Within the next year or two, the poles will reverse at design software provider PTC, as sales of enterprise-style product lifecycle management software outpace sales of traditional desktop CAD products for the first time in company history. And PTC doesn’t plan to look back.
At a recent media day presentation at the company’s headquarters along the high-tech corridor near Boston, PTC executives laid out bullish plans for sales and earnings growth in the years to come and for the company’s place in the PLM marketplace.
PTC’s Windchill PLM suite sits at the center of the shift. License sales for the technology jumped 53% in PTC’s fiscal fourth quarter, the June through September 2009 period during which the economy still had manufacturing technology buyers on edge. The news got even better in the fiscal first quarter, ended Dec. 31, 2009, when Windchill license revenue shot up 137% year over year.
The results have inspired a certain exuberance in the company’s executives, who predicted that either this fiscal year or next, PLM will overtake the CAD lineup anchored by Pro/ENGINEER as the leader of PTC’s sales. Just six years ago, the revenue mix was 75% desktop, 25% PLM.