customers based on that trend. As SharePoint continues its adoption curve, we feel that it’s a great opportunity for us to work with Microsoft to drive SharePoint adoption in the engineering space.” PTC’s SharePoint strategy currently includes two primary products – Windchill ProductPoint and Windchill Web Parts for SharePoint.

Windchill ProductPoint is a SharePoint-based solution that supports sharing, versioning and viewing of multi-CAD data. The sophisticated search functionality saves time across entire projects while reducing the risk of design errors.

The addition of Windchill ProductPoint to the Windchill family has allowed PTC to develop a variety of new areas of business. Having chalked up 100 new customer wins by the end of the last financial year, the company aims to net 400 Windchill ProductPoint wins in FY10. A joint go-to-market strategy with Microsoft is a critical part of this process.

“The Windchill ProductPoint solution is built natively on SharePoint on the Microsoft technology stack, so the Microsoft sales force is very enthusiastic about it,” says Michel. He notes that the SharePoint base makes the solution very easy for SMBs to adopt. “In most cases, they already have SharePoint and they can grow quickly.”

An important part of PTC’s offering for enterprises is Windchill Web Parts for SharePoint. Working seamlessly with PTC’s Windchill PLM solution, Web Parts give companies broader access to product data, improving worker productivity by presenting essential Windchill information in a familiar SharePoint browser. Flexible, configurable search is central to Web Parts. Cross-application dashboards allow team members to seamlessly access and edit documents regardless of their location.

The genius of Windchill Web Parts for SharePoint is its capacity to connect staff communications across departmental boundaries. Team members in planning, marketing, finance or procurement departments can view

product planning and portfolio tools, engineering reports, or configuration of engineered products. The ability to integrate data from all of these different points of view leads to better forecasting and improved understanding of the key performance indicators of the business.

“We’re taking Microsoft with us into engineering and manufacturing departments and then we’re working with them to get us into the core IT spaces,” explains Michel. “Web Parts provides the ability to extend access to engineering and manufacturing information across the enterprise.”

PTC has recently moved into a new area of activity that it believes will quickly gain traction in the marketplace. Its project and portfolio management (PPM) solution, based on Microsoft Project, aims to help managers tackle complex decision-making processes in tough economic conditions. “Our PPM solution is focused on helping managers decide upfront what to work on and then manage it throughout the lifecycle,” says Michel. “As their budgets and development flexibility shrink, they can pick not only which projects to work on, but the best projects within their portfolio to invest in, and they can manage that process efficiently.”

Another area that is gaining momentum is PTC’s incorporation of social networking in its products. PTC’s CAD solution, Pro/ENGINEER, has already had some social networking features built into it for the last few years, says Michel. “We are also building a social product development application on top of the SharePoint stack. It allows people to work more easily in groups, and to understand where knowledge is resident within an organisation.”

He points out that there are many advantages to embedding social networking in engineering solutions. These include being able find people with relevant expertise, possibly leading to conversations that culminate in attracting new inputs into a design. Michel says PTC’s customers are already very excited about the possibilities that are opening up as a result.

Often, PTC schedules new releases of its solutions to take advantage of new developments in its partner technologies. The release of SharePoint 2010 this year will be the trigger for a range of new functionalities in PTC’s core products. Following closely behind the 2010 launch, PTC will roll out new versions of several products to capitalise on the features built into SharePoint 2010.

An upcoming Windchill Dynamics integration will continue to capitalise on Microsoft technologies, and customers can expect further integration throughout the suite on the Microsoft stack and in the Windchill product family.

“We believe that PTC is making the largest investment in SharePoint-integrated products of any ISV,” remarks Michel. “Certainly, we’re the only ISV in the PLM space at the moment leveraging SharePoint as a collaboration platform for a core product. We are also the only PLM player developing a portfolio management solution working with Microsoft Project Server, and we’re very excited about the opportunities this presents.”

PTC has been a leading vendor in the product development space for more than two decades. The company has released strong results for the first

quarter of 2010, with an impressive 195 per cent year-on-year increase in product lifecycle management (PLM) licence revenues in the large enterprise market. And since the last quarter of 2009, PTC has taken the number of paying seats for its software to more than a million.

Based on these robust results, the company expects to outpace the overall market in 2010 and beyond. The PLM part of the business, and in particular PTC’s Windchill platform, will account for the bulk of this expansion. Windchill is already generating around US$500 million of revenue annually and is by far the fastest growing PLM solution in the marketplace. PLM revenue growth is being driven by demand from leading organisations such as Airbus, BAE Systems, Cummins, DRS Technologies, Ikea, Raytheon, and the United States Army and Navy.

A significant factor in PTC’s success is its long and fruitful partnership with Microsoft. Not many companies can claim that Microsoft depends on them for a core part of its functionality. PTC is in this enviable position – in fact, 90 per cent of all Microsoft hardware is designed using PTC’s core MCAD solution, Pro/ENGINEER. PTC was the first MCAD provider to support Windows NT in 1993, and PTC later pioneered support for 64-bit processing with its Pro/ENGINEER 2001 and Pro/MECHANICA 2001 design tools. Today, Microsoft is a major PTC customer for the Windchill ProductPoint solution,

built on SharePoint. In addition, Microsoft is a core user of PTC’s InSight product analytics solution.

The rise of Microsoft SharePoint has deepened the working relationship between the two companies. For PTC, SharePoint offers the opportunity to enhance customers’ existing initiatives with product development applications that leverage Microsoft’s proven system. PTC and Microsoft are now involved in significant joint initiatives to develop, sell and market SharePoint solutions.

PTC’s senior vice president for corporate development, Iain Michel, has occupied a variety of roles at PTC over the last decade, from corporate strategy and business development to mergers and acquisitions. He believes that the secret of PTC’s extraordinary integration with Microsoft lies in a mutual commitment to interoperability. “We’ve worked internally and with Microsoft to make sure that all of our solutions fit seamlessly together,” he says. “SharePoint is obviously a huge part of the strategy.”

It’s not just SharePoint that underpins PTC’s solutions: there is also extensive integration with SQL Server, Office Communications Server, Dynamics and Project Server. For end users, this collaboration results in ease of implementation, lower cost of ownership, and trusted access to best-in-class solutions.

SharePoint has gained market share very quickly across the manufacturing industry because it is a disruptive technology, says Michel. “We are seeing IT consolidation, where customers are replacing old legacy systems with SharePoint and with systems integrated to SharePoint. There is a lot of pick-up and interest from enterprise

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ptc spotlight

feature

PTC continues to grow its longstanding relationship with Microsoft. Michele Witthaus examines the resulting benefits for both companies

ProfiTable

“ We’re taking Microsoft with us into engineering and manufacturing departments and then we’re working with them to get us into the core IT spaces” Iain Michel, PTC

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