Managing Automation - March 2008 - (Page 12)

FREE Online Membership managingautomation.com news managingautomation.com maonline Go online for daily news updates in perspective ago — to build the client base and take advantage of whatever new opportunities may arise in the wake of the Oracle-Agile pairing. In the product realm, he sees room for improvement in Arena’s ability to integrate with its clients’ other applications. “You can’t just have something that goes in easy and is inexpensive and solves a problem; it also has to do that in the context of all the other processes and applications.” — Chris Chiappinelli Alliances, Executive Appointments, Mergers & Acquisitions, Products Transform your business through technology FREE Membership includes: • Award Winning Editorial • Web Exclusive Articles • Whitepapers & Webcasts • Improved Online Tools and Expert Forums • Product Comparison Engine • Targeted Newsletters • Special discounts for Executive Conferences • My “MA” which allows you to save products, comparisons and more Sign Up Today at: MANAGINGAUTOMATION.COM someone who could scale the business. Toward the end of 2007, a confluence of circumstances led Arena to Livingston. Oracle’s acquisition of Agile and its subsequent de-emphasis of mid-market PLM — the bread and butter of Livingston’s Agile Advantage division — gave him the motivation to try something new. Now, looking back to Arena’s early years, Livingston remembers thinking of the company from his position at Agile as “kind of amusing. They were interesting, and we were running into them [in deals], but, frankly, the product hadn’t reached the maturity that I believed it needed ” The intervening years saw strong product development at Arena — helped, in part, by its oft-updated on-demand software, Livingston says. By the time Oracle swooped in on Agile, “we were, I guess you would say, avid competitors,” he says with a chuckle. Now the mid-market PLM arena is Arena’s to win, he says. Jim Brown, an analyst at Aberdeen Group, concurs but says it won’t be easy. “One of the things you have to consider is that larger players haven’t given up on the mid-market,” Brown says. Dassault Systemes, PTC, and Siemens PLM Software all maintain offerings for smaller companies, he notes, and Oracle may still win its share of business with its Agile technology. At the top of Livingston’s priority list for 2008 is leveraging Arena’s recent success — the company surpassed 300 active customers not long THE NEXT PHASE FOR 2006’S PM AWARD WINNER K emco Manufacturing, Managing Automation’s Progressive Manufacturer of the Year in 2006, has been sold, and the company’s CEO, Haider Nazar, has left to run an engineering and design services business that spun out of Kemco. The 65-person Kemco, which had been a family-owned company, was sold in August 2007 to two private investors in the St. Louis area for an undisclosed price. Excluded from the sale was Amplify Technologies, an engineering and design services business that Kemco started two years ago. Nazar, as its CEO, is now expanding Amplify’s operations in India and the United States. Nazar, in an interview with Managing Automation, said he decided to sell Kemco and UPCOMING SAS Global Forum 2008 March 16-19, 2008 Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center San Antonio, TX http://support.sas.com/events /sasglobalforum/2008/index.html Supply-Chain World North America 2008 March 17-19, 2008 Hilton Minneapolis Minneapolis www.supply-chain.org The Lawson Conference and User Exchange (CUE) March 17-20, 2008 Venetian Hotel, Las Vegas www.cueinfo.com Logicon2008 March 25-28, 2008 JW Marriott, Las Vegas www.wbresearch.com/logiconusa EVENTS Gartner Business Intelligence Summit 2008 April 1-3, 2008 Hyatt Regency Chicago www.gartner.com/it/summits/bi6/index.jsp Adept Global Conference 2008 April 2-4, 2008 Adept corporate headquarters Livermore, CA www.adept.com/conference The Logistics & Supply Chain Forum April 15-18, 2008 The Norwegian Dawn New York City www.logisticsforum.com NA 2008-The 2008 Material Handling & Logistics Show and Conference April 21-24, 2008 I-X Center, Cleveland, OH www.NAShow.com Request Information Directly from Vendors you choose http://www.managingautomation.com http://www.managingautomation.com http://support.sas.com/events/sasglobalforum/2008/index.html http://www.gartner.com/it/summits/bi6/index.jsp http://www.adept.com/conference http://www.supply-chain.org http://www.managingautomation.com http://www.logisticsforum.com http://www.cueinfo.com http://www.NAShow.com http://www.wbresearch.com/logiconusa

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Managing Automation - March 2008

Managing Automation - March 2008 Contents Take 1 Mailbox Mitsubishi, IBM, and ILS Team Up to Make Integration Easy for Automakers Former Agile Exec Takes the Reins at Arena Solutions The Next Phase for 2006’s PM Award Winner Integration Firm Boomi Redesigns for On-Demand Ex-Wonderware Chief Takes Helm at Apprion Notes Cover Story: A Rare Breed Special Report: Where are Control Architectures Heading? Transformation: Back to Reality Integration: Getting Standards Under One Roof Industries: The Quest for the Perfect Order Product Scan Advertiser Index Next

Managing Automation - March 2008

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