CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

6 September 2007

Product News

Arena Solutions Extends the Advantage of On-Demand PLM with New Fall '07 Release

Arena Solutions announced it will go live with its new Arena PLM Fall '07 release on Sunday, September 9, 2007. Customers will immediately be able to take advantage of the new enhancements and usability improvements that extend across the entire application, affecting all core functional areas including change management, compliance, outsourcing and supplier management, project collaboration and others. More than 70 improvements in the product were inspired by customer feedback that came directly from Arena PLM's FastFeedback functionality, an attribute only found in Arena PLM that lets users provide comments and make requests in real time, from inside the product.

Arena Solutions' on-demand delivery model (also called software-as-a-service, or SaaS) permits users to fully benefit from the innovation Arena builds into the product the same day it's rolled out, while simultaneously allowing them to continue spending 100 percent of their efforts on product innovation, rather than on installing upgrades, expensive and risky migration projects, customizations, or IT infrastructure. And, while most users find Arena's instant deployment and industry-leading ease of use gets them up and running in a matter of minutes, Arena also has provided expanded access for professional edition users to its sophisticated web-based support, on-demand tutorials, and extensive online documentation, so even more Arena users can get the support and training they need, when and how they need it at no additional cost.

"We appreciate Arena PLM's ease of use and scalability. It's very simple for us, because Arena is on-demand, to just add people and get them up and running quickly using the tools available to us within the product," said Joe Lamoreux, chief executive officer at Coldwatt, Inc., a manufacturer of innovative power conversion solutions with energy efficiency and power density for the computing, networking, storage and telecommunications markets. "Arena has enabled us to scale what we were doing dramatically without adding any significant level of headcount or operating cost."

Tracy White, manager of program management at Coldwatt, Inc., added, "Arena has all the capabilities of other PLM tools, but a major benefit of the product is having the enhancements, changes and deep support that are built right into the software as a service and which show up without any action on our part. We do not need our own IT support, which is a benefit for both small and large companies. I would recommend Arena any day."

Other Arena PLM Fall '07 enhancements include:

•  Improvements in the overall usability of Arena PLM, firmly securing the company's leadership as the easiest to use and deploy PLM solution on the market today.

•  New change and request management productivity features, as well as new outsourcing and supplier management improvements that facilitate collaboration and communication, while maintaining the unprecedented level of control users have come to expect with Arena PLM.

•  Enhancements to compliance management functionality, to better support companies with rapidly changing products, making it easier to satisfy regulations, demonstrate due diligence, and instantly generate compliance reports.

"It is very important to us to remain responsive to our customers, and with this release we have listened closely to their ideas and turned them into enhanced features that move Arena PLM forward in a considerable way," said Michael Topolovac, chief executive officer of Arena Solutions. "While we have a significant amount of personal contact with our customers, we know they are often very busy, so we've made it easy for them to communicate with us with no extra effort, by building an instant feedback mechanism directly into the product. It's yet another small example of the 'service' that is only possible through our software-as-a-service model of PLM."

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