Cadalyst - January 2008 - (Page 40)

plmstrategies The SMB Battleﬁeld Solutions Speed SMBs’ Successes,” March 28, 2007, www.3ds. com). In the next quarter, it rolled out DELMIA PLM Express and CATIA PLM Express, which include ENOVIA SmarTeam Design Express, targeted at the midmarket. The Dassault press office pointed out that by following the not-just-PDM (product data management) strategy, the company has recently rolled out a vision, followed by a brand, 3DVIA, which extends the PLM experience beyond traditional enterprise users. Using an online application format, 3DVIA allows consumers to participate in the product-definition process. Measured in revenues or staff size, what is considered a small business by one vendor may turn out to be a large enterprise for another. To better understand the companies mentioned in this article and their target SMB market, here’s the breakdown, based on the information provided by the vendors themselves. (Note: Some prefer not to disclose their prices.) Arena Solutions SMB is: annual revenues of $10 million to $500 million (but software can be scaled for businessed up to $1 billion) Products: Arena PLM SaaS (delivered solely on-demand) Price: $50 per user per month Astoria Software SMB is: N/A (company primarily caters to large enterprises, Fortune 1000 companies) Products: custom products Price: contact company Dassault Systemes SMB is: annual revenues $100 million to $1 billion, fewer than 1,000 employees Products: CATIA PLM Express and DELMIA PLM Express Price: contact company PTC SMB is: annual revenues $500 million or less Products: Windchill PLM, both on-demand and on-premise deployment Price: $100 per user per month (for on-demand) Siemens PLM Software SMB is: 5–50 engineers (target for UGS Velocity Series) Products: Solid Edge, Teamcenter Express, Femap, CAM Express Price: contact company The Holdout At least for now, Siemens PLM’s feet remain firmly planted outside the on-demand camp. Bruce Boes, Siemens PLM’s vicepresident of marketing for UGS Velocity Series, believes an SMB doesn’t necessarily have to resort to on-demand PLM to reap the benefits promised by this model. If customers want low IT overhead, affordable entry cost, and minimal customization, he’ll point them to the Velocity Series. According to the opponents of the on-demand model, the shared hosting environment that serves as everyone’s data repository is the Achilles’ heel. To them, it represents a security compromise. “Your data is your company,” Boes noted. “When you start to shift it offsite to somebody else, you’re taking a pretty substantial risk.” CIMdata’s director of research Ken Amann remarked, “IP [intellectual property] protection and security has been a major issue in moving to SaaS and shared on-demand environments. However, concerns about security in shared environments have lessened considerably as technology has improved and experience with these software models has grown. While companies still need to be aware of IP protection issues, many are accepting that Web/network–based delivery of productrelated information and processes can be a cost-effective, secure solution for their business.” sales cycle of four months, and our deployment time is literally two to three weeks.” The Challenge for the Giants When asked about Dassault and PTC descending on the SMB territory and the SaaS model, Mark Holman, Arena Solutions’ senior vice-president of operations and strategic development, observed, “We have not yet come up upon these companies in our day-to-day business. We’ve been entrenched in this market with on-demand PLM for seven years and have learned a lot about what it takes to serve these SMB customers with ondemand. It’s often more challenging for large vendors. A typical PLM system isn’t architected to be Web-friendly, to function as a single instance, multitenant solution [the way SaaS operates]. The other challenge is a sales channel conflict.” “The software architecture problem is easier to fix, given time and money,” Astoria’s Ortega said. “But the sales channel conflict is more difficult to tackle, particularly for a big company.” The PLM titans are coming down from Mount Olympus. But the air on the ground is not quite the same. Which of them will win the trust — and, more importantly, the businesses — of the SMBs? The battle has just begun. c Cadalyst contributing editor Kenneth Wong explores the innovative use of technology and its implications. E-mail him at Kenneth.Wong at cadalyst.com. Content Management, at Your Own Pace UGS may not offer on-demand, but its new owner Siemens uses it, at least in one division. In May, Siemens Energy and Automation, Postal Automation Division, signed up for Astoria On-Demand for structured content management. Astoria Software, which provides Web-based solutions for managing dynamic content (technical publications and product manuals, for example), is a bit of an anomaly in the on-demand sector because it sells the type of SaaS solutions generally associated with SMBs to the Fortune 1000 companies, “really big companies with very complex requirements,” according to Dan Ortega, vice-president of marketing at Astoria. Astoria used to pitch its product under the perpetual-licensing model primarily, targeting aerospace and defense contractors, but it decided to explore the on-demand model because it found sales cycles taking too long, Ortega revealed. “Aerospace and defense companies tend to take a long time to make a decision. We’re a startup. We can’t hold our breath that long,” he said. “The on-demand model has an average 40 January 2008 | cadalyst | www.cadalyst.com http://www.cadalyst.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Cadalyst - January 2008

Cadalyst - January 2008 Contents Editor's Window Cad Central Chasing the Dolphins CAD that Won’t Break the Bank AliasStudio 2008 — Design and Visualization Software VectorWorks 2008 — CAD/BIM Authoring Software Dell Precision M4300 — Mobile Workstation What’s in Store for 2008? Low- or No-Cost CAD Goliath Reinvented Doin’ the DEED Cad Cartoon Issue Indexes The Return of Hot Tip Harry

Cadalyst - January 2008

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