Future of PLM is with IBM says Rand

Engineering design and product lifecycle management (PLM) software vendor PTC’s largest global reseller Rand Worldwide, has just announced it will partner with IBM as a premier business partner and will now sell Delmia and Dassault Systemes software. The announcement is a major win for IBM, particularly as Rand will now be able to offer IBM an alternative channel to the mid- to low-end of the engineering design market (90% of Rand’s customers are sub-five seats). “We’re a $150m company with 1,300 employees world wide,” says Steve Gardner, UK country manager for Rand. “We’re already seeing the steady transition of customers moving from 2D to 3D [CAD software], but we believe the future is in the PLM space for us… And we think IBM has the best, broadest offering in this area, all developed on a single architecture.” Rand will now be able to offer its clients an integrated engineering design solution based on IBM’s PLM software, servers, workstations and middleware. Then there’s IBM’s Global Services division which Rand can tap into to provide customers with solution design, implementation, consultancy and training services.