CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
6 October 2005
Implementation Investments
Every Estonian Technical and General Secondary School will Receive Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Software from UGS
UGS Corp. announced that the Estonian government-funded Tiger Leap Foundation is providing 600 seats of UGS' NXT software for all of Estonia's technical schools. UGS has also supplied its PLM software suite to the Technical University of Tallinn. The in-kind grant of PLM products to the Tiger Leap Foundation and Technical University of Tallinn have a market value of over €233 million and is one of the largest academic grants ever made in the EMEA region.
The Tiger Leap Foundation was formed in 1997 and was named to symbolize the radical changes and technological initiatives required to enable Estonia to ensure competitive activities with the economic giants in Asia. The original objective was to deploy general IT infrastructure in schools, enabling teachers to acquire basic computer skills in subject teaching and to enable and encourage interactive learning in compliance with the National Curriculum. Since 2000 these initial objectives have been met and to achieve further progress, the foundation has become the support organization for all IT development in general education supporting continuous refinement of learning environments. UGS is delighted to have played a major part in this phase of the initiative. UGS in-kind contributions to academic partners globally are exceptional with more than 675,000 seats in use at over 8,100 institutions worldwide.
"We are proud to team with the Tiger Leap Foundation's leaders and students," said Mike Robinson, Director, Northern and Eastern Europe for UGS' Distributor Operations. "Our partnership with Tiger Leap will enable us to strengthen the bond between UGS and our core customers by assisting in the development of their future employees. It's crucial that students are trained in industry standard technologies and gain practical knowledge of today's business drivers in order to contribute to indigenous industrial growth through innovative products and methodologies that improve our customers' domestic and international business."
"This is a big step for Estonia in development of technical and technological education," said Jaan Kallas, Secretary General of Estonian Ministry of Education and Research and Chair of the Tiger Leap Council. "By selecting UGS technologies, we recognize our students and future engineers and industrialists will be educated and experienced with the newest developments in technology, including, not just Digital Product Design, but total product lifecycle management. These leading technologies combined with our engineers and graduates will help Estonia achieve industrial recognition not just in the Baltic States and the EEC but also in winning business from competition in Asia Pacific or Tiger regions."
"Overall UGS was selected as having the widest integrated PLM software portfolio and was the best suited to meet the objectives of the Tiger Leap Foundation," said Greg Nutkins, president of UGS' Distributor Operations in EMEA. "The relationship between Tallinn Technical University and UGS has been strong in previous years and UGS' commitment to our product R&D will ensure we fully support the objectives of the Tiger Leap Foundation. We are dedicated to helping improve the technical stature of academic institutions and their ability to develop highly skilled engineers and technologists, for our customers, business partners and global communities. This project was unique to Estonia and we applaud the vision and action of the foundation."
"We have made resources available to enable technology transfer from UGS to our teachers who will train our students. We have also developed test projects such as design contests between schools to simulate the competitive nature of industry," said Kallas.
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