Brands are emotional – at least the good ones. They evoke emotion because they stand for something. Not just products, but people. They are an articulation of culture, vision, history, and the future. When I accepted the task of helping Altair elevate its brand, I knew it was a huge responsibility to act as a steward not only to protect its unique and heralded history, but also to help position it for its limitless future.

Altair’s 35-year history is rooted in providing best-in-class engineering software, which has helped customers create countless products around the globe and in nearly every industry – everything from cars and car seats to spaceships, mobile phones, skyscrapers, athletic gear, ships, and airplanes. It has been helping engineers take out weight, improve strength and performance, get to market faster, and providing outstanding technical support.

Through the years, Altair’s product portfolio grew beyond just simulation software and solvers for engineers. It has become a leader in the high-performance computing and cloud space as well. The compute power needed to run those solvers is huge, and Altair provides the firepower to do it. Most recently Altair became a player in the data analytics, visualization, and data science area through its acquisition of Datawatch. Altair has acquired 29 companies in the past 10 years.

On top of the growth through acquisition, we’ve also grown organically. Our own engineers and developers have created powerhouse software tools to help deliver on our vision; transform customer decision making with simulation, data analytics, and high-performance computing.

Throughout this growth and history, one thing has never wavered – people. People are at the heart of everything we do – our employees, partners, and customers. Because of that bedrock, Altair’s culture is unique and beloved by our employees, who we refer to as Altairians. And our brand is the articulation of that culture.

It became clear when we started this journey that we had to embody that history and create a brand that is worthy of Altair’s people, products, and future. We took painstaking steps to talk to stakeholders from all areas and levels of the company through in-depth interviews, surveys, and workshops facilitated by Gyro Creative, our partner in this process. We also surveyed more than 800 customers. The results cemented what we already knew – we had something special – the responses were resoundingly similar. Normally, when companies undergo this type of ethnographic research, results show that executives and entry-level employees have different views of the company and customers are even more disconnected. Not us.

From Altairians we heard ‘empowered to take risks,’ ‘encouraged to innovate,’ ‘purposeful, powerful technologies,’ and’ ‘freedom to integrate work family life.’ From customers we heard ‘game-changing technology,’ ‘deep technical resources and excellent people,’ and ‘technology that helps solve tough problems.’ These themes resonated and repeated over and over again.

A brand is more than a logo. It’s a visual and verbal articulation of what you stand for, what you deliver to customers and how you look at the world. For us that means helping to accelerate the pace of innovation and drive human progress, always looking forward. Altairians are driven by curiosity and a deep desire to look beyond the horizon for new insights, ideas and possibilities, for ourselves and our customers. Our new brand captures and communicates the essence of our DNA, and reinforces our mission and message for a new generation of customers.
For 35 years, we’ve been leading the way, but we never look over our shoulder. We adapt. We change. We stay open to new possibilities. We only move forward.

Our talented team of designers and marketers have knocked it out of the park. I hope you enjoy their work as much as I do.

Altair. #OnlyForward