News : engineering

Dezineforce appoints new CEO

Robyn — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 14:08:00 GMT

Dezineforce has announced the appointment of George Shanks as its new CEO. Shanks brings with him a wealth of experience, which will further enhance that of the strong executive team built by Dr Peter Collins who assumes the role of commercial director and will continue to serve on the board.

Shanks joins Dezineforce at an exciting time. The company recently launched a plug-and-play appliance version of its on-demand cloud based engineering design optimisation and decision support suite. This product launch has created significant opportunities in both new and existing markets by giving engineering companies an alternative, on-site way of accessing the unique capabilities of the Dezineforce solution.

Shanks has over 25 years’ experience building successful companies. In 1998 he co-founded Rubus, an Internet consultancy, and helped the company grow from initial start-up to over 300 people in just over two years. Most recently he was CEO of JacobsRimell, a company he led to growth and profit over a four-year period, culminating in the successful sale of the company to a public industry player.

Commenting on Shanks’s appointment, chairman of Dezineforce, Dr Uday Phadke, said: “Dezineforce has successfully developed its service delivering it to customers across several target sectors in high-tech engineering. Peter Collins has led the company through this initial phase with tremendous energy and laid the foundation for its future growth. George Shanks is a successful and experienced executive whose unparalleled leadership expertise will drive the company through the next stage of its development.”

Shanks added: “There is a very talented team behind Dezineforce whose groundbreaking technology gives our innovative solutions a considerable edge as engineering organisations look to make real use of design optimisation techniques. I am delighted to join the company at this time and look forward to working with the team to deliver step change benefits for our customers by transforming the way design engineers work.”

On cloud nine

Robyn — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:13:00 GMT

MADE magazine recently ran an article about how Tods Aerospace is using dezineforce to make the very best use of the latest advances in composite materials. Using dezineforce optimisation techniques, companies like Tods can not only improve their understanding of the performance of composites as alternative materials, they can generate optimum designs that will make the best use of innovative new materials as they become available. The on-demand nature of this approach creates scope for design houses and manufacturers, large and small, to raise their design capability to an entirely new level, achieving breakthroughs in composites design like Tods has done and driving true innovation in the aerospace sector.

Click here to download a PDF of the article.

This article appeared in MADE magazine, September 2009, the magazine of the design exchange of the Materials Knowledge Transfer Network.

dezineforce partners with Microsoft to offer plug-and-play appliance for design optimisation

Robyn — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 12:44:00 GMT

World-class dezineforce design optimisation and decision support suite now available as plug-and-play appliance incorporating an easy to deploy Microsoft high performance computing cluster.

dezineforce has partnered with Microsoft to make its cutting-edge design search and optimisation and decision support suite available as an appliance to give engineering companies an alternative mode of access to the unique capabilities of the dezineforce solution.

The new, plug-and-play, appliance allows on-site deployment of dezineforce’s design search and optimisation and decision support suite, with workflows that integrate industry-standard and customer proprietary simulation tools on a Microsoft high-performance computing (HPC) cluster.

“dezineforce is pioneering the application of design search and optimisation, and decision support, techniques to solve complex design challenges,” said Dr Michael Newberry, Microsoft’s UK HPC Product Manager. “Microsoft is committed to providing software solutions for the engineering sector so that our customers can run sophisticated models in a timely fashion. We trust that the success dezineforce’s customers will realize as a result of this technology will spur others to adopt HPC for high-performance computing needs.”

dezineforce search and optimisation tools enable designers to explore design or operating spaces more comprehensively. They are deployed as part of the design process to help designers gain greater insight into the performance and behaviour of their designs. Decision support tools help designers make sense of the large amounts of raw data generated by simulations, enabling them to make better design decisions. The compute power of the Microsoft HPC cluster dramatically reduces the time needed to complete the end-to-end engineering design search and optimisation process.

“The dezineforce solution empowers engineers to achieve better designs and Microsoft’s innovative high-performance computing clusters compress the time to design decision significantly. The appliance version offers flexibility to our customers to choose their preferred mode of accessing and using the dezineforce solution, including integration with their proprietary simulation tools,” says Dr Peter Collins, dezineforce CEO.

dezineforce strengthens executive team with key appointments

Robyn — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 11:54:00 GMT

Round of senior appointments and promotions sees dezineforce preparing for rapid growth

dezineforce, the first global provider of web-based, on-demand engineering design optimisation, has announced a round of key appointments to augment its management team. Peter Kelly joins as vice president of sales, Richard Harding is promoted from services manager to vice president of technical services and Arun Muthirulan joins as vice president of marketing.

Peter Kelly has over 15 years’ experience in senior sales and sales management positions with leading engineering and visualisation software vendors. He joins dezineforce after successfully leading a Northern European sales team at Parametric Technology (PTC). Before joining PTC Peter led the UK sales team for Mathsoft Engineering, achieving year-on-year growth, and was integral to the successful acquisition of Mathsoft by PTC. Prior to this Peter held a variety of sales management and sales positions at Advanced Visual Systems. In his new role, Peter will be responsible for creating new structure, processes and measurements to accelerate growth as dezineforce expands its sales across key verticals. Peter holds a degree in mathematical engineering from Loughborough University and a master’s degree in information engineering.

Richard Harding holds a degree in ship science from the University of Southampton. As a senior consulting engineer based within the University of Southampton's consultancy group he has provided innovative engineering solutions to a broad range of clients including Rolls Royce. Richard has designed and delivered web-based engineering applications exploiting distributed computing technologies for Lloyd's Register. He has also developed naval architectural software used by the MoD and major defence contractors to support the operation of the UK's naval fleet and for the development of new concept designs. In his new role Richard will lead the technical services team, managing technical pre-sales, professional services, domain leadership, customer support, training initiatives and supplier relationships.

Arun Muthirulan has more than 15 years of experience in business strategy, marketing and project management. He has worked in a variety of roles for large corporations as well as early-stage companies and start-ups, helping to develop and implement business strategy and obtain venture capital investment. Arun has international project management experience in the ICT industry in India, Canada and the UK managing complex, business critical projects for blue chip clients such as Ford Motor Company, Dun & Bradstreet Corporation and Aetna Life Insurance Company. Arun has a background in engineering and a recent MBA from Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. In his role, Arun will focus on establishing the dezineforce as the premier intelligent design solution for engineering design search and optimisation.

Commenting on the appointments, dezineforce CEO Dr Peter Collins said: “With these additions to the executive team I am confident we have achieved the right balance of commercial knowledge, skills and experience needed to help dezineforce realise its full potential and further strengthen the company’s market presence and credibility.”