PTC Announces Worldwide Collaboration Centers; First Center Unveiled in Boston Area Features HP VISUALIZE Immersive Environment
WALTHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 6, 2000--PTC (NASDAQ:PMTC),
the leading provider of collaborative product commerce (CPC)
solutions, today announced its first worldwide collaboration center.
The center, built in conjunction with Hewlett-Packard Company (HP), is
designed to help manufacturing companies, their product designers and
engineers, business partners, and suppliers understand how CPC and the
Internet is transforming traditional manufacturing business models.
Visitors to the collaboration center will understand the role of
the Internet in manufacturing today and participate in
industry-specific examples of how companies can find, organize, and
use critical product-related information in a virtual business
enterprise. The first center, located in the Waltham, Mass.,
headquarters of PTC, coordinates HP's Internet-based infrastructure,
particularly its hardware, services, and VISUALIZE Center technology
with PTC's powerful CPC solutions to fully exemplify the uses of CPC
in manufacturing companies. A second collaboration center, again
developed with HP, will be opened later this year in Europe.
"Our strategic relationship with HP allows us to showcase PTC's
CPC vision to visiting customers from around the world in a
state-of-the-art, real-world immersive environment," explained Ronald
Locklin, vice president of worldwide alliances at PTC. "Visitors to
the worldwide collaboration centers will be able to understand how
PTC's solutions allow them to collapse the time and distance between
themselves and their customers, partners, and suppliers."
The collaboration center in Waltham and subsequent global centers
highlight how customers can upgrade and extend their intranets, access
legacy applications and empower non-engineers to visualize engineering
data through their Web browsers to collaborate across the extended
enterprise.
Designed using advanced visualization and computing technology
from HP, the center features a 20'x 6' Immersive Visualization
PowerWall driven by HP VISUALIZE J5000 workstations with three HP
VISUALIZE fx6 graphics pipes. The HP VISUALIZE workstations provide
the collaboration center with the computing and 3D graphics power
necessary for engineers to interact with complete digital prototypes
on a life-size scale and share them across the extended enterprise.
The collaboration center employs additional HP hardware combined
with PTC's Windchill Info*Engine to validate how preeminent
manufacturers can solve one of their greatest concerns: integrating
and accessing information managed by legacy, incumbent and ERP systems
in order to accelerate time-to-market.
"At PTC's collaboration center, featuring HP's visualization and
graphics technology, customers can develop competitive strategies for
implementing Web-based CPC solutions, as well as experience the same
design review environment used by many of the world's leading
manufacturers," said Jim Zafarana, worldwide marketing manager for
HP's Technical Computing Division. "Together with PTC, we can offer
solutions that prepare our joint customers to take full advantage of
the Internet and reap the benefits in the world of collaborative
product commerce."
More than 50 customers and partners from world-class manufacturing
industries including aerospace, automotive, telecommunications, and
heavy machinery have already taken advantage of PTC's collaborative
center. "We are excited that this facility will help our manufacturing
customers understand how they can leverage these powerful solutions to
embrace and maximize the opportunities the Internet has to offer,"
said Barry Cohen, PTC's executive vice president for marketing.
About PTC's Web-based Collaboration Solutions
Focused on all phases of a product's lifecycle -- from concept and
definition to production, service, maintenance, and retirement --
Windchill advances collaborative product commerce (CPC) initiatives by
allowing manufacturers to collaborate over the Internet with their
customers, suppliers, and partners throughout the product development
and delivery process. Windchill's unique Web-based approach
springboards manufacturers into the Internet age, enabling them to
capitalize on enterprise expertise, customer knowledge, and supplier
innovation while accelerating the global introduction of innovative
products to market with reduced risk and lower costs. |
