The Hindu Business Line : PTC integrates Mathcad with Pro/ENGINEER

Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC) has announced the integration of its April 2006 acquisition Mathcad with its computer-aided design solution Pro/ENGINEER. This integration will allow Pro/E to deliver `predictive engineering' capabilities that will allow customers to analyse their designs quickly and make improvements rapidly to their designs.

"Our customers face mounting pressure to deliver better products faster and at a lower cost," said Mr Jim Heppelmann, Executive Vice-President and Chief Product Officer, PTC, in his keynote address.

The integration between Pro/ENGINEER and Mathcad will be available from mid-August, in the Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 3.0 M030 maintenance release. PTC also announced some new capabilities for the maintenance release 30 for Windchill 8 planned for September 2006: the ability to use SQL Server; and the integration of the Arbortext Content Manager. Also on the horizon in Windchill 9 is a B2B project collaborator called MPMLink, based on PTC's acquisition of Polyplan.

Speaking to journalists, Mr C. Richard Harrison, President and CEO, PTC, said that India is an important part of the company's strategy with more than 600 of its 4,000 employees.

Answering a question on the company's services focus, he said, "We do want to have good services. But we want to be a good product company first. Services represent 25 per cent of our revenues and it is growing fast."

On India's servicing capabilities, he said, "We will probably set up a back office for our service offerings, maybe do conversion for clients. We have approached some customers to outsource their technical publications as an experiment. We will form partnerships for this."