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Key takeaways:

• Existing Dassault Systèmes ENOVIA SmarTeam users have multiple options either to remain with their V5 environments, co-exist with the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform, or migrate to the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform
• Existing ENOVIA V5 products including ENOVIA SmarTeam will be enhanced and supported for years to come

Dassault Systèmes, developers of the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform for product development, has reiterated their commitment to the ENOVIA SmarTeam collaboration platform. SmarTeam gained popularity within many companies for managing their CATIA V5, SOLIDWORKS and multi-CAD design files. Dassault Systèmes states that the full suite of ENOVIA products, including SmarTeam, will be enhanced and supported for years to come. CIMdata welcomes this pronouncement from Dassault Systèmes that provides SmarTeam customers the stability of a sustained solution for their CAD data management needs. As user companies face an increasingly difficult task of designing sophisticated products for their competitive industries, they cannot afford to have the tools upon which they rely shifting underneath them. CIMdata believes the decision to provide continued life to ENOVIA SmarTeam will benefit both SmarTeam user companies and Dassault Systèmes.

The Dassault Systèmes team has done their due diligence in understanding the current SmarTeam customer base. They discovered that users generally fall into one of three categories:

• CATIA Design Data Management—users who deploy CATIA V5 as their product modeling suite and use ENOVIA SmarTeam to manage their model BOMs.
• Multi-CAD Design Data Management—users who work with product models from multiple CAD suites, often including Dassault Systèmes’ SOLIDWORKS, to manage their model BOMs.
• Enterprise PLM—a limited number of users who deploy ENOVIA SmarTeam to manage files and metadata across their full enterprise.

After Dassault Systèmes analyzed how SmarTeam was deployed in the field, they generated choices for their user base for alternative move-forward strategies. Dassault Systèmes recommends growth options based on a user company’s business drivers. For companies that have well established engineering processes, no complex or sophisticated product development practices of enterprise scale, and no plans to expand toward multiple development sites, remaining with and even growing their current V5 ENOVIA SmarTeam environment can best suit their needs. On average, these companies limit their usage of SmarTeam to a single CAD solution (most often CATIA V5) or multi-CAD data management and have no current plans to adopt full-scale PLM practices. Their investments are protected given Dassault Systèmes future road map for their platforms and Dassault Systèmes’ statement that there are no current plans for end of development or end of service for SmarTeam (Figure 1).

Figure 1—Dassault’s Future Platform Road Map
(Courtesy of Dassault Systèmes)

For user companies with multidisciplinary product development processes and aggressive plans to expand into multiple development sites and establish global collaboration between sites and the supply chain, Dassault Systèmes recommends a transition strategy. The migration toward the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform can be undertaken at a controlled pace by co-existing with the V6 platform while maintaining an existing V5 environment. A company may wish to keep managing existing products and projects in ENOVIA SmarTeam for both in-house and supply chain users who deploy CATIA V5 (or SOLIDWORKS) yet take advantage of the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform’s collaborative technologies and capabilities to guide the development process. CIMdata sees granting users this flexibility in their choice of when and at what pace to transition to the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform as a benefit for users and positions Dassault Systèmes as a helping partner in their business strategy.

As companies move to simplify their IT infrastructures and establish new best practices, Dassault Systèmes recommends they consider a direct move to the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform. This includes those existing users of ENOVIA SmarTeam for Enterprise PLM. To assist the move to the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform Dassault Systèmes has developed semi-automated transition tools to ease the burden on user companies. They studied the most common SmarTeam environments and built a suite of transition tools to help a company migrate while keeping their total cost of ownership low. Dassault Systèmes has also partnered with service providers to offer assistance to users who have customized their SmarTeam deployments and therefore are less able to take advantage of standard transition tools.

CIMdata recognizes the efforts of Dassault Systèmes to support their SmarTeam customer base. We believe the decision to provide continued support for the ENOVIA SmarTeam product is a smart one. Protecting a user’s investment makes for a good partner and rewards both provider and user alike. Dassault Systèmes’ investment in ENOVIA SmarTeam product sustainability is an example that other solution providers should heed.