In 1969, DNV released the first commercial version of the finite element analysis program Sesam. With 40 year's history of innovation and knowledge transfer, Sesam is today stronger than ever thanks to support from our customers in the marine industry.

We are very pleased to celebrate Sesam's first 40 years, and we promise to work hard and listen to market needs to ensure further development and innovation that will enhance the engineering process.

The initial development of Sesam was done by Pål Bergan at the Norwegian Institute of Technology in Trondheim. With support from former CEO Egil Abrahamsen, DNV bought Sesam in 1968 and enhanced the technology to be able to verify the strength and safety of large ship and offshore structures. The capacity of the computers at that time was very limited, but the challenges to compute were big. The use of a multi-level superelement technique was a way of solving big problems on computers with limited capacity. The capacity of today’s computers makes it possible to run more exact calculations and investigate more complex problems. Finite element analysis is now an integrated part of the engineering process, and there is constant demand for more efficiency and zero tolerance for failure. A closer integration between computer-aided engineering (CAE)and computer-aided design (CAD) is needed to enhance both quality and efficiency, and out current development of Sesam is addressing this challenge.

The turbulent financial world is affecting our business, so we need to adapt to the changed world economy and market needs. Working close with our customers has always been the strategy of DNV Software, and it is more important than ever to stick together and share knowledge. Our user conferences are an important arena for knowledge sharing, and we hope you will take the time to attend one of them. The DNV Software Conference at Høvik this June will be followed by user conferences in Oslo, Paris, Houston, Philadelphia, Busan, Beijing, Singapore and Hyderabad.

Ketil Aamnes
global sales and marketing director
DNV Software