Between The Lines

The EDA industry has lost its one and only research analyst group today, as research firm Gartner has laid off its entire EDA analyst staff. I got word today from longtime now former Gartner-Dataquest chief EDA analyst Gary Smith.

Gary says there hasn't been enough support from EDA vendors in the last year for Gartner to keep its EDA analyst branch. Over the years and my entire career, Gary's crew has been a fixture, a sounding post and THE keeper of tool marketshare. It has been the only group doing it.

I'm bummed. In fact I've said on many occasions that if the EDA industry really wants to get its due respect and get more coverage from the general business press it needs more industry analysts. That way even some business journalist that doesn't know all that much about the industry could at least put together a story on the differing objective opinions of a couple of analysts. One analyst group wasn't enough, zero is a travesty.

Gary's not down though, in fact he's quite optimistic and said that he's going to try to keep the group together and hopefully have the entire operation picked up by another research company.

Now that EDA has lost Gary's group, where are we going to get marketshare? EDAC MSS just looks at total industry revenue and isn't objective—EDAC's purpose is in fact to promote the EDA industry not give a wholly honest assessment of it. If EDAC wants to make itself useful, it should step in to encourage more research firms to cover EDA perhaps fund it in some way. Without an independent research firm vendors can make wild and crazy marketshare claims and there is no independent research to keep them in check. Best of luck Gary, Daya, Laurie et al. Hope you land somewhere soon or simply do it on your own. That of course means the industry needs to step up with some funding and stop shooting itself in the foot.