HP and UGS join forces to sell product development collaboration software, hardware and services

At last week’s UGS annual press conference in Los Angeles, Hewlett Packard and UGS announced their intention to co-market UGS’ product development collaboration software bundled with HP’s hardware and implementation services. The software is based on UGS’ e-Vis web collaboration backbone combined with HP’s enterprise hardware tools, including Unix servers NT servers, Unix workstations and a range of HP network and platform connectivity solutions. Speaking in at the UGS press event, Alan Johnson, HP’s vp global alliances manufacturing solutions, said: “We have a shared vision with UGS, to extend PDM [product data management] out to the masses, beyond the engineering department, out to other departments and down the supply chain. In effect, we want to generate offerings that blur the lines between products and services.” The actual UGS-HP offering includes the following: UGS’ pre-packaged e-Vis software; HP’s hardware and operating system environment, “that reduces deployment time from months to weeks because it is pre-qualified”; and bundles services based on HP’s ‘workshop’ approach (ie consultancy advice to improve the client’s business processes).