The use of Sesam worldwide has boomed during 2005. We have welcomed many new companies to our Sesam family, and several existing customers have expanded their use either through additional modules or extended licencing.
Market-driven product development paying off
There are two key drivers for this growth. First of all, we are beginning to reap the rewards of our steady investment in market-driven product development. This has helped us in growing our share of markets in which we are already strong. In the early 1990s, Sesam was perceived as a high-end verification tool. The situation today is quite different; Sesam is now recognised as a design-oriented tool with focus on improving the efficiency and quality of a designer’s daily work. By listening carefully to designers and by introducing concept modelling techniques, Sesam has become far more user-friendly. This allows the engineers using Sesam to focus on ‘real’ structures and environmental conditions, not simplified idealised models as is often the case in traditional CAE systems.
Secondly, the high oil price has drawn new players into the offshore industry. This has encouraged companies to invest more in both marginal fields and ultradeep-water exploration. Sesam is equally adept at modelling both small simple and large complex structures. Because of this adaptability, many of the new players have chosen Sesam as their preferred tool for design and analysis. When investigating why these companies have selected Sesam, we see some consistent trends:
Trust
Trust in DNV Software as a provider of quality software and an excellent standard of technical Sesam support. The fact that DNV Software is part of DNV is also of importance; the DNV brand has a very high standing.
Integration
Sesam is an integrated system where the same base model can be used from basic to detailed design, covering many aspects such as hydrostatics, hydrodynamics, mooring analysis, linear statics, code checking, fatigue, deepwater coupled analysis and so on.
User-friendly
DNV Software has focused on developing a user-friendly design analysis tool. Customers see that we continue to develop our software to meet the needs of the market whilst implementing new and efficient technologies. A significant portion of the Sesam maintenance income is funding such work.
3D modelling
Sesam is a true 3D graphic software system including the best of previous linebased input. This makes it much easier to model the structure, equipment, loads and the environment. At the same time, the 3D graphics capabilities make for much more efficiency when assessing and documenting results, for both static and dynamic analyses. Also, the ability to log, edit and reuse input dialogues offers enormous savings in time.
Track record
SESAM has a long and successful track record. Validation of software is crucial; the computational parts of Sesam have been in use for more than 30 years by many companies operating in numerous offshore fields; this together with DNV Software’s own validation illustrates the quality of the software.
Local support
It is very important to our customers to be able to contact skilled support staff during normal business hours with local language capabilities. DNV Software now has local support in Oslo, London, Houston, Pusan and Shanghai. The main support centre is in Oslo.
DNV Software attaches great importance to ‘market-driven product development’ and fully intends to continue with this strategy to best meet your business needs. Supporting this objective, a new release of Sesam with many additional benefits and offering even greater productivity will be available on the January 2006 CD. The CD with all the improved modules included, will be distributed from 15th january and will also be available for downloading from the Sesam support pages.