Airbus has adopted Aras Innovator as its PLM tool of choice – an act that could disrupt the PLM market
Airbus and Aras have signed a ‘Strategic Partner Agreement to use Aras Innovator for enterprise-wide Engineering Business Processes beyond 30,000 users’.
What this means in short: the aerospace giant has swerved past the usual PLM players – Dassault Systèmes, PTC and Siemens – in favour of Aras’ open source Innovator platform and subscription model.
Aras Innovator remains a free to download and open source product, but the costs come with upgrades, maintenance and support, while the customer can add in its own levels of customisation as and when it wishes.
“Our success with the deployment of Test Information Management for aircraft end-to-end across the structural test pyramid in multi-site operation including our extended enterprise proved the viability of Aras for complex engineering business processes,” explained Airbus VP Engineering Solutions Anders Romare.
Interestingly, he added: “The unique SaaS subscription business model of Aras which eliminates up-front license costs and includes system upgrades with customisations is also quite compelling.”
For over a decade Enovia, Windchill and Teamcentre have been the big names in the industry, yet with a huge client adoption like Airbus, Aras has firmly entered the frame.
With Aras’ customer base already including GE, Hitachi, Honda, Motorola, and Xerox, we expect a fresh flurry of activity from the PLM sector over the coming months as Aras looks to build on this move and the competition look to reaffirm their position.
