New Aras Innovator Tuned for Global PLM Deployments

Aras, which has staked its claim around open source Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), has introduced a new release of its platform tuned for global PLM deployment.

The new Aras Innovator release features an array of enhancements designed to optimize the PLM platform for enterprise-wide PLM deployments that take advantage of geographically distributed data centers, private clouds or hybrid environments that combine both on-premise and cloud computing infrastructure. It is available for download from the company's website.

In the area of enterprise manageability, the platform now supports data server virtualization, allowing companies to consolidate physical server infrastructure and distribute computing horsepower to resources spread around the globe. In addition, enhanced caching techniques help minimize traffic over the WAN, ensuring faster performance for worldwide PLM deployments, particularly on high latency networks and in low-bandwidth conditions such as those that likely exist in emerging economies, according to Aras officials.

To foster international business process collaboration, the new release allows workflows to operate in multiple languages concurrently, delivering workflow activities and instructions in the native language of each participant. There is also new multi-level system notification functionality so system administrators can tailor notices to users by specific names, groups or roles - another capability designed to minimize PLM administration headaches.

Security is another area of focus for the new Aras Innovator release, including advanced database protection, enhanced track and audit functionality, and additional system administrator controls.

To address the pain of system upgrades, Aras is upgraded "in place" without recoding or data migration - a significant departure from traditional PLM system upgrades which require reimplementation and data migration. With the new release, Aras will now perform both minor and major upgrades as part of the Aras Unlimited subscription package at no additional cost.

Aras' model-based SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) technology is the key to quickly and easily upgrading highly customized business applications, according to Peter Schroer, Aras' president. "The problem has always been that CIOs must trade off their business' need to automate competitive processes versus the IT reality that once a complex system is customized, it is very difficult and expensive to implement upgrades from the software," he says. "Aras' Subscription makes the business case easy - all upgrades are included in the fixed price annual subscription regardless of customization."

Aras Innovator supports the latest Microsoft software platform, including Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V.