Survey - Would your company take advantage of Wildfire 5 with Intralink 3.x?

[mkorch]

Pro/E User Community,


Wildfire 5 is currently NOT supported with Intralink 3.X. Raytheon is
talking with PTC about the possibility of adding Wildfire 5 support with
Intralink 3.X.

Please respond to this survey if your company is unable to upgrade to
Wildfire 5 at this time due to Intralink data management constraints.



What version of Pro/E are you using now?



Assuming PTC supported Wildfire 5 with Intralink 3.X, would your company
upgrade to Wildfire 5 and when?



What is your data management strategy beyond Intralink 3.X including time
frame?



Please reply to -. I will be compiling feedback to
present to PTC.

Best Regards,

Margi Korch
Raytheon Missile Systems

This thread is inactive and closed by the PTC Community Management Team. If you would like to provide a reply and re-open this thread, please notify the moderator and reference the thread. You may also use "Start a topic" button to ask a new question. Please be sure to include what version of the PTC product you are using so another community member knowledgeable about your version may be able to assist.

[jnelson]

responses below

[BenLoosli]

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At what cost would you pay for PTC to support Ilink 3.4+ with WF5?
Intralink has been a no revenue product for PTC for almost 2 years now, except those that paid for the extra year support until June 2009 to get WF4 support. Would everyone be entitled to the WF5 support or just those who have already paid for the additional year for WF4? Do those on WF3 have to pay for the WF4 support before they can get the WF5 support.

I'll also play devil's advocate and say you have all had plenty of notice that PTC did not want to support Intralink 3.x products for 4 years now. Sometimes you have to bite the bullet and do an unpleasant upgrade. Windchill-based solutions are more support intensive, but what is the cost of staying on out-dated technology? Eventually, PTC is going to say NO MORE to these Intralink 3.x upgrades.

Ben

[FredericVannest]

response below...

[JOES]

As much as I dislike restarting this old debate, I feel I should respond.

*"Intralink has been a no revenue product for PTC for almost 2 years now..."
* Our maintenance did not get reduced. Same revenue (actually a little
more per seat) as 4 years ago which included Intralink (& still does).

*"Sometimes you have to bite the bullet and do an unpleasant upgrade."...*
Hopefully PTC understands that biting the bullet could very well mean
switching platforms.

No offense intended Ben. There is a lot going on in some companies these
days & attempting bite that bullet could trigger moving our whole design
department overseas. We have to reduce costs, not increase them.
IMO the PTC marketing folks made a huge mistake killing a product their
customers purchased & trying to force their customers to purchase something
new. Remember, PTC originally claimed Intralink was going away
completely. Sell a product, collect maintenace for years, then kill it &
force customers to buy new product, a winning formula! Maybe PTC can come
out with a new parametric 3D CAD program & tell their customers ProE is
going away, you have to buy this NEW program.

Yes, PTC back-petaled & Intralink 9 or whatever they call it is not going
away. Hopefully Intralink 10 will be something that we can migrate to
easier, as in copy the files to a server, run set-up, import the data dump
from 3.4, load the clients, train the users & go. For all I know Intralink
9 *is* that easy... but not from what I've heard.

Regards,
Joe S.




On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 6:49 PM, Ben Loosli <-> wrote:

> At what cost would you pay for PTC to support Ilink 3.4+ with WF5?
>
> Intralink has been a no revenue product for PTC for almost 2 years now,
> except those that paid for the extra year support until June 2009 to get WF4
> support. Would everyone be entitled to the WF5 support or just those who
> have already paid for the additional year for WF4? Do those on WF3 have to
> pay for the WF4 support before they can get the WF5 support.
>
>
>
> I'll also play devil's advocate and say you have all had plenty of notice
> that PTC did not want to support Intralink 3.x products for 4 years now.
> Sometimes you have to bite the bullet and do an unpleasant upgrade.
> Windchill-based solutions are more support intensive, but what is the cost
> of staying on out-dated technology? Eventually, PTC is going to say NO MORE
> to these Intralink 3.x upgrades.
>
>
> Ben
>

[ptc-1932745]

Just my $.02...



