CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
10 June 2013
Product News
PTC Creo to be Available in a Virtualized Environment
PTC today announced its PTC Creo® design and analysis applications will be available and supported in a Virtual Desktop environment. Five of the leading apps, PTC Creo Parametric™, PTC Creo Direct™, PTC Creo Layout™, PTC Creo Options Modeler™ and PTC Creo Simulate™, have been verified as Citrix Ready®. Starting with PTC Creo 2.0 M060, these applications will be supported by PTC when running on virtualized desktops on an IBM server through a Citrix and NVIDIA-powered integration. PTC’s support for virtual desktop configurations will enable customers to realize improved performance when working with large assemblies stored on a remote server, while ensuring IP protection of the design data and streamlining administration and deployment of PTC Creo. It will also grant users the freedom to work on a wider variety of operating systems – including mobile – through the Citrix Receiver™ and NVIDIA GRID™ vGPU™ technology.
In design and manufacturing today, customers face increased pressure to reduce IT costs, while improving flexibility and performance. They need to have the ability to get global teams up and running quickly in new locations, and they need all teams to be able to easily access the latest software installation by updating a single server. Virtualization of PTC Creo design and analysis applications can help IT managers accomplish this.
“Some power users experience network bandwidth limitations when they work with their largest assemblies, simply because they need to move a lot of data from a PTC Windchill server to their local workspace. This inefficiency slows the design process for some of our customers’ most proficient users,” said Mike Campbell, Executive Vice President, CAD Segment, PTC. “But now imagine working on huge assemblies in PTC Creo with little to no network latency impacting your part load times because all of the data is right there – potentially on the same server rack as PTC Windchill - and is therefore almost immediately available. You actually have a better user experience than if you tried loading the data across the network to your local machine.”
“We want to thank IBM, Citrix and NVIDIA for collaborating with us in this initial process and we’re looking forward to many other PTC partners certifying their virtualization hardware/software with us,” continued Campbell.
In addition to the performance edge, running PTC Creo in a virtualized environment offers customers a level of IP protection that is not available with alternate deployment methods. Company data stays on its servers, allowing customers complete freedom to collaborate with external design partners in real time utilizing the same design data. By supporting virtual desktops, PTC also empowers users to use a device of their choice, be it a device powered by Windows, Mac OS X or any of the major mobile platforms as well – iOS, Android, and Windows Mobile. This will add an additional element of flexibility and accessibility for PTC customers by eliminating the need for every member of the extended development team to have a Windows-based device solely dedicated to design or analysis tasks.
Certifications and Availability
The Citrix Ready program helps customers identify third-party solutions that are recommended to enhance virtualization, networking and cloud computing solutions from Citrix. PTC Creo applications completed a rigorous verification process to ensure compatibility with Citrix XenDesktop® with Citrix HDX 3D Pro and an NVIDIA GRID K2 board with two high performance NVIDIA Kepler™ GPUs, providing confidence in joint solution compatibility.
In addition to Citrix verifying PTC Creo applications as Citrix Ready®, PTC has tested and certified the complete virtual technology configuration consisting of PTC Creo 2.0 M060 running on IBM iDataPlex dx360 M4 server, Citrix XenServer™ and XenDesktop with HDX 3D and NVIDIA GRID K2 graphics boards. PTC Creo certification provides customers with assurance that the specific certified configuration has been thoroughly tested by PTC and that PTC expects PTC Creo will run without issue on the certified configuration.
PTC Creo Parametric is running in our first certified configuration at IBM Booth #326.
PTC expects PTC Creo 2.0 M060 will be available in late June. The timing of any product release, and any features or functionality thereof, are subject to change at PTC's discretion.
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