We believe this is a strategic for Agile and there are several important benefits. First, it will enable us to get a seat at a bigger table, said Agile CEO Bryan Stolle. Many sales opportunity discussions start at the engineering table and grow to broader PLM but because we are not a recognized supplier in engineering we are invited in later or not at all. Now we will have access to more deals at an earlier part.
He also stressed the cross-sell and upsell opportunities resulting from access to Cimmetry’s customer base and pointed out that the two companies have been partners for 10 years and most of Cimmetry’s customers have a t least one Agile application in place.
The third key benefit will be access to new vertical market sectors Agile currently does not have a presence in. Agile’s 1,200 customers are in the automotive, aerospace and defense, consumer products, electronics, high tech, industrial products, and life sciences industries whereas Cimmetry focuses on the manufacturing, electronics, architecture/engineering/construction (A/E/C) and industrial markets.
Cimmetry will continue to run as a separate company within Agile and will retain its 110 Montreal, Canada-based employees. Stolle said there is no product overlap so there will be no need to change the product line up. As the two have worked together for 10 years and customers can already view Agile content from within Cimmetry, there will be no integration issues.
As far as Cimmetry’s OEM partners are concerned he said there would be no change and Agile intends growing the OEM channel.
Using collaborative visualization software organizations can view graphical information relating to new products rather than text-based information and because the Cimmetry application can handle over 450 file formats information can be gathered and displayed from a wide range of sources.
It can be made available to a broader set of people within the organization from engineering to marketing as well as external organizations such as manufacturers or outsourcing partners. By bringing more people into the product decision-making process, organizations should be able to deliver better quality, appropriate and innovative products to market in shorter time scales.
Analysts say collaborative visualization is a critical PLM infrastructure component because organizations work with partners from design not just manufacturing, said Cimmetry president Faucal Kahloun.
A key benefit of the Cimmetry application is its ability to bridge the mechanical and electronic worlds which enables organizations to bring together all the components required for a potential product, from printed circuit board to external casing, and create a virtual mock up.
This enables them to see whether the elements are a good physical fit for example, before spending time and money building prototypes. It also helps speed up time to market and time to value, which are the underlying goals of PLM.
Stolle says there is no single company that competes with the new entity because other vendors such as UGS Corp, Spicer Corp and Dessault Systems offer elements of the Agile/Cimmetry whole.
However, the PLM competitive landscape is changing as a result of acquisition activity with vendors building up broader PLM portfolios and looking to develop partner ecosystems to enable them to provide end-to-end PLM software and service. For instance, UGS started 2005 with the acquisition of Israel-based Tecnomatix Technologies for $228 million in order to round out its PLM offering.
According to research from Forrester As PLM continues to grow into an enterprise-class solution, IT buyers are looking for a credible vendor that can combine internal capabilities with external best-of-breed partnerships to deliver a comprehensive PLM solution. Through its selective acquisitions and strategic partnerships, UGS wants to demonstrate its ability to deliver such an end-to-end PLM solution.
In the process, UGS is reshaping the PLM market dynamics by spawning a Software Innovation Network a dynamic ecosystem made up of global software and service partners that supply a portfolio of software and service innovations, which meet customers’ unique demands.
The role of PLM is to help manage the development, introduction, support and retirement of products. Within this definition, key requirements are the need for speed and control of aspects such as time to market and time to value as well as the ability to quickly respond to unique requests; plus new product development and launch which involves detailing the product and how it is made, sold and serviced in order to shorten the time to market and time to value.
