Today, on March 17, 2006, we wrapped up a massive planning, engineering, quality assurance, and documentation process and launched Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 3.0 into the marketplace. I think you are really going to like this release! First, for the innovations it contains, and second, for its unprecedented quality.

On the innovation front, there is a long list of significant improvements we classify as “Fast” and “Smart”. Sketching is up to 80% faster. Assemblies as much as 500% faster. Drawings 63% faster, plus new support for shaded views. Sheetmetal up to 90% faster. CAM up to 300% faster. Plus smart process wizards to capture expert knowledge and best practices. Smart models that carry much more than geometric information, for example manufacturing knowledge. Smart sharing, both online and offline. And smart interoperability with Pro/INTRALINK, and across our Product Development System. Take a look at our website for all of the details – there are simply too many new capabilities to list them all here in this blog!

On the quality front, with Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 3.0 we set out to create the first “premium quality” brand in the CAD marketplace. This is an interesting new strategy, and I’m convinced you will feel the difference immediately when you first use Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 3.0. Why did we do this? First and foremost, users of nearly any software product complain about quality. I saw a recent survey that said 43% of SolidWorks users claim the software crashes too often, and 46% felt that SolidWorks did not spend enough time testing the software. We all know the “blue screen of death” or the more modern “Send” versus “Don’t Send” dialog. Makes me wonder if anyone can keep up with all the reports that I alone send?

The more mature a product or category, the less tolerance there is for quality problems among the user community. We’ve seen how this phenomenon has driven premium quality brands in the automotive industry. Yet, though CAD/PLM has matured greatly, nobody has clearly risen above the pack with premium quality. We think PTC can be the first, and we think we have some special advantages that competitors will struggle to duplicate. First, at an executive level we’ve committed to lead with quality. Second, we’ve made dramatic and continuous improvements throughout our processes, and it all starts there. But there is more. Quality is evaluated at many levels – for example, how well does this feature, this software program, this integrated software system, or this entire automated business process work? To make a truly happy customer, the answer needs to be consistently positive across the spectrum.

PTC is unique in that our integral Product Development System – built around Pro/ENGINEER and Pro/INTRALINK but encompassing Windchill, ProductView, Arbortext, and more – spans the range from addressing single user productivity features to institutionalizing best-practice enterprise product development processes. And all of this software is carefully planned, coordinated, developed, and tested here at PTC before we ship it to you. This approach ensures that the customer gets the absolute best user experience with the absolute lowest total cost of ownership. Competitors across the board lack either PTC’s footprint of capabilities and/or the integral architecture upon which to build this picture of total quality in a larger software system. This is a huge fundamental advantage for PTC, and we plan to leverage it.

Talk to you soon,

Jim Heppelmann

EVP & Chief Product Officer

PTC