It’s election year and we have one of the most divisive campaigns I can recall, so of course it means I should write an article about Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) unity.  Six years ago, I wrote an article titled “PLM State: Why can’t we all just get along?” where I confessed that despite my University of Texas roots, I have learned to tolerate Oklahoma Sooners.  Since that time I have made even more progress and hired two Texas A&M Aggies to work at Zero Wait-State. I still see a lot of division between PLM vendors, systems integrators and third party partners and usually it is the customers that lose.  Most recently, it appears that a lack of common standards around the “Internet of Things” (IOT) will result in a fragmented industry that will hinder the movement from achieving its full potential.  We continue to strive for unity and this article announces our new partnership with the recently acquired Perception Software (now a business unit of Altium Software) and will explain our strategy for PLM going forward.

Prior to the acquisition by Altium, we had an ongoing relationship with Perception Software, mainly around their ECAD connector for Agile PLM.  In our role as a systems integrator and with our focus on engineering collaboration, it was a natural partnership.  Perception Software has always been primarily focused on being a software vendor so it was mutually beneficial when we teamed up with them to offer implementation services for their ECAD connectors to Agile PLM.  Over the past several years, Perception has expanded their focus to offer a robust search tool for product data that works with various PLM and other enterprise systems.  The product is called Encompass Product Navigation and has been adopted by large companies like Cisco and Harris Corporation.  This product led to a scaled version specifically for Oracle’s Agile PLM application called AgileXPLORER and a portion of this product has been included in the AgilePLM Engineering Collaboration module by Oracle and Perception.  This product presents a clean, modern user interface that allows clients to rapidly access information in Agile using search criteria that is more tailored to their business requirements.  Perception Software is releasing a new version of the product that enhances the security to mirror Agile PLM’s security model and offers additional analytic capabilities to deliver even more return for customers’ PLM investment.  Given the direction of our current product development initiatives around enhancing PLM through customization tools, the new version of AgileXPLORER is a great fit for our clients.  To that end, we announce a preferred partnership between Perception Software and Zero Wait-State.  Zero Wait-State will provide implementation services and utilize our products AttributeState and RestState alongside AgileXPLORER to allow Agile PLM customers to maximize their investment in their PLM tool by fully unlocking the valuable product data their PLM system maintains.  This partnership will leverage the strengths of both companies to provide high value capabilities to AgilePLM users.  Zero Wait-State has a staff of seasoned PLM professionals that can deploy AgileXPLORER alongside our State products to enable companies to address their toughest business issues around innovation, cost, quality and time to market.  We are excited for the opportunity to work closely with Perception and leverage their technology for our clients.

This type of cooperation is unprecedented in our government and the PLM space in general.  It is exciting that two organizations can align for the best interest of their clients.  Going forward, Zero Wait-State will continue to seek a role as a unifier of technology and process to allow our clients to reap the advantages of using “best in class” solutions to solve their business challenges. We have deliberately sought out areas like data migration and integration to facilitate the abilities to work with multiple systems since this is reflective of the world we all live in. It is rare to be able to fully standardize on one platform and there are always touch points that require systems and people to interact effectively.  Our exclusive State software products are architected for this reality and will enable our clients to fully leverage their PLM data and adopt technology that best addresses their future business needs.  This new partnership with Perception Software is another step toward providing our clients with maximum flexibility in product development, allowing them to move quickly in the pursuit of optimization and productivity.  Perception Software will be demonstrating the latest version of their product in a webinar September 15. Click HERE to register and learn more about their technology.