Aras brings open source model to PLM practitioners, Microsoft users

The open source software movement has spread to the product development space—and in a somewhat surprising fashion.

In January, product life-cycle management (PLM) software vendor Aras made its Microsoft-based Innovator application suite available for free. “Customers can download it, use it, and make changes as they require,” says Aras President Peter Schroer. “This is the first time an open source application has been available to Microsoft users.”

Open source applications typically have been associated with noncommercial, nonproprietary technology platforms like Linux, Eclipse, or Apache. But Schroer believes companies that operate on the Microsoft technology stack also would like the additional freedom to customize applications that comes with open source software. “There is a lot of pent-up demand for open source software,” he says. “We believe this will be a high-growth model.”

Microsoft has been supporting the open source movement, albeit somewhat quietly, for more than a year. It manages CodePlex, a Web site (www.codeplex.com) where users can initiate and contribute to open source projects based on Microsoft technology. Schroer says any Aras customer can post changes made to Innovator on CodePlex, but they are not required to do so.

Aras claims more than 3,000 copies of the Innovator suite have been downloaded since it became freely available in January. One copy went to Dennis Henning, IT manager at Ogihara America Corp., a Howell, Mich.-based manufacturer of automotive body panels.

Ogihara wanted a PLM package to manage its Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) process, a methodology that nearly all automotive manufacturers use to ensure compliance with both regulatory and customer requirements in regard to product quality.

“The open source distribution model made this a highly palatable deployment,” Henning says of the Innovator suite, which is the first Microsoft-based enterprise application Ogihara has used. “It eliminated all the discussion about how many licenses we could afford to purchase, and how we would manage those licenses.”

When he began shopping for a PLM application, Henning envisioned making the package available to roughly 30 people in the 900-person company. Under Aras' open source licensing model, he now expects 60 to 80 people to have access to the system, which is scheduled to go live April 2007.

Ogihara purchased a two-year support package from Aras, which allows it to get help with configuring Innovator for its own purposes. For its initial deployment, Ogihara loaded Innovator on a Windows-based Dell server that also houses a Microsoft SQL Server database. The application also is connected to a services-oriented middleware layer from Sonic Software, which will transport messages back and forth between Innovator and Ogihara's ERP system from QAD.

Henning says his initial analysis of Innovator led him to believe it would be easily adaptable to uses beyond the APQP program, and the ability to work with the source code improves upon that aspect of the system.

Schroer sees the open source model as a positive for both Aras and its customers.

“When companies have a business problem, they often struggle with getting budget approval for new software to address the issue,” says Schroer. “With this model, they can get the software for free and start tackling problems immediately. They also can go to the CodePlex site and find out about best practices from other companies.”

Aras will benefit, Schroer says, because most users will feel the need to purchase a support contract. “That should provide us a reliable stream of income,” he says.