I sold Pro/ENGINEER for seven years as a reseller, I have resold AutoCAD for ten years and am selling SolidWorks for about 18 months.
I know the marketshare and the quality of Pro/ENGINEER's software. It is powerful, but and these are very big buts it is very very difficult to use, very, very difficult to find personnel who can really use the software, and many companies are beginning to rethink their PTC investment in light of software like SolidWorks which is lower in cost of ownership by a factor of over 75%, vastly easier to use, vastly easier to implement, and vastly easier to justify.
I may be myopic, I may be whatever you PMTC believers think, but I know this market (at least the US portion of this market) better than most. Why is Polaroid abandoning their Pro investment. What's happening in companies like Fisher and Porter, Johnson & Johnson to their PTC installed base. Let's get real. No product in this market has shown the ability to maintain its edge over time. I;m wise enough to remember than CVN once dominated the market, then there was Intergraph, then their was Autodesk, now their is PMTC. What did each of these dominant players have in common. They grew complacent and arrogant. Show me a more arrogant company than PMTC in this or any other marketplace. They will fall just like all the other heros. My bet is that SolidWorks is the company that takes them down.
Time will tell |
