PROVIDENCE – Despite the tough environment for technology companies, Dassault Systèmes, the French parent company of Providence-based virtual testing developer Simulia, saw both its revenue and profit increase in the third quarter.

Simulia in particular gave a boost to the French software company, which reported 318 million euros in revenue and 43 million in profit for the quarter. Simulia’s revenue grew by double digits during the quarter, even when measured in constant currencies, Dassault said.

Simulia and Enovia, another Dassault subsidiary, led the company’s revenue growth in the Americas, Thibault de Tersant, Dassault’s senior executive vice president and chief financial officer, said during the firm’s quarterly conference call on Oct. 29.

Later, de Tersant singled out Simulia’s performance as one of three key factors that contributed to the revenue growth, “as customers continue to increase their use of virtual simulation in the product design and creation process.” He also said Simulia’s growth was “well diversified across a broad range of industries.”

Dassault also raised its earnings forecast for 2008 slightly. However, analysts said “the explanation lies mainly in the currency markets … and there is no guarantee that 2009 will be as positive a year for the company,” Forbes reported. The company said it was still too early to forecast 2009 earnings.

“Dassault Systèmes seems to be resisting [the economic downturn] better,” Dov Levy, an analyst with CM-CIC Securities, wrote in a research note quoted by Reuters. “The group is benefiting from the good performance of its software sales especially in Europe and the United States, but it remains dependent on the economic situation.”

Separately, the aeronautics company Alenia Aeronautica has announced that it will use software developed by Simulia as part of a new “enterprise-wide simulation process integration and collaboration framework” that Alenia is developing.

The Simulia software, Fiper, “will be used and integrated in the Alenia VPPS platform to capture and manage simulation workflows used across the multi-disciplinary design domain,” according to a news release from Dassault Systèmes.

“As part of Simulia’s Simulation Lifecycle Management portfolio, Fiper provides an open engineering framework to integrate, automate, and manage simulation processes and computing resources,” the company said.

Simulia’s programmers will work with Alenia engineers and third-party partners, including Exemplar s.r.l., on the project, Dassault said.

Alenia Aeronautica’s Vittorio Selmin said his firm chose Fiper because of “its capability to efficiently capture simulation workflows and its open component architecture that allows us to integrate a variety of in-house and commercial analysis systems.”

Dassault Systèmes (Nasdaq: DASTY and Paris: DSY) specializes in 3D and product lifecycle management (PLM) software. It is the parent of the Providence-based Simulia, a developer of DS-simulation software including the Abaqus and Catia analysis applications. For more information, visit www.simulia.com.