CIMdata attended the annual Aras customer event, ACE 2021, held virtually on April 19th through the 21st. The three half-days agenda had 5 parallel tracks in addition to the keynote track. The tracks included presentations from customers, partners, and the Aras team. Over 2,700 people attended live.

On April 15, 2021 PTC released the next revision of their flagship product, Creo 8. This release shows PTC’s continued investment in emerging technologies. It contains a wide range of enhancements across a variety of design and manufacturing areas, including usability and productivity enhancements, model-based definition and detailing, generative design and simulation, and additive and subtractive manufacturing. Creo 8 supports PTC’s stated goal to make the design engineer more efficient and productive.

CIMdata believes that Eurostep’s ShareAspace provides BAE Systems Maritime with the data repository based on standards and the enterprise collaboration capabilities they need to move forward on their journey to Digital Twin support for their highly advanced product platforms.

On April 19, 2021 at the ACE 2021 virtual conference (Aras’ user conference), Mr. Peter Schroer, Aras’ CEO & Founder, announced a major investment by GI Partners, a private investment firm based in San Francisco, California.

Today, April 15, 2021, Autodesk announced their intent to acquire cloud-based product lifecycle management (PLM) and product data management (PDM) solution provider, Upchain. The acquisition provides Autodesk an established data collaboration platform upon which to support a decentralized product value chain.

The authoring and reviewing of this data can burden the company’s subject matter experts and steal their time away from their engineering tasks. Oberon has recognized this challenge and developed a flexible cloud-based solution that eases the burden on engineering staff and makes the data easily available to interested parties. CIMdata recognizes the strength of the Titania solution and the role it can play in improving a company’s ability to deliver their products with a better-quality experience for their clients.

A recent CIMdata research project found that Aras customers have upgraded more recently than customers of other mindshare leaders’ solutions. Other findings from this research will be released soon. Companies looking for a PLM solution that can be easily kept up to date should check out Aras Innovator. Aras’ technology and business approach helps customers configure a solution to their needs and keep it current.

A recent market entrant, CassiniPLM, delivers a cloud-native SaaS platform targeting small- and medium-sized businesses (SMB) that spans the lifecycle from idea through life. CassiniPLM’s flexible modular platform is designed for ease of implementation and adaptation by their SMB targets.

Leveraging AM requires many technologies to be organized, and the scale required for efficient operation is beyond that of any single company. Wipro’s industry focused digital inventory-as-a-service solution pulls together a consortium of stake holders to increase the business viability and adds technology to support validated part production by ensuring part identification, traceability and also ensuring that certified parts are reproduced reliably. CIMdata recommends that companies looking to transform spare parts management check out Wipro’s approach.

CONTACT Software created their IoT platform leveraging their CONTACT Elements solution in part due to the company’s expertise with industrial assets and their support for digital twins. CONTACT Elements gives them a proven, modular platform and makes it easy to leverage other platform elements in IoT/IIoT applications. The company is positioning CONTACT Elements for IoT as a business platform that can offer an end-to-end solution to support the on-going conversations of IT, OT, and engineering technology.