ANN ARBOR , Michigan , July 7, 2005—PTC has announced its intention to purchase all of the assets of Arbortext, a market leader in dynamic enterprise publishing. We believe that this acquisition is strategically important and will create a number of advantages and opportunities for the combined entity. The primary consideration is that the synergistic combination of the companies’ products will create benefits for customers by providing dynamic enterprise publishing integrated within a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) environment.
Several challenges to fulfilling the promise of this activity remain. A detailed integration strategy and schedule have to be implemented. The organizational structure will need to be finalized. Branding has to be worked out. And, a solution to the technical challenge of how to bring 3D content into an open, XML-based environment needs to be developed.
The challenges not withstanding, the combination of PTC and Arbortext products provides a more complete PLM solution than previously available for their customers in a number of industry segments, including, but not limited to discrete manufacturing. For manufacturing companies, the combination will provide an integrated approach for re-purposing their product design and manufacturing planning information into all of the different types of documents that are required to support new product introductions (e.g., specifications, parts catalogs, labels, packaging, assembly instructions, repair and service manuals). For non-manufacturing companies, the combination will provide a single repository and publishing environment for books, reports, manuals, instructions, etc., and eventually allow the incorporation of rich 3D graphical content into electronic publications. Arbortext will, for the first time, be able to offer their customers a complete solution for both managing and publishing information.
In addition, through this acquisition, PTC gains access to a number of market segments in which it has little presence today, including financial services, pharmaceutical, publishing, and others. Arbortext will gain a major distribution capability supported by PTC’s direct sales force as well as its channels.
