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By Geraldine Deflandre, Fluent Benelux and Andy Young, Fluent Europe The year 2003 marks two important anniversaries for our company. Twenty years ago, we celebrated the sale of our first FLUENT license, and fifteen years ago, we became incorporated. Many changes have taken place since then, but much has stayed the same. Many of the people who worked so hard to bring the product and company together are still Fluent employees today, and many of those who first licensed our software have continued to be clients throughout the years. In 1983, a small group of us at Creare, an engineering consulting firm in neighboring Etna, NH, introduced the first commercial version of FLUENT, which had been developed by Prof. James Swithenbank and his team, including Dr. Ferit Boysan, at Sheffield University in the UK. The first version allowed for 2D or 3D structured grids using Cartesian or polar coordinates, steadystate flow, laminar or turbulent conditions, heat transfer, three-component combustion, a dispersed phase, and natural convection, with an easy-to-use, interactive frontend. We held our first sales seminar at Creare in October, and the first sale of FLUENT was closed in December to Fuel Systems Textron. The engineer who was first to put his confidence in us is still a regular attendee at our annual Users' Group Meetings in the US. In 1984, we sold six more licenses, and our business has grown steadily each year since then. Meanwhile, Dr. Boysan launched our sister company, Flow Simulations Ltd. in Sheffield, which later became Fluent Europe, the first of many European offices to come. Because our early roots were as consulting engineers, a unique corporate ethos has defined us until this day. Our mission has never been limited to software sales, but to make sure that all of our customers get solutions to their engineering problems, whatever they may be. The first set of capabilities in FLUENT seems modest by today's standards, but they were state-of-theart back then. Never did we dream that in twenty years we would reach the level of sophistication that we now see in the pages of our newsletter: problems with millions of cells, moving geometry, LES turbulence modeling, and solution optimization! When we began, we worked hard to educate industry managers about the existence and value of CFD. Our early users were experts in their fields who were not afraid to be the risk takers of the day. Once sold on the benefits of CFD, they acted as evangelists to convert their colleagues. Today, we see a top-level commitment at many organizations to make CAE an integral part of the production cycle, from beginning to end. Our challenge now is to meet their needs by providing reliable software with easy access, customizability, and interoperability with other products. Our steady growth, from the very first sale onwards, has been mirrored by the ever-increasing capabilities of our products as well as the number of users worldwide. The directions we have chosen to take have always been the result of customer input. Thus, it is you, our customers, with your continued support over the years, who helped us become the company that we are today, and I thank you. I also thank our capable and dedicated employees who are the heart and soul of Fluent! |
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