ANSYS to acquire CFX

Fred

This is obviously big news on the CFX forum and may represent a major turn in the CFD industry. For those who have been holed up in a cave for the past two weeks, the original ANSYS news release is available here http://www.ansys.com/corporate/news_...s/feb04_03.htm.

CFX was late in the game with an unstructured solver, but has become a serious contender over the past few years. They share roughly the same market share as Star-CD and about half of Fluent's. Although if you were to now combine their market share with that of ICEM (purchased by ANSYS about 2 1/2 years ago), it would place them in an easy second with Fluent.

The big question of course is how long Star and Fluent will be able to hold on to their customers once the ANSYS simulation group (CFX, ICEM and ANSYS or C.I.A.) releases the first truly integrated Fluid Structure Interaction system. Will they be able to go it alone, or will they be swallowed up by other industry players.

What do you think? Considering what CFX already has to offer with their CFX-5 solver, and furthermore the promise of truly integrated FSI, would you be willing to switch to CFX? How many of you are already running ANSYS?