While my time in the PLM space is short compared to some of my colleagues (only 14 years), I have been involved with software, one way or another, througout my career. So expanding our PLM coverage to include providers of software development tools is no hardship. Our focus is on development of embedded software, the software that animates products designed, manufactured, and deployed using PLM.

In that vein, I recently had a call with Seapine Software (www.seapine.com), a long-time provider of application lifecycle management solutions. While they are not a huge company, with over 100 employees and over 8,500 customers, they do have offices in Cincinnati (HQ), London, Munich, and South Africa (which handles Asia-Pacific), and their business is mostly split between North America and Europe, with some in AP. Their solutions began on-premise, and they launched a cloud option earlier this year. 

In their 20 year history they have had some success in a number of verticals, and work more with CTOs and product development than IT, which is our focus. Based on our conversation, their experience in the market echoes what we hear from many industrial companies. Software is not often in the vocabulary of industrial companies, or is at least an exotic language. With hardware and software driving value in almost all manufacturing industries, things are getting more complicated and people need help.

For example, over the last 3-4 years, the medical device industry has gotten more interested in what Seapine has to offer, which makes sense given how software and electronics provide most of the value in many medical devices in the market today. Medical professionals get a great idea, put it on paper and get funding. They look to Seapine to help manage the evolving design and to build and test prototypes to get FDA approval.

Software is no different from other aspects of PLM. Everybody starts with Word and Excel, and then struggles when things get too complicated. (At CIMdata, we always say that the number one PLM tool is Excel.) When companies have multiple sites, with many contributors and stakeholders, management by Excel becomes too complicated.

Another big driver for tools is compliance. Companies in many industries have to answer to multiple levels of government agencies. They have to be able to prove their solution works and meets all requirements to pass. Seapines's solution provides one repository to manage all the artifacts, and helps support risk analysis and mitigation. It also provides visibility to the work status to all of the stakeholders.

Sounds like PLM to me, which of course it really is, just a different product, different types of tools and terminology. Time to dig in. Stay tuned. Follow Stan @smprezbo

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