A slew of Aras Community Events (ACE's) are just around the corner. We kicked off the year with our International event in Troy, MI and continued it with a regional event in Chicago, IL . Up next are a series of events around the globe. Leading with ACE…

Aras's own Nate Brown presents the Requirements Management Solution. This solution allows users to manage their requirements within Aras Innovator, making it possible to map requirements for other ItemTypes in the system. The user interface makes it possible…

Does your coworker have an Aras "Be Different" shirt that they love to show off? Do you hate yourself for wanting it so much? If this sounds like you, check out the Aras merchandise store . If your thing isn't to Be Different there are also lots of…

Aras Innovator has one of the best security , authentication and data access rights models the PLM market has to offer. It was defined early on by our defense industry customers , which means it meets government security specifications. The entire Aras…

Last week, some interesting posts about the storage and analysis of data in PLM systems popped up in the blogs I frequent. The conclusion of these posts? PLM needs to be more like Google – it needs to go beyond conventional taxonomies and make sense of…

It would be faster to tell you what's not happening! Social, cloud, impact matrix, MPP & MBOM and more; it's all coming because you – the members of the Aras Community – asked for it. How, you ask? Using the Aras public roadmap and making your voice heard…

I just the read the Information Week article about General Motor’s “U-Turn” on outsourcing. GM is turning IT into a value-add and mission critical resource again, instead of just a cost center driven to reduce IT infrastructure costs as its only goal…

While twittering about last week, someone I follow noted "Business Insider article titles make him laugh". So of course I had to click into This Ex-Salesforce Exec Wants To Save The Planet - And Kill Oracle, SAP in the Process . Pretty bold title but…

Last night I had the pleasure of dining with a group of Aras enthusiasts – partners and users – visiting Aras HQ for a training class. Located on the Merrimack River, the dinner conversation naturally focused on the area’s rich industrial past and before…

By now you've heard that Aras is Different .  It's true.  We're not your legacy PLM software.  But what does different really mean, and better yet why does it matter? For Aras, being different means accepting our uniquess, striving for it, and challenging…

Here at Aras, the enterprise open source business model is a driving force behind our company.  It influences the way we think.  The software we create.  And the community we stand with. But we still get asked, “Is this model viable for enterprise software…

The latest Service Pack for Aras Innovator Version 9.3 is now available - SP3! This highly anticipated service pack includes a variety of improvements from SQL Server 2012 support to package import/export utility enhancements and more. One such improvement…

A while back Ralph Grabowski’s upFront.eZine published a piece titled “ Just How Open is Aras with its Open-Source PLM ” which involved my response to another reader’s statement about Aras. To Ralph’s credit, he published a substantial portion of my response…

Did you catch yesterday’s Boston Globe? It had a rarely captured view into PLM by Boston Globe tech feature writer D.C. Denison: Route 128 at Center of Manufacturing . Denison’s article highlights the clustering of PLM firms in the greater Boston area…

So what is it about Aras Innovator that keeps Enterprises and Users alike coming back for more? For starters, it’s completely different from any other PLM product in the marketplace. When you compare Aras Innovator with other enterprise software applications…

CIMdata's annual PLM Vendor forum was today in Ann Arbor, MI and the Twitter-sphere was buzzing - Were you following? Btw, kudos to @smprezbo for this year's well received hash tag. There were so many interesting thoughts from the mention of angry birds…

You don’t have to be a PLM expert to know that one of the hottest topics in the industry is integrations. Whether its ECAD, MCAD, ERP or another application, anyone who has done a lap around the PLM track has an integration war story to share. In this…

Like anyone involved in the PLM world, I too have been following the continued announcements of Autodesk PLM 360. There was a veritable thunderstorm of posts on twitter yesterday that took up my feed for the better part of the morning on the subject.…

At any given moment in time there are beginners in PLM. Start-ups. Seasoned professionals changing roles. Growing companies making new investments in previously forgone solutions. This morning I passed Peter Schroer in the hall as I was thinking about…

This morning on Copyblogger I read a piece by John Truant that discussed the negative affect that playing by the rules can have on a business... "If you're doing everything right, but find yourself unable to stand out from your competitors... I can…

To wrap up the series of posts I've made over the past few weeks, I'd like to reiterate a few key points: IF YOU HAVEN’T STARTED YOUR PLM IMPLEMENTATION YET You now have some good tips to help you get going in the right direction, including: Clearly…

Just because you can automate everything, doesn’t mean you should. Over-automation causes two problems. First, it complicates and delays your PLM implementation while driving up costs. Second, it can create rigid business rules that take users – actual…

NO VISION / NO ROADMAP It’s not uncommon for C-level executives to have one vision for PLM and engineering to have another, with a gigantic gap in between. The execs, who finance and approve PLM, are thinking about profits, innovation and getting new…

Choosing a Product Data Management (PDM) system to do the work of a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solution is a surefire way for a project to get stuck. As the name implies, PDM is great for managing engineering product data; however, when it comes…

GROWING PAINS Often PLM starts with one group in a corporation, such as engineering. While this can be a great way to get started, when properly implemented PLM should be accessible to everyone in the company. The real benefits and ROI come from providing…