PTC Acquired Onshape And What Do We Think About It At OpenBOM

As you probably heard, PTC agreed to acquire Onsahpe. The press release and additional materials from PTC can be found here. 

PTC is acquiring Onshape because we have a deep commitment to providing innovative technology that drives business value and enhances your competitive position.

It is a technological purchase. Read more of my thoughts here – Onshape + PTC = What happened? PTC acquired Onshape to leapfrog in technology and get an advantage in the research and development Onshape did for the last seven years in the cloud infrastructure, multi-tenant systems, scalable data management, and collaboration. Onshape runs on AWS (Amazon Web Service cloud) and serves customers globally via software available in the browser and subscription-based business model. 

PTC CEO Jim Hepplemann gives the following justification why PTC was interested in purchasing Onshape technologies. 

As you know, most software industries have embraced the SaaS model because it lowers cost of ownership and accelerates the introduction of new capabilities into the market. SaaS eliminates the need for costly server hardware and ensures that users are always current with the latest software with no need for administrators to implement patches or perform regular upgrades. Onhape is an amazing product – I trust you will be as impressed by its many breakthroughs as I have been

At OpenBOM, we cannot agree more about the importance of SaaS models and cloud technologies. As Jim Hepplemann said, PTC made research learning about all successful SaaS platforms availability in different industry domain. According to PTC research, none of these platforms came a result of the porting of existing systems and technologies from client-server, database, web technologies to SaaS. You need to start from a clean sheet of paper to design system that will be multi-tenant and available globally for users and customers. 

SaaS business model also a significant contribution to the economics of the system and ability of the platform to serve a broad group of customers. 

At OpenBOM, we are excited about Onshape technologies. OpenBOM was partnering with Onshape from the first day and our application is available on Onshape App Store. Navigate here OpenBOM App for Onshape to learn more and read customer reviews. 

OpenBOM is deeply integrated into Onshape different product levels – data integration with real-time updates, user experience, and drawing integration. Check the following five minutes video to see a quick overview. 

But more than just BOM creation OpenBOM gives to Onshape users and customers to go beyond design level. As we know, one CAD user in the company creates the data consumed by ten people. In the following video, you can watch how you can see how information captured from Onshape can be used for downstream planning and purchasing processes. 

Integration with Onshape is important, but we realized that the Bill of Materials using stands in the intersection of roads between different applications, teams and data sources. Therefore, at OpenBOM we created a real-time collaborative environment with a unique spreadsheet-like user experience allowing people and teams to stay “on the same BOM”. 

Here is a video demonstrating how OpenBOM can be used for real-time collaboration (think Google Spreadsheet) connecting engineers, manufacturing planners and contractors. 

Another way OpenBOM can help you is by integrating OpenBOM with other applications. You can check the list of available integrations on our website. The following video shows you how OpenBOM can create a Bill of Materials from Solidworks design. 

Conclusion.

At OpenBOM we believe in the power of cloud and SaaS applications. It gives a huge advantage in the way how easy you can manage data online, sharing information and connect people and teams across the globe. At the same time, we realized that the reality of many manufacturing companies is to work in different environments and tools. The jump is not immediate and therefore customers should have a choice. By providing rich set of integrations, OpenBOM allows customers to maximize the value and optimize use existing and future technologies together. 

Best, Oleg @ openbom dot com.

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