Aras Announces Open-Source Solution on SharePoint 2010 for Enterprise Collaborative Product Development

By DE Editors

Aras a product lifecycle management (PLM) software solution provider, has announced the introduction of an open source SharePoint-based solution developed in collaboration with Actify, Razorleaf and Microsoft. The collaborative product development (CPD) solution enables product data assets normally constrained within PLM or product data management (PDM) systems to be shared throughout the enterprise as well as with its customers, suppliers and partners globally. The solution combines the capabilities of Actify’s DesignShare, including a new Silverlight-based 3D viewer, and the Aras Innovator PLM solution suite by using SharePoint Server 2010 Business Connectivity Services, PerformancePoint services, workflow and search to form an end-to-end companion for PLM and PDM.

“The value of PLM and PDM increases vastly when more people in the product development process can access the information quickly and easily for their own purposes,” says Simon Floyd, director of Worldwide Industry Technology Strategy for Microsoft. “This solution is therefore designed to extend the reach of product information in the Enterprise by making it instantly accessible, reusable and easily shared using collaboration, business intelligence, search and social computing capabilities of SharePoint Server 2010.”

The solution is available on Microsoft‘s Codeplex open source community.

It dynamically exposes information contained within Aras Innovator in real time through SharePoint to the broader community of information workers across the global enterprise. PLM workflows in SharePoint are enabled with Aras while 3D visualization from Actify in Silverlight provides a collaborative decision making process. Visual information is presented to users in the familiar SharePoint interface. Information from these collaborative sessions is made part of the product record and managed within SharePoint.

For more information, visit Aras.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company's website.