CIMdata attended the Oracle Modern Supply Chain Experience 2016 in San Jose, California on January 25-27, 2016. The event was action packed, with three days of rich content. PLM played a more significant role and had a stronger presence than in prior years. There were themes that crossed all sessions, such as the inevitability of the cloud and the importance of supporting innovation with requirements traceability. Oracle’s commitment to extending and enhancing cloud-based PLM was clear, while remaining committed to Agile A9 and on-premise customers. For Oracle customers the event continues to evolve into a business leadership and strategy meeting, distinguishing it from Oracle OpenWorld, which is more targeted at developers. CIMdata looks forward to next year’s event, and sessions by customers using this hybrid environment with a range of cloud and on-premise solutions that show the power of Oracle’s approach.

TCS has developed a framework that treats the elements that drive profitability as systems and manages complete profitability models as a system of systems that operates over the full product lifecycle. By providing up to date profitability feedback via this approach, management is able to make better decisions sooner, maximizing profitability for both the short- and long-term. TCS has proven that it has the technical and consulting experience to adapt their solution to meet the requirements of companies in multiple industries. 

Profitability management is a core process in any company, but few companies do it well due to the complexity of the details. CIMdata sees TCS’s framework and associated services as a good example of a solution that can help companies improve the effectiveness of their profitability management strategy.

CIMdata believes the ANSYS 17.0 release is compelling evidence that ANSYS has succeeded at creating an M&S innovation platform infrastructure that is open and extensible based on industry standards. ANSYS is well positioned to provide comprehensive and high performance systems modeling and simulation capabilities for a wide range of engineers in globally distributed enterprises—throughout the product development process. As a result, CIMdata believes that the ANSYS platform should be given strong consideration as a core M&S environment for use by global organizations, particularly where innovative electronics content and software functionality are the key competitive differentiators.

CIMdata attended PTC’s Thing Event held on 28 January 2016 in Boston, MA USA. CIMdata was very impressed with the new technologies and solutions that PTC presented at the Thing Event, along with their overall strategy based on these offerings. The Thing Event highlighted the potential for companies in a range of industries to use big data/analytics powered by IoT and AR to deliver innovative user experiences that bring product and lifecycle knowledge to the point of work where it is needed most. While their enterprise aspirations are audacious, PTC now has the solution portfolio in place to help their industrial companies change the game in their product markets.

CIMdata believes that Siemens’ intent to acquire CD-adapco reinforces their strategy to be a formidable force in the Simulation & Analysis (S&A) market and while it will expand and strengthen their portfolio of S&A solutions, it will have to be integrated with other Siemens PLM Software technology and solutions including Teamcenter as well as LMS and NX CAE. Historically, Siemens PLM Software has taken a considered approach to such acquisitions and has brought together the best of each application to create new, more capable solutions.

With Infor PLM Accelerate, the company has a proven PLM solution for discrete manufacturers. While based on robust third party technology, Infor has significantly enhanced Infor PLM Accelerate with its own IP and technology. It has been integrated with other Infor solutions and technologies to expand its overall capability and provide companies with a consistent product development business environment. CIMdata recommends that manufacturing companies reviewing their current PLM solutions or looking at implementing one should include Infor PLM Accelerate and Infor when evaluating their needs for PLM.

CIMdata views Autodesk University 2015 as a major success for the company. The strong attendance attests to Autodesk’s major influence in the PLM industry. Autodesk continues to focus on their product innovation platform with Fusion 360 with Autodesk PLM 360 at its core. The new aggressive Forge initiative is set to encourage third-party app development on the platform. The future of making things is here and Autodesk can be found at the center of the action.

SAP’s Product Lifecycle Costing (PLC) solution enables new product costs to be defined, quantified, and analyzed during the early stages of the product lifecycle (i.e., during development). SAP’s PLC solution can address the early costing, quoting, and estimating problem faced by manufacturers in many industries, and especially for automotive suppliers. Available as a standalone product, SAP’s PLC solution provides a comprehensive set of capabilities for early engineering, quotation, and lifecycle costing. CIMdata recommends that companies looking to address their lifecycle costing requirements include SAP’s PLC solution in their evaluation of potential solutions, regardless of whether or not they are an SAP ERP user.

On 25 November 2015, Siemens PLM Software entered into an agreement to acquire Polarion. CIMdata thinks this acquisition makes excellent business sense. 

CIMdata believes that Geometric has a comprehensive and pragmatic approach to solving product and business complexity issues. They have a clear vision of PLM and a deep understanding of the tools, technologies, and processes required to implement PLM in a wide variety of mature and emerging manufacturing industries. CIMdata recommends that companies looking for a partner to help them implement and leverage their PLM investments for maximum benefit include Geometric in their evaluations.