‘Pure’ product lifecycle management targeted on SMEs

PLM (product lifecycle management) software developer Agile is betting its business on European manufacturers, including SMEs, seeing the power of the CAD-agnostic PLM approach. The company, which has been quietly acquisitive over the last couple of years – buying German PLM firm Eigner and CAD visualisation software company Cimmetry – says it’s now prioritising R&D dollars for localising its offerings, spreading functionality between systems and focusing on SMEs. Martin Alleman, who runs Agile Europe, says: “We have mainly sold E6 [former Eigner PLM] in the automotive and industrial sectors. The rest of our business has been Agile 9 but that was not available in a localised version. “So our Number One priority for the next 12 months will be to complete our coverage of Agile 9 for all industries and territories… Then we will have an SME initiative with a big push on Agile Advantage [the hosted version of Agile 9] across Europe.” ZF and Siemens are among the latest to implement E6 PLM in Europe. ZF is now one of Agile’s five largest users in the world, while Siemens has standardised on Agile and SAP as its enterprise systems. Other big wins include Apple and Cisco on Agile 9, as well as Alcatel and Marconi in Europe – the latter having implementing the system on top of its earlier PTC Windchill system to support its move to outsourced services. Agile currently has four product lines. Agile 9 is the flagship product for the high tech, life sciences and CPG (consumer packaged goods) sectors. E6 is the evolution of Eigner’s product, now on its third release since acquisition and aimed at the automotive, industrial and aerospace sectors. Cimmetry is Agile’s collaborative visualisation software – used by Agile and OEMed to Dassault and SAP and others for product content sharing with view and markup capabilities. And Agile Advantage, the on-demand PLM offering, was launched in the US 18 months ago, and now has 200 SME users mostly in the high tech and medical device sectors.