Altium Acquires Octopart

[ncoonrod14]

Looks as if Octopart's role in Circuitmaker wasn't a coincidence...

http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/581946/altium-acquire-octopart/

http://hackaday.com/2015/08/14/octopart-and-altium-join-forces/

They've been partners for years, not a surprise this happened. 

[ajb]

Here's hoping they don't wind up closing down the publicly-accessible site.  Much as I'd like to see them use octopart's resources to improve AD's data management*, it'd be a shame to lose the site in more or less its current (ad supported?) state.

* not that I'll be holding my breath.

[ncoonrod14]

Here's hoping they don't wind up closing down the publicly-accessible site.  Much as I'd like to see them use octopart's resources to improve AD's data management*, it'd be a shame to lose the site in more or less its current (ad supported?) state.

* not that I'll be holding my breath.

Sounds Promising

Under the deal, Octopart will remain remain independent of Altium and operate out of their NYC office, and plans are for the part search engine to remain free and open.

[EEVblog]

Altium paid US$12M for Octopart & US$4M for Ciiva
Both companies combined only earned <$4M in revenue

http://www.altium.com/resources/investor-announcement/investor_presentation_august_2015.pdf

[John Coloccia]

I was actually looking for some sort of BOM management and cost analysis software. Ciiva came up.  I checked it out. I'm am so sick an tired of this cloud based data mining garbage. It analyzes the kinds of things you're purchasing so it can make recommendations to other people...and presumably will pester you with alternative recommendations too. Anonymous or not (and we all know it's only anonymous until it's not), I don't really see why I have any interest in helping my competitors source parts, especially the hard to find ones.

[rx8pilot]

Altium paid US$12M for Octopart & US$4M for Ciiva
Both companies combined only earned <$4M in revenue

http://www.altium.com/resources/investor-announcement/investor_presentation_august_2015.pdf

Makes sense. They are using the new math auto-valuation button on there calculators. I would love to sell my business for 10x its actual value. Curious what margin they had on the <$4M.

[John Coloccia]

How does Octopart make money, anyway? Do companies pay a fee to list there?

[EEVblog]

Makes sense. They are using the new math auto-valuation button on there calculators. I would love to sell my business for 10x its actual value. Curious what margin they had on the <$4M.

That's nothing.
IIRC Altium paid $3M (at the time in shares) for Morfik, and Morfik had a revenue of under $50k (yes, k).
Ironically, that gave the Morfik founder enough shares to eventually collude with the board to boot out his good mate Nick Martin who bought him out and saved his company. Now he's CEO of Altium and super rich. One of the best business plays I've ever seen BTW 
Actually, that's ultimately been good for Altium as a company.

[timofonic]

Promises...

They have some secret plan behind this, I'm sure.

At the end, the service will be part of the Altium cloud.

They'll excuse a sinner mind if restructuring to make the company more profitable

Are there an open alternative? Open Source code, Open Source data.

[tszaboo]

Altium paid US$12M for Octopart & US$4M for Ciiva
Both companies combined only earned <$4M in revenue

http://www.altium.com/resources/investor-announcement/investor_presentation_august_2015.pdf

But, you know, SYNERGY.

[timofonic]

Altium paid US$12M for Octopart & US$4M for Ciiva
Both companies combined only earned <$4M in revenue

http://www.altium.com/resources/investor-announcement/investor_presentation_august_2015.pdf

But, you know, SYNERGY.

Synergy, what a nice buzzword for monopoly of information and services. They'll be the best EDA suite with ready to use libraries, checked to be valid to major parts and State of the Art BOM generation better than today. But be sure to prepare your wallets!

I'm sure Cadence, Zuken and Mentor Graphics are going to make some strategic move after this.

I'm sure other major EDA shoguns are going to make similar strategical moves, providing State of The Art BOM generation totally  integrated in their EDA packages.

I wonder how Open Source EDA tools are going to compete against this. This is going to give tons of it disadvantages to smaller fishes in the long.

EDA CORE needs to become a reality, he situation could become a lot worse in the future with tons of vendor lock-in.  I think an important goal needs to be.

 A big parts database with a common format of:

- Checked component libraries from a dedicated team.
- Advanced taxonomy.
- Reusable schematics reusable on new designs using new and common parts.
- A manufacturer and distributor database of each component.
- 3D models, preferably in STEP format.
- Using Git plus some database format, based on sqlite out PostgresSQL (gEDA developers are brainstorming on this).

The future of EDA looks dystopian to me...


I wonder how Open Source EDA tools are going to complete against this. EDA CORE needs to become a reality, a big database with a common format of:

- Checked component libraries from a dedicated team.
- Advanced taxonomy.
- Reusable schematics reusable on new designs using new and common parts.
- A manufacturer and distributor database.
- Using Git plus some database format, based on sqlite out PostgresSQL (gEDA developers are brainstorming on this).

The future of EDA looks dystopian to me...

[miguelvp]

Altium paid US$12M for Octopart & US$4M for Ciiva
Both companies combined only earned <$4M in revenue

http://www.altium.com/resources/investor-announcement/investor_presentation_august_2015.pdf

What I read on the slide is:
The combined group revenue for Altium, Octopart & Ciiva for the last 12 months is $84M

Maybe only $4M is profit, maybe I missed the slide with that figure, but I couldn't find it, or did they change the slide?

Edit: never mind I got it now, it's all three combined and Altium contributed $80M, I guess I didn't get it at the time. Funny how they word it so it looks bigger!

[kc3ase]

Altium paid US$12M for Octopart & US$4M for Ciiva
Both companies combined only earned <$4M in revenue

http://www.altium.com/resources/investor-announcement/investor_presentation_august_2015.pdf

It's the data collection that's very valuable. Maybe one day, Digikey, will have a much more advanced database. On our new project I can't say how many times the search engine for parts is wrong, incomplete and many necessary search fields are missing.

[zapta]

Just tried Octopart for the first time and am very impressed. I uploaded a .csv BOM and it improved the cost significantly (compared to Digikey only which is what I used so far).  For example 10 units of LPC11U35FHI33/501 went down from  4.05 to 2.57.  An then, changing the quantity multiplier so so simple compared to Digikey. Very well done.

[timofonic]

Just tried Octopart for the first time and am very impressed. I uploaded a .csv BOM and it improved the cost significantly (compared to Digikey only which is what I used so far).  For example 10 units of LPC11U35FHI33/501 went down from  4.05 to 2.57.  An then, changing the quantity multiplier so so simple compared to Digikey. Very well done.

Use it while you can! I expect one year before some synergical restructurings happen.

[John Coloccia]

How does Octopart make money, anyway? Do companies pay a fee to list there?

Hmmm...so I guess no one else knows either?

Incidentally, I do agree with Zapta that it's very useful for parts I have to buy in quantity.  I was able to find Switchcraft 12B jacks that I normally pay about $1.50 for (that's in qtys > 100) for something ridiculous like $.78 at some overstock/clearance house. I bought them out. It's also great for ICs. For cheaper parts, like resistors and caps, I usually don't bother just because it takes so long to research the BOM, break it up among multiple suppliers, and then figure out if it's even worth it once I add in shipping.  It's not worth my time.  For expensive parts, say > $.10 or $.20 each, it's been working out better than I thought.

And yeah, I hope they don't synergize it into a steaming pile of garbage.