The information about Aras PLM OEM deal with Infor caught my attention yesterday evening. It looks like a big deal for Aras Corp. Aras PLM is well known by their innovative Enterprise Open Source model. If you are not familiar with Aras, check their website and blog. For the last few years Aras demonstrated solid capabilities to deliver full scale PLM solution. You probably remember my old blog – Aras lines up against Windchill, ENOVIA and TeamCenter 3 years ago. I think Infor-Aras partnership is a step in the same direction. More information about Infor-Aras partnership is here. Product offering will be re-branded as Infor PLM Innovator. The following passage explains how does it fit Infor PLM strategy:
Infor PLM Innovator – powered by aras – provides a full-featured, highly scalable, flexible and secure PLM solution built on industry best practices that easily adapts to your company’s changing business practices. Seamlessly integrated with Infor ERP, Infor PLM Innovator goes beyond the capabilities of standalone PLM products, to unite your entire product lifecycle for a single view of the truth, which provides actionable information from design and manufacturing to purchasing, quality, the supply chain and beyond.
What is specially interesting, Infor is going to offer Aras PLM as a cloud-service. Consilia Vector research put an interesting perspective on an opportunity related to Aras-Infor deal.
Word of mouth and an open source sales program has taken Aras quite far; this deal with Infor will be like moving from cars to airplanes. It also gives Infor what it craves, a customer checklist that more completely matches item for item with Oracle and SAP. Oracle bought Agile PLM several years ago, and SAP has assembled a PLM system from a variety of small purchases and in-house projects.
I found comments about SAP and Oracle quite remarkable. It looks like all three top ERP vendors recognized the value and importance of Product Lifecycle Management. I guess, manufacturing and enterprise companies are challenged how to support innovation with constraints of global product development and manufacturing. Therefore, adding PLM functionality to their product suites is an important imperative for all of them.
The notion of cloud in Aras-Infor deal is interesting. It is going to challenge cloud ERP providers too. If you noticed, leading cloud ERP provider Netsuite made a strategic partnership alliance with Autodesk about integration between Netsuite ERP and Autodesk PLM 360.
So, what about top three CAD-PLM providers – Dassault, Siemens and PTC? I think, strategic focus on these vendors is outside of ERP-PLM bundles. Dassault is focusing on 3DExperience. PTC is developing strategy for IoT. Siemens is broadening their TeamCenter PLM platform and applications. All these vendors have some sort of partnership agreements with ERP vendors as well as love-hate relationships of selling PLM solutions to same manufacturing companies.
What is my conclusion? All ERP vendors are well armed with PLM weapon to provide a comprehensive product development and manufacturing solutions. It confirms growing adoption and interest of manufacturing companies of all sizes in PLM. It is time to grab some popcorn and get ready for PLM-ERP competitive performance. Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg
