The first half of 2001 witnessed a sharp economic downturn. Then terrorist attacks on U.S. targets in September further undermined the U.S. and world economies. The damaged airline industry and declining business travel have put companies under increasing pressure to find ways to collaborate over long distances and to refine product development and management. As a result, CAD, PDM, collaborative systems, and supplier and customer management will continue to grow at a healthy rate, according to research and consulting firm CIMdata.
After explosive 65% growth in 2000, the
collaborative product definition management (CPDM) market will slump to
36% growth in the period from 2001-2005, says research firm CIMdata. But
it could have been worse--that rate results from companies seeking to
operate more efficiently during the current recession. If these
predictions are correct, the service sector of the market will be valued
at about $8 billion and the software sector at over $6 billion by
2005.
"All the major industries today are looking for additional collaborative tools, and developers are looking for ways to provide them," says Ken Amann, CIMdata's director of research. He believes that difficulties in travel will increase the interest in both synchronous (people working together simultaneously) and asynchronous (people working together sequentially) collaboration for CAD, and shared repositories of design data.
CIMdata expects the overall market for what it calls "CPDM"—worldwide collaborative product definition management—to grow by an average of 36% through 2005.
Current PDM sales seem to validate that expectation. PTC reported 22% growth in sales of Windchill over the calendar year 2001, and expected that percentage to increase in the future as smaller companies use some of the Windchill technologies that PTC now offers as separate products (such as Windchill ProjectLink and PartsLink). EDS PLM Solutions reported sales in excess of 1,000 seats of iMan in October alone (the former UGS hasn't broken out growth percentages for the PDM program), and says that Metaphase revenue has grown between 32% and 46% each quarter of this year, compared with the same quarter in the previous year. Dassault Systemes reported a sales increase of 32% for Enovia and SmarTeam combined. Only MatrixOne reported a decrease, with an approximate 8.3% loss.
Amann suggested that design engineers should expect:
More interaction in real time, either via visualization
technology used over company networks or through Internet portals.
Pressure to collaborate as a way to reduce costs in the
design cycle.
The emergence of visualization tools and document and
content management technologies for collaboration.
New ways of sharing PDM information—even that stored in legacy systems—by means of future use of XML as a standard for developing future PDM standards.
CIMdata expects that the areas of greatest growth in CPDM will be automotive and aerospace companies seeking more effective integration of their supply chains and worldwide operations.
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