PLM investment spending rises in first-half 2006

-- Control Engineering, 8/1/2006

Cambridge, MA— An increasing number of mergers and acquisitions, fueled by a staggering number of innovative technologies entering the market, are stimulating product lifecycle management (PLM) spending, reports Daratech in a recent market assessment. At the start of 2006, the IT market research firm forecast that the overall PLM market would grow about 14% to just under $12 billion. Although the company has not put a figure on the results for the first half of 2006, it says its initial forecast was “on the conservative side.”

In the first half of the year, says Daratech, seven major acquisitions occurred, expanding an increasingly growing PLM market. An increase in the rate of consolidation among major companies is occurring as they strive to reach new customer segments and new market verticals and to fill technology gaps.

According to Daratech, PLM and asset lifecycle management technologies are still in their infancies. It forecasts providers will continue to acquire companies and technologies they believe give them better opportunities to serve customers and improve bottom lines. In Daratech’s estimation, openness is also in the forefront and “the more a provider does to make itself interoperable with its own technologies and others’, the more it will reap from the ROI of its solutions.”

Among acquisitions taking place since the beginning of the year are Ansys' purchase of Fluent Inc., Autodesk’s acquisition of Constructware, Dassault Systèmes’ acquisition of MatrixOne, and Agile Software’s agreement to acquire Prodika.

—Control Engineering Daily News Desk