How much are companies investing in PLM? Daratech gives a rundown
Cambridge, MA — July 26, 2006 — Daratech, a provider of information technology market research and technology assessment, advisory and strategic consulting services, continues to note the increasing number of mergers and acquisitions and the changing playing field for all competitors in product lifecycle management (PLM).
The firm asserts this is happening because there are a staggering number of innovative technologies entering the market each year. PLM and asset lifecycle management technologies are still in their infancies, and solution providers will continue to acquire companies and technologies they believe give them a better opportunity to serve their customers, as well as a leg up on the competition and a way to increase their own bottom lines.
Also, Daratech said, the quest for openness is at the forefront of everyone's minds of late, and the more a provider does to make itself interoperable with its own technologies and others', the more it stands to reap from the ROI of its solutions.
At the start of 2006, Daratech forecast that the overall PLM market would grow by about 14 percent, to just under $12 billion. While the company hasn't updated this total to include results for the first half of 2006, it would appear that this forecast was on the conservative side.
In the first half of 2006, more than a handful of major acquisitions took place, quickly expanding an increasingly growing PLM market. An increase in the rate of consolidation among the major companies is occurring as they seek to reach new customer segments, new market verticals and to fill technology gaps.
Since the beginning of the year, in chronological order, the following transactions have occurred: ANSYS announced that it would acquire Fluent, Inc.; Autodesk announced its acquisition of Constructware; Dassault Systèmes (DS) announced the acquisition of MatrixOne; Adobe Systems. Inc. announced it had acquired TTF of France; PTC announced the acquisition of Mathsoft; Agile Software announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Prodika; and Open Text Corp. announced that it intends to acquire Hummingbird Ltd.
Not all money is being spent inside the industry, however; outside investments are being poured into this space, meaning that even the "outsiders" see a big benefit of investing in PLM. Primavara Systems Inc announced that it received investments from Insight Venture Partners and Francisco Partners L.P., and Blue Ridge Numerics announced it has received a "significant infusion" of capital from the Global Environment Fund (GEF).
