One-to-One: PLM? Microsoft? SOA? Open Source? Aras says yes

I
had the chance to talk with … both Marc Lind and
Peter Schroer from Aras
Corporation in separate conversations in recent times about the
progress they are making since transitioning
to an open source model over a year ago. My first reaction to
their move was “what’s that all about?” Time has passed, and I
am pleasantly surprised by the traction they have made,
breaking free from a pack of vendors that were increasingly
starting to look the same. I am even more pleased to see that the
market is rewarding them for it.

They did What!?
I have always been intrigued by Aras. They have good people and
good ideas, and I was introduced to them a while back based on some
unique architectural approaches they took with their solution. But
Aras struggled to differentiate themselves based on architecture,
and did not have the mass or scale to compete with the likes of
Dassault, EDS PLM (now Siemens PLM), PTC, and even Agile (now
Oracle). How could they get their message across on their
architecture? The answer was - they couldn’t. It wasn’t enough to
differentiate. They needed to be more different.

In 2005, Aras dropped its support for all platforms except for
Microsoft. The move appeared to be an attempt to move to smaller
businesses. Which, in fact, worked. Then, in January of 2007 they
did something that took my by surprise. They made a very
bold move and went open source. PLM? Microsoft? Open
Source? SOA? XML? There was a lot to the move and more acronyms
than you can shake a stick at, but the key is this:

You could get a free download of
the software. No strings attached. 

Aras adopted a proven open source model to complement this, by
offering enterprise and small business support packages (this is
where they make their money, of course). Effectively, they removed
the license fee to start using the software and went straight to
maintenance. A gutsy move, but even free software is of no value if
it doesn’t provide value. Open source just gave Aras a foot in the
door. How much more different can you be than free? 

What they Offer
Aras offers support for PLM business processes.
One of the refreshing things about them is that they focus on
solving problems versus focusing solely on core PDM. One example of
this is their offering for quality management, supporting process
like APQP. They also support change and configuration management,
where they just announced 4 star
certification on CMII from the Institute of Configuration
Management (ICM). To their
credit, Aras focuses on solving problems and not just selling
software. Wait, they don’t even sell the software… you know what
I mean.

Aras also has a very interesting architecture that takes
advantage of model-based programming approaches, but that
is probably more than we want to get into in this blog. The key to
this is that it is made to be customized, making it an excellent
choice for an open source model where companies gain source code
and frequently modify the product. Aras is also supporting a
community where these enhancements can be openly shared among the
community.

Who do they Work With?
Based on offering free software, you might expect that they would
be selling primarily to small companies (they thought so, too). You
would be wrong. They were, but they are not unhappy about the
larger companies downloading and using the software. They are
also finding traction in larger companies, many of whom have
invested in other, traditional PLM systems. Aras can
extend traditional PLM solutions by providing a business
process layer on top of their PDM solutions, or be implemented as
the core PLM solution itself.

So that’s what I hear from Aras, I hope you found it useful. What
do you think? What else should I have asked them? Is open source
PLM for real?