The CONTACT User Meeting 2013 was held on 6 and 7 November in Brühl, near Cologne, and focused on innovation: How can companies leverage their capacity to innovate over the long term and what benefits can be derived from appropriate IT solutions? The over 40 presentations at this year's user conference provided some answers.
More than 200 customers, prospects and partners were able to get all the latest about CONTACT's portfolio, including CIM DATABASE PDM/PLM, Project Office for process-oriented project management, and Workspaces for collaborative CAD and CAx data management. The event provided an impressive demonstration of how CONTACT has upped the ante with a new software architecture and an open platform for collaborative product development.
"With CIM DATABASE 10, we have transformed our vision into reality," said CONTACT's managing director Karl Heinz Zachries in his keynote address at the start of the event. He went on to say that CONTACT was continuing to grow and remain profitable and was in excellent shape with an equity ratio of more than 70%. Zachries' aim is to turn the company into a well respected global player going forward. Given the company's high level of innovative drive and customer satisfaction, the modular software kit of the new CIM DATABASE 10 platform architecture, and the high-priority expansion of the partner network, he is certain that it is more than able to rise to the challenge.
Zachries sees one focus of this global expansion drive in the Far East. Recently, CONTACT entered into a joint venture with the Japanese ECAD supplier Zuken. Based on CONTACT's modular software kit and core elements of CIM DATABASE, the joint venture is developing a solution for the ECAD software E3 Series, which will be marketed through Zuken's international sales organization.
With more than 40 presentations, the event had a full agenda. There were a number of parallel breakout sessions offering hands-on workshops, tutorials, specialist presentations and user reports. "It was extremely interesting for me as a system developer," said Petra Kunberger from the Belgian automotive supplier BOSAL, who introduced CIM DATABASE 10 a few months ago. Eberhard Reich from KOSTAL added: "OpenWorld had a number of fascinating topics, such as 3D visualization, to offer automotive suppliers."
Head of development at CONTACT, Frank Patz-Brockmann explained the current product strategy and roadmap. One key feature will be full integration of 3D viewing in the technology platform. The new focus on configuration management also went down very well. Patz-Brockmann said that one of the challenges lay in coping with both design variance resulting from increasing product customization and temporal variance, which is becoming increasingly significant as a result of long product lifecycles and new operator models.
He also underscored the benefits of the new component architecture: It is much faster and easier to configure and maintain products and solutions for a particular target group. Even longstanding customers are surprised at the dynamic development of CONTACT's software platform and the products that are built on it such as CIM DATABASE and Project Office. Peter Sorgatz from BASF Polyurethanes: "Even though we are in close contact with the development team, the roadmap came as a pleasant surprise. For instance, it was new to me that CONTACT would be basing its user interface technology around HTML 5."
Zachries summed up by saying that "create.together" was CONTACT's recipe for success: "And success comes from creativity coupled with our close collaboration with you, our customers. And for that, you deserve our heartfelt thanks."
You can get a sense of what CONTACT OpenWorld 2013 was like and read more about the presentations here.
