Eight months after San Diego’s Accelrys (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ACCL]]) completed its merger with Santa Clara, CA-based Symyx Technologies, the scientific software developer is today lifting the curtain on a new strategy based on the company’s broader and deeper resources.
The merger, valued last year at about $175 million, combined Accelrys’ flagship software for simulating and modeling scientific experiments with Symyx’ strength in cheminformatics and notebook software used to chart and manage lab experiments. Along with its fourth-quarter financial results today, Accelrys is also sharing some new software products that are intended to help manage the entire process of scientific development—from R&D to commercialization and manufacturing—at industry, academic, and government institutions.
“It’s the future for us, the strategy for the next two to three years,” says Accelrys CEO Max Carnecchia. “What we’re hearing from our largest customers is that they really need a framework, they need a [software] architecture that can harness all of the innovation, all the experiments, all the modeling and simulation, and all the work they’re doing across labs on a global basis, both within their own organizations and within their collaborators.”
In explaining today’s new product introductions, Carnecchia said, “A series of individual islands of capabilities have now been brought together into a true platform.”
The Symyx merger brought Accelrys a combined base of more than 1,350 customers, including 29 of the top 30 biopharmaceutical companies, all five top chemical giants, and many U.S. government agencies and universities.
“It was actually our customers who talked with us about their needs during the merger and pre-merger” that led to the strategy, says Melissa Purcell, Accelrys’ senior director of marketing communications.
“Obviously, we had thoughts around the idea that the combination was going to create
