Industry's Most Comprehensive Capabilities And Strongest Architecture
Eliminate Barriers To Distributed Product Development
NEEDHAM, Mass., Jan. 19 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- PTC (Nasdaq: PMTC), The
Product Development Company(TM), today announced the availability of
Windchill(R) 7.0, a major release of its Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)
technology and a critical component of its complete Product Development
System. The Windchill 7.0 suite addresses the challenges manufacturers face
today when seeking more customer input while developing products across
multiple sites and relying on suppliers for a significant portion of their
design and manufacturing activities.
Given shorter product lifecycles, effective and regular collaboration with
the extended global design chain has become more important than ever.
However, prior to Windchill 7.0, manufacturers have been forced to choose
between control-oriented product data management (PDM) offerings or more
flexible collaboration tools. Attempting to use both together necessitated the
development of complex and costly integrations that duplicate information in
both independent environments.
With Windchill 7.0, PTC provides an integral PLM solution that seamlessly
marries flexible and streamlined collaborative capabilities with formal
control of information and processes. Both capabilities share a common pure
Internet architecture to enable communication of information throughout the
value chain, as well as a new turnkey enterprise interoperability module that
connects to other enterprise systems such as SAP. Manufacturers benefit with
faster time-to-market, higher quality, and lower costs.
"Windchill 7.0 is a breakthrough release for PTC and for the PLM industry
as a whole," said Jim Heppelmann, Chief Product Officer and EVP, PTC. "With
our Product Development System that blends Pro/ENGINEER(R) and Windchill, PTC
is the only vendor to offer comprehensive create, collaborate, and control
capabilities on an architecture that is integral, Internet, and interoperable.
Windchill 7.0 is an important element of PTC's Product Development System
strategy that helps remove complexity, cost, and risk from PLM initiatives."
Integral Collaboration and Control
Windchill 7.0 brings together typically disconnected collaboration and
control capabilities (driven by Windchill ProjectLink(TM) and Windchill
PDMLink(TM)) into a single system. For the first time, engineers can
selectively and securely collaborate while maintaining the appropriate
linkages to the formal PDM system. This is accomplished by enabling users to
check-in/out or share select information from the PDM environment into secure,
self-administered Web collaboration spaces where it is available to other
participants using a Web browser. Everyday activities like communicating with
external customers and suppliers, resolving complex engineering changes, and
performing "what if?" analyses are greatly simplified and improved. A home
page aggregates each participant's tasks, checked-out documents, and
activities across projects and products. When used with PTC's Pro/ENGINEER
Wildfire(R), Windchill 7.0 enables a truly seamless experience for engineers
who want to collaborate but need to retain control over their designs across
and beyond the enterprise.
"We applaud PTC's product direction for Windchill 7.0 to provide a
seamless user and data environment across Windchill PDMLink and Windchill
ProjectLink," said Dan Shoenhair, Director, Engineering Business Manager,
Ping, a leading sports equipment manufacturer. "This will enable us to
provide controlled access of product data to our suppliers; being able to
collaborate with our suppliers securely is very important to our business."
Interoperability with Other Enterprise Systems
Windchill 7.0 also strengthens PTC's portfolio of interoperability
capabilities with the release of Windchill Enterprise Systems Integration
(Windchill ESI). This new module that provides turnkey process and data
mappings between Windchill and other enterprise systems such as ERP, SCM, and
CRM - the first adapter being SAP. Windchill ESI for SAP allows for the
synchronization of information such as bills of material (BOM), released
parts, documents, and engineering change notices (ECN) from Windchill to one
or more ERP instances. PTC plans to offer additional turnkey integrations in
the future for other ERP systems such as Oracle Manufacturing.
(For more information on Windchill ESI, please refer to the press release
"New Windchill Module Delivers Turnkey Integration To Connect PLM With ERP".)
Pure Internet Architecture and Interactive 3D Visualization
With Windchill 7.0, PTC continues to demonstrate technology leadership in
an Internet environment by creating a scalable J2EE standards-based and Web
Services-enabled foundation which dovetails neatly into a company's existing
Web infrastructure. Not only does Windchill help drive adoption by requiring
nothing more than a simple Web browser, but Windchill 7.0 further accelerates
the understanding of information with embedded interactive 3D thumbnails on
product pages, allowing the user to spin, pan, and zoom in on the image to
quickly preview digital product data. Because 2D information is increasingly
being delivered via the Adobe PDF format, Windchill 7.0 enhances collaboration
through tight integration with Adobe Acrobat. Microsoft documents can be
automatically published to PDF format for viewing and markups are maintained
as part of the product record. Both of these enhancements are powered by the
embedded industry-leading Windchill ProductView visualization capabilities.
Additional Enhancements
Beyond these main themes, Windchill 7.0 includes a number of product-
specific enhancements that improve usability and performance. Examples include
enhanced distributed product administration, support for product teams and
templates, extended support for structured documents, streamlined Microsoft(R)
Office integration, and advanced audit reporting.
Windchill 7.0 became available to customers in December 2003 and can be
licensed through PTC or certain of the company's authorized resellers. For
more information on Windchill, please visit the Windchill product pages on
PTC.com.
About PTC
PTC (Nasdaq: PMTC) develops, markets, and supports software solutions that
help manufacturers win with superior products. PTC is the world's largest
software company with a total commitment to product development. The company
services more than 33,000 customers worldwide. Further information on PTC is
available at http://www.ptc.com.
Except for the historical information contained herein, matters discussed
in this news release may constitute forward-looking statements that involve
risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially
from those projected. These include: the success of our initiatives to
facilitate our customer's understanding of the benefits of our integral PLM
solutions, including return on investment and value creation; Our ability to
successfully develop, integrate and support the technology necessary to
deliver products and services that anticipate and adequately respond to
evolving customer requirements; our ability to realize revenue from the
larger, strategic business opportunities we are pursuing as well as from our
point solutions based on Windchill technology; the success of our partnering,
distribution and customer satisfaction initiatives; the success of our
Windchill integrated solutions strategy initiatives, including our efforts to
successfully compete in the MCAD industry by differentiating our MCAD
offerings by targeting synergies with Windchill; the success of our cost
reduction initiatives; and the effects of a weakened economy which may impact
the overall demand for software and related services; as well as other risks
and uncertainties detailed from time to time in reports filed by PTC with the
Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Company's most recent
reports on Form 10-K and 10-Q.
PTC and its logo, Product First, The Product Development Company, Product
Development Means Business, Create Collaborate Control, Pro/ENGINEER,
Windchill, and all PTC product names and logos are trademarks or registered
trademarks of Parametric Technology Corporation or its subsidiaries in the
United States and in other countries. Microsoft is a registered trademark of
Microsoft Corporation; Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation;
and SAP is a registered trademark of SAP AG Germany.
Contact Information:
Joe Gavaghan
PTC Global Public Relations
781-370-5074
jgavaghan@ptc.com
Meredith Mendola
PTC Investor Relations
781-370-6151
mmendola@ptc.com
SOURCE PTC
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Related links:
http://www.ptc.com
CONTACT:
Joe Gavaghan, Global Public Relations,
+1-781-370-5074, jgavaghan@ptc.com, or Meredith Mendola, Investor
Relations, +1-781-370-6151, mmendola@ptc.com
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