Paying maintenance does not mean you get future upgrades, it just means
that you get support during the period you paid for...



As a critic of the one-source-for-all-CAD-tools approach put forward by
PTC, we are always at the mercy of them for all of our CAD modules, and
they can 'upgrade' them at any time.



Didn't PTC have something called ProPDM before Interlink?



... tell them to open-source Inrterlink if it's a dead product, all
Interlink users should already have the ability to get licenses for the
underlying IP from third parties anyway.



You can vote with your dollars, that ALWAYS works...



Just my $.02...



Christopher Gosnell

TRIGON INC.
FPD Company
124 Hidden Valley Road
McMurray, PA 15317
PH: 724.941.5540
FX: 724.941.8322
www.fpdinc.com

[ToddStahlhut]

I think for many the issue isn't that they refuse to "bite the bullet" but
that it takes a while to chew and swallow it and during this time they are
continuing to pay maintenance for older versions of software (ie WF3 and
WF4) and will be unable to upgrade to WF5 / WF6 for the foreseeable future
as they work to transition to whatever PDM solution they are moving to.

If PTC made the transition to the new PDM system(s) easier, many of us
would have finished moving by now.




Todd Stahlhut
CAE Administrator, Mechanical Design
Raytheon Technical Services Company LLC



Indianapolis, IN
317 306-2254 office
-






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[ChrisCollinson]

Todd hit the nail on the head in my view

I used to be able to upgrade my ProPDM and Intralink systems myself so used
to see value in the maintenance program as I could upgrade to whatever I
thought was suitable, quickly and easily.

Were now on PDMLink and because we feel its too higher risk to the business
to do the upgrades ourselves at the moment we have to pay for the upgrades
aswell as maintenance. I really hope they get it right this time too, the
last one left a bit of a bad taste in my bosses mouths so their reluctant
to pay the money. R8 is reaching end of life and is not supported on the
later proe version so what do you do. (i was gonna write something there
but I will try and keep this professional)

If this upgrade process was simplified more people would run with it

Its a cash cow and we're being milked!!!!!

[BenLoosli]

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Pro/Intralink was PTC's third data management system.
Don't know the original ssytem name.
Pro/PDM was the second PDM system that PTC sold.
Pro/Intralink was next and included some tools to migrate from Pro/PDM.
Windchill/PDMLink was next but was never useable as an Intralink 'replacement' until V7 of Windchill.
Windchill/Intralink was introduced to make the CAD vaulting easier at Windchill 8.
PDMLink is a lot more complex than the Intralink application built on Windchill.
A lot of users claimed that until 9.1 of Intralink, they lacked functionality that was in 3.3/3.4 of Pro/Intralink.
I was involved in a Pro/Intralink 3.3 to PDMLink 7 upgrade at one company and a psuedo upgrade of Pro/PDm to PDMLink 7 at another. Isay psuedo becasue it was a total manual upgrade process as PTC had no tools to help with that migration.

I do understand alot of the comments about costs and that this upgrade is expensive, etc. But from PTC's side, how long can you expect them to back-peddle and continue updating a system they don't want to update. PTC has already killed to PDM products.

The company I was at that used Pro/PDM didn't kill it until August 2008, when we just said enough. The actual reason for killing Pro/PDM was obsolete hardwaremaintenance costs on SGI servers that ran Pro/PDM.It was also the end of them using Pro/E 2001 and switching everyone to Wildfire.

Ben

[rreifsnyder]

Pro/Project was the data manager before Pro/PDM.

Rob Reifsnyder
Mechanical Design Engineer/ Pro/E Librarian
L
Mission Systems & Sensors (MS2)
497 Electronics Parkway
Liverpool, NY 13088
EP5-Quad2, Cube 281

[mreece]

I really like this debate, and I'm guessing PTC is watching this pretty
closely!



Much of PTC's sales are to companies that purchased Windchill to be a
solution to their PLM problems. Most of the users of this forum are
doing business with PTC because of Pro/ENGINEER. If we pose this same
question in the Solutions, or Infrastructure or ProjectLink forums, they
would not be too enthusiastic about spending resources on old
technology.



