Aras bolsters PLM position with funding

Product life-cycle management (PLM) vendor Aras Corp. has nabbed $4.2-million series B funding from a group led by Greylock and Matrix Partners. While the funding will help the company compete in the PLM market, the vendor is seeking to carve out a niche in the market, which includes much larger best-of-breed players, as well as large suite vendors.

Marc Lind, an Aras VP, says the company offers broad PLM functionality that is quick to implement. "We focus on quick deployments and ease of modification," says Lind. "Our key point of differentiation is the ability of the application engine to be easily tailored or modified very quickly."

Mike Burkett, a research director for PLM at Boston-based analyst firm AMR Research, agrees that Aras has "very configurable" software that is quick to deploy, but he sees the hand-off from design to production as the vendor's functional strong suit.

"In the PLM space, there's a place where you have to address tooling and manage all of the manufacturing documents in product revisions," says Burkett. "Aras has a strong focus and functionality around this hand-off to manufacturing. They have out-of-the-box tools for managing tooling and manufacturing process instructions."