This research does not constitute an exhaustive list of vendors in any given technology area, but rather is designed to highlight interesting, new and innovative vendors, products and services. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. 
It may seem to many that the market for PLM software, including design applications, has matured. Yet, the small Cool Vendors highlighted in this research are proof that important innovation continues to happen in this well-established software market. Gartner's manufacturing clients continue to ask advice on:
- Reducing the difficulty and cost to purchase, deploy, and upgrade PLM software
- Selecting design software that is easier to use
- Improving ability to share design data
- Increasing the reliability and confidence in CAE results
- Improving ability to capture and continuously evolve product-related knowledge
- Addressing system engineering and cross-functional simulation needs
Such inquiries substantiate market interest in the value that these five Cool Vendors provide.
Why Cool: Aras is evolving to become the most visible software vendor providing open-source PLM support. This means that users do not pay license fees to download the software and deploy it. Aras makes its money from annual subscription fees that include maintenance, software upgrades and support. Given the architectural layering of core functionality and customized workflow via model-based service-oriented architecture (SOA), Aras claims that highly customized global PLM deployments can typically be upgraded in less than 10 person days. For smaller global installations of 2,500 users or fewer, the subscription is a flat fee of less than $300,000 per year. As the number of seats increases to more than 5,000 users, fixed-price unlimited user subscriptions are negotiable. Gartner is seeing increased interest and adoption from manufacturers and PLM service providers. One well-known manufacturer with approximately 1,800 seats deployed validated that Aras' Innovator software performs as well as, if not better than, the expensive software that it displaced. The manufacturer reported that the cost to deploy the Aras open-source offering was 2.5% of the highest quote from more-mainstream PLM vendors for the same functionality. The annual subscription fees for support and upgrades are approximately 40% of what they would pay the major PLM vendors for annual maintenance, and they had no expense for PLM licenses. They use Aras Innovator for managing bills of material and engineering change processes. Challenges: Although Aras is making a bold and appealing value proposition, this vendor is relatively small without much market awareness. Therefore, corporate decision makers that equate risk protection with vendor size may want to work with a global system integrator if considering Aras. Then, quality of support will depend on how dedicated the service provider remains to supporting Aras long-term compared to other PLM vendors. Also, while Aras offers an approach to CAD viewing, Aras relies on third parties for CAD integrations. A significant number of Gartner's manufacturing clients prioritize CAD integration. Those considering Aras should conduct pilots to validate the integration. Also, Aras' growth potential is reliant on a growing customer base and partnerships with PLM service providers to maintain adequate support capacity. Who Should Care: CIOs and those managers of R&D groups responsible for PLM support should investigate Aras. Manufacturers of electromechanical equipment for industrial, automotive, aerospace and high-tech markets will gain the fastest value, because Aras currently has the most experience with these types of manufacturers.
Why Cool: Comet Solutions addresses one of the most difficult and underserved challenges in product development today — it enables a multidisciplinary system-level approach to product design that is connected to other product development software capabilities, yet it can also support detailed design. The software enables engineering teams to manage their work-in-progress configuration data with relatively little overhead. Users can also integrate a broad variety of design, data management and math-based tools — such as Matlab — with Comet Solutions software for a system-level approach to design. While other software providers promote their capabilities to address this challenge, Gartner perceives Comet Solutions' approach as more modern, much easier to deploy and use, and more cost-effective. Customers noted that Comet's software substantially improved the ability of multidisciplinary teams to collaborate on complex projects heavily influenced by structural, thermal and optical behavior. One customer reported that the ability to evaluate designs from a system level, and also from the perspective of each participant's expertise at a detailed level, provided better physical insight than prior design approaches and improved performance of the design team by a factor of five. Although the customer was not specific, Gartner perceives that the factor of five was based on a combination of time, cost and quality metrics. While Comet's early customers use it for mechanical design and optics, Gartner believes that Comet's approach can be adapted to broad markets, including mechatronics. Challenges: While Comet's capabilities have potential to expand to a broad number of markets, it will struggle with communicating its value proposition to broad audiences. The challenge of communicating to broad markets can inhibit the rate of potential growth. Engineers with experience and deep expertise at designing complex systems are the most likely candidates to quickly appreciate the value of Comet's offerings. While the community of such engineers within any company is relatively small, the number of such companies is large enough that Comet can still see substantial growth from its current size and have a significant potential impact on the state of product development practice. Who Should Care: Product development managers and engineers with system-level responsibility for product design should investigate Comet.
