May 29, 2012 -- ANSYS, Inc. and Esterel Technologies, Inc. have signed a definitive agreement whereby ANSYS will acquire Esterel Technologies for a cash purchase price of approximately $53 million, subject to certain working capital adjustments at close. The agreement also includes retention provisions for key members of management and employees.

The Esterel SCADE solution enables software and systems engineers to design, simulate and produce embedded software. Esterel provides software and systems engineers a solution to accurately model and simulate the behavior of the embedded software code to gain insight earlier in the design process and trace it to its requirements. Esterel solutions also reduce engineering time and cost by automatically generating certified and dependable embedded software code from these high-fidelity models. Esterel certified code generators are currently compliant with more than 10 certification standards including aerospace, defense, rail transportation, automotive, industrial systems and nuclear plants.

The acquisition of Esterel complements ANSYS software solutions by extending the ANSYS Simulation Driven Product Development vision to encompass both hardware and software systems. The complementary combination is expected to accelerate development and delivery of new and innovative products to the marketplace while lowering design and engineering costs for customers and enhancing product safety.

"The complementary nature of software and hardware simulation provides key technological strengths that enhance our ability to deliver comprehensive, high-fidelity, world-class system-simulation technologies," said Eric Bantegnie, co-founder, CEO and President of Esterel. "We believe Esterel customers will leverage the integration of our embedded-software-development products into a complete model-based systems engineering solution. This unique combination will reduce costly reliance on physical testing and streamline system engineering processes, while also improving the speed and success of our customers' product-development efforts. Together we will meet the stringent requirements of upcoming certification standards, such as ISO 26262 in Automotive or DO-178C in aerospace."