One of the joys of my role at CIMdata is being part of the briefing calls we have with players in the PLM Economy: solution providers, service providers, hardware companies, and many others. I got into technology in the first place because it never stopped moving, so this is like a little slice of heaven in my week.
We recently had a call with NextLabs, a specialist in “Information Risk Management” who has an impressive partners list, including Microsoft Gold Certified, SAP Certified (on NetWeaver), IBM Business Partner, and Siemens (announcing a more extensive partnership just after our call). NextLabs is another firm that could be classified as a PLM Mechanic. If they are doing their job right, their digital rights management (DRM) solutions just work, providing a higher level protection, monitoring and tracking than just the data management solution alone.
NextLabs has been around since 2004, and claims three “locations” (geos) with multiple offices in the Americas and Asia; they work through partners in Europe. The company’s expertise is deep, and includes a significant patent portfolio for a small firm. Even before the Siemens PLM announcement, NextLabs was working with SAP on PLM, their Visual Enterprise offerings, and ERP. Their slides sport some nice logos: Boeing, BAE Systems, Qualcomm, Flextronics, Dow, Raytheon, United Technologies, GE, and Morgan Stanley (while today Morgan is an outlier, their initial focus was on financial data).
There is an old saying about all politics being local. The same is true for digital rights and security. Many people know about ITAR, but there are an abundance of unique privacy and security rules and regulations that come into play around the world. Since most companies have global value chains and customer lists, NextLabs can help them keep their vital intellectual assets under control while staying clear of any regulatory snafus.
They are working with other PLM solution providers (and talking with still more), so stay tuned. Follow Stan @smprezbo
Subscribe to our RSS feed to have future blog postings delivered to your feed reader.