Why Cool: Emergent Systems approaches the challenge of capturing and reusing corporate engineering knowledge innovatively. The approach is dynamic, adaptable and even applicable to domains outside of engineering. Instead of promoting the traditional approach of creating difficult-to-modify rule-based expert systems to capture design and engineering knowledge, Emergent Systems promotes an enterprisewide approach that includes structuring of content, workflow and "knowledge packets" that provide role-based decision support. The architecture goes beyond traditional tools by changing or introducing new knowledge packets to workflow without the need to embed new specialized logic to workflow. Customers report that Emergent Systems' approach to retaining and reusing a growing corporate knowledgebase is dynamic, adaptive and more effective than traditional approaches. One leading customer described how it uses Emergent's E2ks software to manage product requirements across R&D and manufacturing. Users structure requirements to be role-based and presented to stakeholders based on the nature of a use case. For example, design requirements may apply to product assembly or stamping of quality parts. If quality issues arise, E2ks facilitates tracing those issues to design decisions made. They can then upgrade the knowledge packets that pertain to those design decisions. One customer reported improved ability to define and refine requirements explicitly and much more awareness of requirements compliance. It commented on its improved ability to leverage requirements and workflow as strategic corporate knowledge expressed in the language of the business, rather than in some cryptic rule-based language. Challenges: Successful knowledge management initiatives require commitment and investment; E2ks is no exception. This implies that selling cycles are long, given the enterprise scope. Even when companies recognize the need for such strategic knowledge management, many do not have the conviction to make the necessary investments. The need to classify and structure knowledge domains, and the need to fund new dedicated teams responsible for managing the knowledge, are also inhibitors to getting started. Who Should Care: Those responsible for operations such as engineering, manufacturing, service and quality control would find E2ks a useful tool. Knowledge management professionals within manufacturing firms should also be interested.
Engineering Software Research and Development (ESRD) Why Cool: ESRD pays uncompromising attention to the quality of the engineering analysis results that its CAE software — StressCheck — produces. This is particularly important as concerns about reliability of design decisions based on software tools continue to increase. ESRD offers advanced finite element analysis software and expertise beyond what is commonly available from better-known CAE vendors to enable such reliability. ESRD's software delivers many of these advances in what engineers can use as an online engineering handbook. In addition to a prepackaged set of parametrically driven engineering analysis models, users can add their own company-specific models as well and link them to other commonly used software in the scientific community such as Matlab, Microsoft Excel or any other Component Object Model (COM)-enabled application. Customers commented that their challenging engineering work would have been impossible without StressCheck, although they attempted similar problems with other CAE software (for example, customers applying ESRD tools to evaluating the behavior of composite materials in aerospace). They reported that the software is particularly robust when evaluating the resistance of structures built with composites to localized damage. The possibilities extend to other domains such as biomechanics, where ESRD has had successes as well. Some executives at larger CAE firms stated that ESRD's focus areas are "too niche" for it to be a commercial success. ESRD converts, most of whom are deep-CAE experts, refute those comments by citing ESRD's superior results. Most use ESRD in conjunction with mainstream CAE tools. Challenges: Companies like ESRD struggle to reach broad markets because they focus on specialized capabilities of particular interest to relatively small communities of engineering specialists. Yet, these specialists work on engineering challenges vital to the reliability of products. The conventional practices, ingrained culture and expectations set in the mainstream CAE market make it difficult for firms such as ESRD to be heard. Who Should Care: Engineering managers and CAE specialists in discrete manufacturing industries responsible for design quality, product safety, and reliable mechanical performance should investigate ESRD.
Why Cool: SpaceClaim offers unprecedented cost-benefit in its ability for occasional CAD users to achieve high-quality results while creating new designs, importing existing CAD geometry, making changes and sharing the models. SpaceClaim adopted the most comprehensive modeling approach called — direct modeling — as the foundation of its software. The CAD industry veterans that founded SpaceClaim also leveraged their deep expertise in feature-based parts and assembly modeling to incorporate strong ease of use. This approach enables users to import CAD models from any other CAD system, make a broad range of changes, and then export the models. In contrast, most mainstream CAD is limited to referencing, cutting or building on geometry imported from other CAD systems, but not directly editing imported geometry. A perpetual license at list price costs less than $2,500, more than 35% less than most mainstream 3D CAD software. SpaceClaim's biggest opportunities are with users who work with geometry but are not necessarily CAD professionals. One engineer in the medical device industry, who occasionally works with CAD, commented that SpaceClaim helps him raise the level of his work. He noted that SpaceClaim is so much easier to use than typical CAD software that he spends more time on engineering and less time creating geometry. Yet, SpaceClaim appeals to design professionals as well. For example, one designer with decades of deep experience in industries where aesthetics counts, commented that he can produce high-quality designs in 40% to 60% less time with SpaceClaim than with better-known CAD software. Challenges: Reaching a large market of occasional CAD users is difficult, particularly in the CAD market, where the strong established vendors have decades of strong brand recognition. Additionally, many potential customers that standardized on the better-known CAD offerings will be cautious about introducing relatively new CAD software from a lesser-known vendor. Who Should Care: Any department of a small or large company with an occasional or continuous need for CAD should be interested in SpaceClaim. SpaceClaim could be particularly interesting for groups involved in product manufacturing, concept and bid modeling, or repurposing CAD models for engineering activities such as simulation. © 2010 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. or its affiliates. Reproduction and distribution of this publication in any form without prior written permission is forbidden. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. Although Gartner's research may discuss legal issues related to the information technology business, Gartner does not provide legal advice or services and its research should not be construed or used as such. Gartner shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice.
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