At many of our companies, Pro/ENGINEER is our CAD tool of choice and the
problem we need to solve is that of Pro/ENGINEER data management. For
reasons of culture, or finance, or having alternate systems to handle
our PLM needs Windchill has not been our solution. Many companies
standardized on an alternate PLM system, before Windchill was a viable
product. Many companies don't need, or can't justify the costs
associated with an Enterprise PLM system like Windchill.



For me, the problem is not that Pro/INTRALINK is going away. I have
lived through the extinction of Pro/PROJECT and Pro/PDM. The real
problem this time is that PTC has not offered a viable replacement.



Windchill requires far more resources has too many moving parts, and
licensing costs too much, to be the right choice to fill the
Pro/ENGINEER Data management void.



ProductView does not yet have the capabilities to replace INTRALINK,
plus there is no migration path.



I applaud Margi's call to debate the issue of WF5 data management
support, and I truly hope that her team succeeds in convincing PTC that
the Pro/ENGINEER community is still of value to their future.



One dilemma is that I do not know of a system that can replace
Pro/INTRALINK from a third party vendor. TeamCemter or eMatrix or SAP or
other systems that claim they can handle our Pro/E data are as bulky and
complex as WC.



So far, we have been able to avert the key question from our management.
If we don't have a solution from PTC to solve our design tool data
management issues, what other tool(s) are we going to switch that does
not have this problem?!?





PTC needs to struggle with the cost of Pro/E data management vs the
value of the current Pro/E customer base and their maintenance dollars.

[inkddawg]

Mike,

I have worked with many different PDM systems. While I loved Intralink as a very simple control of CAD data I find PDMLink more effective for the entire package. I actually love PDMLink much more. Your comment about ProductView is not accurate as well. I will admit it has had issues but they are being corrected and every time I get an upgrade it is hugely better.

I have worked with the implementation of TeamCenter and others. Cost of managing others ismuch higher then PDMLink and requires much more in admin support. TeamCenter falls way short on much functionality. ProductView, while not perfect, is very effective. The problem people have is "it is something new and different and that is not how I have always done it". Or they just do not like having to follow a very specific set of procedures and process which probably did not exist or was not effective enough. Well, in my opinion and in many cases, whattheyhave been doing is not the best way of doing things and this forces everyone to develop, follow andset processes and procedures to limit waste, rework and production holdup. I am a data and document control freakI like the capabilities of PDMLink and prefer it over most others.

My response is a bit rambling but there is so much more that can be said about this.I am just adding my points as simply as I can.

Just to add another point,my company is not a small one with just a couple productsand in one location.I support a huge user baseof over 150CAD and hundreds of production, purchasing, marketing personnel here in the states and abroad and doing a fairly good job of it, I might add. We are one IT dude to handle server and replica server issues myboss and me. My boss and I cross support each other.


Rex Snider
Engineering Applications Administrator

--- On Wed, 2/10/10, Reece, Mike (HNI Corp) <reecem@hnicorp.com> wrote:

[mreece]

Sorry... I said ProductView, and meant ProductPoint

[ocorten-2]

When we set out to convince PTC to support WF4 with Intralink 3.x the
main problem was the unicode 16-bit support.
PTC told us that this would require a major overhaul of the Intralink
code and thus cost a lot of resources.
But still the Pro/E community proved to be big enough and PTC decided to
support WF4 and overhaul the Intralink code.
Maybe it does not take that much resources to support WF5 on Intralink
3.x now that the unicode issue has allready been solved.
Perhaps it's time for PTC to chime in on this issue?

But here at Fico we are currently biting the bullet: we are migrating
towards Windchill Intralink 9.1.
Many years ago I did the Pro/PDM->Pro/Intralink migration myself. But
now we have to hire a company to help us out with migrating and merging
two databases (costs us $100K incl. training)
Assuming we are able to swallow the bullet: Intralink 9.1 will give us
many advantages; most importantly the improved WAN performance which
enables us to operate more efficient on a global scale. And off course
being able to upgrade ProE and being on supported technology again.



