With the introduction of PTC Navigate, PTC continues its efforts to make product data accessible to all enterprise product data stakeholders, no matter the system of record. The design principles employed by PTC for PTC Navigate promise to unlock the value of product data currently scattered throughout most enterprises’ information technology systems. The currently available apps can be deployed by users or groups to enable specific roles and tasks as needed. In addition, these apps can be quickly and easily tailored by adding data types and attributes suited to the specific roles and tasks as needed. PTC Navigate takes a fresh look at how product data should be accessed and consumed by all product data stakeholders, and promises to unleash product data to the enterprise in an intuitive, practical manner.

CIMdata hears a lot of companies talking about being open and how they intend to support a platformized approach to PLM. The flexible architecture and support of common industry standards enables Aras Innovator to serve as a PLM backbone for more and more companies. Minerva has developed a solution on top of the Aras platform to support High Tech—preconfigured so disruption and time to deploy are minimized, improving the ROI.

The High Tech industry has been struggling with short, fast paced lifecycles and disconnected systems for far too long, and CIMdata is encouraged to see companies like Aras and Minerva building out preconfigured solutions to serve as a PLM backbone that supports the processes needed to develop the next generation of connected products.

On May 16, 2016, Siemens PLM Software users opened PLM World 2016 in Orlando, Florida. The event celebrated its 40th year with over 1,900 attendees from 423 different companies and 73 partners traveling from 30 countries worldwide. This annual gathering of Teamcenter, NX, and other Siemens PLM Software solution users met to learn and share their experiences. CIMdata welcomed the openness with which the Siemens PLM Software team presented and discussed their solutions. PLM World offers a unique environment to speak with not only Siemens personnel, but also their end users and technology and service partners across numerous industries.

Most product design companies maintain extensive repositories of released components and subassemblies that if reused in their current new product development can dramatically reduce time and cost. Capgemini, the consulting, technology, and outsourcing services company, offers their clients support for an effective metadata search across multiple, data-managed repositories. CIMdata views this capability as a strong positive for industrial companies who often have to work in a multi-provider solution environment.

All in all, Infor’s Optiva brings the best of its technical reputation to bear in a highly usable and connected manner. It also marks a journey being taken by Infor in committing to the cloud. With Optiva VER. 12, customers have the choice of remaining on premise or moving to the cloud, using AWS, without compromising functionality. CIMdata is pleased to see Infor taking a world class technical recipe management system to the level of being a PLM platform, with a modernized, simplified user interface and having enabled a cloud based solution without compromise. The consistency of Infor’s recent product efforts are being seen across all of Infor’s offerings and CIMdata looks forward to seeing where Infor takes Optiva next.

CIMdata recently attended PTC’s LiveWorx 2016. The event revealed PTC’s rebranding which emphasizes the yin and yang of “physical” and “digital” encapsulating their strategy to support customers developing smart, connected products. While PTC’s strategy enables a broad range of IoT applications, CIMdata believes they are in a sweet spot for the Industrial Internet.

The new Simcenter solution is Siemens PLM Software’s next major step in evolving cross domain and multi-physics performance modeling, simulation, and testing tools as a foundational capability within their Smart Innovation Portfolio of industry solutions.

GeometricEDGE is a feature-rich solution designed to address complex collaboration and data exchange needs between large organizations. It was released in 2015, yet is built on a 10-year legacy of implementing interoperability solutions to support collaboration. CIMdata sees GeometricEDGE as a solid solution to complex collaboration issues. Enabling users to use their existing toolsets while accessing partner data reduces technical and political issues. Reducing issues means more time to focus on the product, which is always a good thing.

Over 1,000 people converged on Boston’s Back Bay for the first Dassault Systèmes’ “Science in the Age of Experience” conference. This event was for customers and partners for two of Dassault Systèmes’ brands, BIOVIA and SIMULIA. In CIMdata’s opinion, with BIOVIA and SIMULIA, Dassault Systèmes displays a compelling vision of how science will enable innovation, and how their 3DEXPERIENCE platform is enabling and delivering many required capabilities. Dassault Systèmes’ vision now extends far beyond their roots in CAD, mechanical design, and product data management.

CIMdata is relatively confident in predicting that ANSYS will continue to be a market leader in the physics-based behavior simulation solutions market and will continue to act as a consolidator of niche simulation companies that round out the ANSYS multi-physics technology, as well as contribute to a multi-domain platform for optimizing the designs of complex cyber-physical systems. With its strong balance sheet and large market capitalization to annual sales ratio, ANSYS management also has strategic options available to acquire larger companies with technologies and expertise that enable ANSYS to enter important adjacent markets for simulation and analysis software growth such as Model-Based Systems Engineering, IoT, digital twin, machine learning, human modeling and bio-materials engineering, and additive manufacturing.