current and future numerical simulation challenges.”


Written by

Erin Winick Anthony

Erin Winick Anthony is the founder of STEAM Power Media, a science communication company focused on digital storytelling. She holds a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Florida, and uses her technical background to serve as a translator between scientists, engineers, and the public. She previously worked as a science communication specialist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center for the International Space Station where she was awarded NASA’s Silver Snoopy, and as a reporter for MIT Technology Review. You can find her on social media @erinwinick sharing space, science, and pinball content.