Olaf Corten
CAD/PLM Manager, Besi Competence Center - Other Business Applications
Fico BV, Ratio 6, 6921 RW Duiven, The Netherlands
Tel.: +31 26 3196215

[ChrisCollinson]

Mike is right about PDMlink, it is a more far reaching tool than Intralink,
I have design team around the world and Windchill has made it far more
successful than Intralink, I have project teams using ProjectLink to
collaborate around the world to, So it is a good tool in my book.

I had a conversation with the Northern Europe VP about this upgrade and the
cost and as he said, it is not just a CAD Data Management tool it is a PDM
system,

It is worth looking at what other value you "Could" potentially get from it
rather than just CAD Data Management, change management, doc management and
so on. Some might say a sledge hammer to crack a walnut, by why not turn
the walnut into a tree?

My comments were against the complexity of the install of Windchill and the
risk to the business if you attempted yourself and it went south.
Although ootb it is very easy to get a new system up and running the danger
and complexity is when upgraded an existing system with Databases upgrades,
Ldaps etc where as Intralink and ProPDM were easy monolithic systems.

Sorry for the rant but tis a good debate


Best Regards

Chris Collinson
CAD Administrator
skype_id - dek_ccollinson

[ChrisCollinson]

Sorry I meant to say Rex was right

Best Regards

Chris Collinson
CAD Administrator

[Spikaart]

Maintenance does include new software upgrades. When PTC kills a software and forces everyone to switch to a new software after paying maintenance on the one they had it just tastes bad. "New"software that replaces the originalshould be included in maintenance and should not reduce functionality.

Killing Intralink did leave customers hanging (us included).

PTC's new solutions do lack some functionality (some of which are critical to our business) and do increase costs (not a smart thing to do right now).

PTC would do well to stop backpedaling, do a complete about-face, support their Ilink3.x customers on Wildfire 5, and create a clear migration path that does not reduce capabilities while increasing costs. If they did that we would start back on maintenance.

PTC makes great software! The problem is that they left many companies in a bad lurch with this Intralink debacle. Backpedaling is the wrong strategy but so is leaving many companies hung out to dry. They need to fix this problem once and for all. And while they work on that they should be supporting Intralink3.x customers so they are able to leverage Wildfire5.

Steve Pikaart

Continental Tooling Concepts

[lhunter]

Well said Steve. Continental is not the only one hung out to dry.



On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 9:26 AM, Steve Pikaart <
spikaart@continentaltooling.com> wrote:

> Maintenance does include new software upgrades. When PTC kills a software
> and forces everyone to switch to a new software after paying maintenance on
> the one they had it just tastes bad. "New" software that replaces the
> original should be included in maintenance and should not reduce
> functionality.
> Killing Intralink did leave customers hanging (us included).
>
> PTC's new solutions do lack some functionality (some of which are critical
> to our business) and do increase costs (not a smart thing to do right now).
> PTC would do well to stop backpedaling, do a complete about-face, support
> their Ilink3.x customers on Wildfire 5, and create a clear migration path
> that does not reduce capabilities while increasing costs. If they did that
> we would start back on maintenance.
>
> PTC makes great software! The problem is that they left many companies in a
> bad lurch with this Intralink debacle. Backpedaling is the wrong strategy
> but so is leaving many companies hung out to dry. They need to fix this
> problem once and for all. And while they work on that they should be
> supporting Intralink3.x customers so they are able to leverage Wildfire5.
>
> Steve Pikaart
>
> Continental Tooling Concepts
>
>
>

[ptc-169947]

Hi all,

We're planing to move from 3.x to PDMLink, and we'll only use it the same way we used 3.x. As a data repository with revision control, release levels and approvals in place. Because we have active and legacy data in both PrioE and SW, there is an argument for migrating to SolidWorks Enterprise rather then PDMLink. I saw Enterprise very briefly and thought the interface was simple and easy to use, although that was only on the surface. Didn't have time to get into details. Both can manage the other's native files, and the seat licenses are floating too. I personally would rather stick with PDMLink (since we already own some seats), but one of our sites also owns (fewer seats) of Enterprise. Does anyone have any experience with Enterprise? Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Stefan