Autodesk is establishing itself as a pioneer in cloud services by aggressively deploying a web services platform, building new cloud-based applications, creating new business models, and establishing a modern developer network. The challenge will be to successfully bridge to the future for the millions of customers using its established applications, while simultaneously winning out over its competition as it expands into new disciplines and markets.

In CIMdata’s view the Solid Edge University 2016 conference served the purpose of both educating and inspiring the Solid Edge users in attendance. The range of hands-on training sessions and innovative, thought provoking end user presentations combined to raise the awareness of the attendees to “Expand their Horizons.”

Product innovation platforms are the foundation upon which functional capabilities, data, and processes are enabled—leading to the potential for much more innovation. Few PLM implementations achieve their goals and often end up as “instant” legacy PDM solutions that are not sustainable. A strong product innovation platform dramatically eases the burden of integrations with an enterprise’s broad range of PLM-enabling solutions. Aras Innovator provides an open and extensible product innovation platform that can be employed to provide an enterprise with a PLM solution that can grow into the future.

CIMdata recently participated in the ANSYS Dimensions Innovation event held in Paris, France, a customer-focused event which replaced the former Esterel SCADE Users Group Conference. On day one, the presentations were tailored towards management participants with a focus on highlighting the global industry trends cited above and how ANSYS is developing an integrated product innovation platform to enable simulation-driven systems development. Day two consisted of a series of in-depth technical presentations across three concurrent tracks on IoT, System Simulation, and Embedded Software.

In CIMdata’s observation, HPE with more than 30 years of experience implementing, maintaining, managing, operating, and supporting complex and heterogeneous PLM and MES solutions is an acknowledged leader, with deep real world experiences in de-customization and implementing standardized configurations.

According to the Aras Corporation (Aras) web site, the company had a very large win at the end of 2016. They closed a 50,000 seat deal at General Motors to support enterprise change management, vehicle bill of materials (EBOM & MBOM), variants and options, and other lifecycle processes. The implementation is underway now.

CIMdata believes that Aras was selected because of its technical capabilities, business model, and the architecture’s ability to support complex configuration management, which was an important use case.

CIMdata looks forward to following Aras’ journey throughout 2017 and into the future.

The morning of February 7, 2017 brought news that Carl Bass was resigning from Autodesk effective February 8. Mr. Bass is only the third CEO in Autodesk’s history, having taken the helm from Carol Bartz in 2006, who succeeded Autodesk founder John Walker in 1992. Mr. Bass is notable for leading the company through major transformations of both its product offerings and business models.

CIMdata attended the Oracle Modern Supply Chain Experience 2016 in San Jose, California on February 13-15, 2017. The Oracle Modern Supply Chain Experience is a business meeting focused on market influencers and decision makers with presentations by Oracle, customers, and selected partners. Over 3,000 people attended from around the world.

The 19th annual SOLIDWORKS World conference was held February 5-8, 2017 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, California, USA. A large and enthusiastic crowd of over 5,000 SOLIDWORKS users attended the conference.

Dassault Systèmes’ continued investment in SOLIDWORKS, as well as its connection to their 3DEXPERIENCE platform, illustrates a long-term commitment to add value and ensure that SOLIDWORKS remains a design platform of choice. SOLIDWORKS World 2017 demonstrated the strength and size of the SOLIDWORKS community and greater eco-system that continues to develop around it.

CIMdata is impressed with Altair’s product strategy for enabling systems simulation up front in the product development process to drive innovative product design concepts and by Altair’s execution in developing a comprehensive portfolio of multi-physics solvers integrated with Altair’s world-class optimization capabilities. The bottom line is that Altair has grown into a multi-physics systems modeling and simulation platform provider that can compete toe-to-toe with the major PLM market leaders and has the potential to be a disruptive force in their targeted industry segments.