Parametric Technology Corporation

Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC)

Type	Public (NASDAQ: PMTC)
Founded	1985
Headquarters	Needham, Massachusetts, USA
Key people	C. Richard Harrison, CEO
Industry	CAD/CAE/CAM/ECM Software
Products	PLM See complete products listing.
Revenue	1.07B billion USD (2008)
Employees	5,264 (2008)
Website	www.ptc.com

Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC)(NASDAQ: PMTC) provides Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) engineering CAD/CAM software and content management and dynamic publishing solutions to more than 50,000 companies worldwide. PTC customers include companies in manufacturing, publishing, services, government and life sciences industries. PTC was a member of the S&P 500 Index through the end of 2006, when it instead became listed in the S&P Midcap 400. It is also in the Russell 2000 index.

Portfolio

PTC has six core product families – Pro/ENGINEER, Windchill, Arbortext, Mathcad, ProductView, and CoCreate.

What began as hardware independence for Pro/ENGINEER led to an ongoing commitment to interoperability and open standards for all PTC products. PTC became the first to release a pure Internet architecture solution for product data management and collaboration with Windchill. Today, PTC positions their six core product families into one suite that they call the Product Development System.

History

PTC was founded in 1985, by Samuel Peisakhovich Geisberg, who previously worked at Prime Computer, Computervision (CV) and Applicon. Pro/ENGINEER (a.k.a. Pro/E), the company's first product, shipped in 1988. John Deere became PTC's first customer.

Once an initial version of Pro/ENGINEER was developed, the company received venture capital funding from Charles River Associates and Steve Walske became the CEO. Pro/ENGINEER was the first commercially successful parametric feature based solid modeler. Through a combination of innovative technology, and no-holds-barred sales tactics, PTC quickly became a major force in the CAD industry.^[1] Its strong ascent continued unabated until the mid-1990s, when the introduction of Microsoft Windows NT, and the availability of commercial geometric modeling libraries opened the door to a new generation of low-cost competitors and PTC's reputation for overly aggressive sales tactics alienated many of its customers. These competitors, symbolized by Solidworks, squeezed PTC from the bottom, while more established companies like Unigraphics and IBM held the 'high ground' in automotive and aerospace industries. PTC's sales began a multi-year decline from which it took years to recover. It took a new CAD product (Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire) and an expanded product line, but PTC has been able to transform itself over the past 10 years into the third largest provider of Product Lifecycle Management software ^[2].

On December 29, 2006 Standard & Poor's bumped PTC off its S&P 500 Index, and replaced it instead with the newly spun-off natural gas company Spectra Energy Corp. (NYSE: SE). Parametric then bumped Pier 1 Imports Inc. (NYSE: PIR), a retailer of home furnishings, down one spot and off the bottom of the S&P MidCap 400 Index.^[3] In 2008, PTC once again achieved revenues of over $1 billion,^[4] something it had not been able to accomplish since 1999.

Companies acquired by PTC

• Rasna Corp., developers of MECHANICA design optimization and simulation software, in May 1995 for $180 million.[1]
• Computervision, developers of CADDS in 1998[2]
• Polyplan, Technologies acquired 2005 for Manufacturing Process Management
• Arbortext, developers of Arbortext, in 2005 for $190 million [3]
• Mathsoft, developers of Mathcad, in April 2006 for $63 million.[4]
• ITEDO Software GmbH in October 2006 for $17 million. ITEDO makes technical drawing software and had 34 employees mainly in Germany and the United States.[5]
• NC Graphics in May 2007 for an undisclosed sum.[6]
• CoCreate in December 2007 for $250 million. [7]
• Relex Software in June 2009 for an undisclosed sum. [8]

References

External links

• Parametric Technology Corporation
• PTC/USER