CENIT AG, IBM, and Dassault Systemes Strengthen Product Lifecycle Management Alliance
STUTTGART, Germany & PARIS--Sept. 25, 2002--Reinforced partnership will increase cooperation in sales, service,
and development to optimize and leverage PLM skills and resources
CENIT AG Systemhaus, IBM, and Dassault Systemes today announced plans to reinforce their alliance by leveraging the companies' respective strengths.
The new alliance calls for increased cooperation in Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) sales, service, and development, with a specific focus on the automotive and shipbuilding industries, and interfaces with other e-business solutions.
CENIT is a major IBM Premier Business Partner, selling IBM PLM Solutions centered on Dassault Systemes' 3D PLM portfolio, including CATIA, ENOVIA, SMARTEAM, and DELMIA. CENIT also provides customers with integrated IBM solutions, including IBM PLM software and services.
Building upon the success of this partnership, IBM will grant CENIT direct access to its Industry Competency Centers, including those jointly operated with Dassault Systemes. In addition, CENIT and Dassault Systemes will sign a consulting agreement to optimize sharing of best practices and consulting experience. IBM will further support this relationship by assigning an international PLM Business Partner executive.
In the area of product development, CENIT is currently a Dassault Systemes' CAA V5 Gold Software Partner and has concluded Original Software Component agreements with Dassault Systemes. These include V5 solutions for CATIA and DELMIA. Under the new alliance, development will be extended to include ENOVIA solutions with specific emphasis on manufacturing, shipbuilding and interfaces. In Germany, CENIT will operate as the Manufacturing Core Competency Center for CATIA NC and DELMIA.
"CENIT is Germany's largest and most experienced consulting crew for PLM in a market with an annual revenue growth rate of more than 20 per cent," said CENIT Executive Board spokesman Andreas Schmidt. "Our expertise in the PLM business is reaffirmed by this alliance and we expect increased market share as well as higher software and service revenue from it."
"Strengthening our partnership with CENIT will generate new business opportunities and allow more companies to reap the benefits of product lifecycle management," said Kim Stuckey, worldwide channel manager, IBM Product Lifecycle Management, "CENIT's strong process focus delivers faster return on investment to customers. This announcement underlines our strategy to address the PLM space with partners that have the skills and capabilities to deliver business value."
"CENIT is a valued Dassault Systemes partner and this strengthened alliance only fortifies our common goal of providing the best 3D PLM solutions in the world," said Philippe Forestier, executive vice president of sales and marketing, Dassault Systemes. "The alliance will enable each company to play to its strengths and maximize efficiency. For example, CENIT has invested heavily in skills for the shipbuilding industry. To optimize that talent, CENIT will become an important partner of the IBM Shipbuilding Competency Center in Hamburg."
About CENIT AG Systemhaus
The CENIT AG Systemhaus group is a service enterprise with international operations in information technology, employing over 590 people. The company - a systems provider with a Neuer Markt listing - focuses on Internet technologies. In its business unit e-engineering and e-business, it offers tailor-made solutions as a one-stop provider. In 2001, the CENIT group made sales of EUR 118.8m worldwide. Besides branches all over Germany, the company has subsidiaries in France and Switzerland Information about CENITAG Systemhaus is available at http://www.cenit.de
About IBM
IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. IBM Sales & Distribution, which supports more than a dozen key industries worldwide, works with companies of all sizes around the world to deploy the full range of IBM technologies. The fastest way to get more information about IBM is through the IBM home page at http://www.ibm.com
About Dassault Systemes
Dassault Systemes is the premier global software developer for the CAD/CAM/CAE/PLM market, providing companies with e-business solutions to implement their digital enterprise, thus creating and simulating the entire product life cycle from initial concept to product in service. CATIA, ENOVIA and DELMIA Solutions support industry-specific business processes to help unleash creativity and innovation, reduce development cycle time, improve quality, competitiveness and shareholder value: CATIA supports the digital product definition and simulation, DELMIA provides solutions to define and simulate lean digital manufacturing processes and ENOVIA delivers enterprise solutions that manage a comprehensive, collaborative and distributed model of the digital product, processes and resources. The combined integration creates the Digital Product life cycle Pipeline, supporting reuse of corporate knowledge. SolidWorks and SmarTeam Corp., as Dassault Systemes companies, offer respectively 3D design-centric and collaborative PDM software solutions based on Windows and the Internet. Spatial, also part of the Dassault Systemes family, is a market-leading provider of world-class 3D software components and services (for 3D modeling, visualization, and interoperability) to meet the requirements of 3D in Internet-based e-commerce and B2B applications.
Information about Dassault Systemes is available at http://www.dsweb.com