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It’s been just two months since the AltiumLive event drew several hundred designers to San Diego, California, and Altium is already gearing up for the next show in Munich, Germany (January 15–17, 2019). I recently spoke with Chris Donato, VP of global sales for Altium, about the upcoming AltiumLive show as well as the company’s growth over the past few years.
Andy Shaughnessy: Chris, welcome. Why don’t you start by telling us a little about January’s AltiumLive event in Munich? What can attendees expect at your sophomore event?
Chris Donato: Thanks, Andy. AltiumLive is quickly becoming one of the largest educational events that focuses exclusively on PCB design. Attendees in Munich can expect four fantastic keynote presenters: Thomas Wischnack of Porsche Engineering, Dan Beeker of NXP Semiconductors, Alun Morgan of Ventec, and Max Seeley of 3M.
We also have a full-day high-speed class taught by Lee Ritchey on the front end. That class runs in parallel with our University Day, which features a variety of different Altium Designer courses. In addition to that, 12 presentations from Altium Designer users and supply chain experts are scheduled, and six professional development courses are available on topics like multi-board, advanced design rules, and constraints and documentation. That's 30 sessions in total, and they're all filled with some amazing education opportunities not only for our users but for us as well.
Lastly, we’ll host two sessions to present Altium Designer 19, and finally, Altium 365—a cloud-based platform that allows for unprecedented collaboration between all stakeholders in the design-to-realization process. It's certainly an exciting time to be a part of Altium.
Shaughnessy: Now, let’s segue a little. How are things going at Altium? I understand you’ve had some real growth lately.
Donato: First, thank you for giving me this opportunity. I've been here for close to 15 years, and I've never felt as excited as I am now. We've really set our sights high. Since 2014, we've had over 7,100 new customers come on board, which has been quite amazing. That comes out to more than 10,000 new licensed users of Altium Designer.
Shaughnessy: So, that's from FY 2014 to 2019, basically.
Donato: Yes, almost five years coming up here shortly. During that time, the company has doubled our revenue from $70 million to over $140 million, closing in on our goal of $200 million by 2020. Our subscription tools, which are the number of active licenses that we have, have grown from 26,000 to 40,000. It's been exciting to see this continued growth.
Shaughnessy: A couple of years ago, you were just excited to hit the $100-million mark, and now you’re at $140 million.
Donato: Our fiscal year ends this coming June. Then, the year after that, we plan to be at $200 million. By 2020, we are aiming to have doubled our revenue again. I can map these growth years with our continued innovation that our R&D team has shown every year. Last year, we had this easy, powerful, modern update of the Altium Designer product—Altium Designer 18. That brought on a whole new world of opportunity with its 64-bit capability, and here we are on the precipice of yet another release shortly.
To read this entire interview, which appeared in the December 2018 issue of Design007 Magazine, click here.
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