PTC Seeks VARs To Broaden Reach

PTC's new campaign to net those new VARs, called Channel Advantage, launched in late October, said Robert Kocis, senior vice president of worldwide channel sales.

The Needham, Mass.-based developer is seeking VARs that have worked with CAD products such as SolidWorks, Solid Edge or AutoCAD and want to extend into the emerging field of product life-cycle management (PLM). Previously, most of PTC's small base of partners was limited to selling its mechanical CAD (MCAD) products. Under Channel Advantage, resellers will be able to sell the developer's Windchill PDMLink and Windchill ProjectLink collaborative offerings for the first time.

"We always did the MCAD products; now we can go into the same customer base and provide them with the full development solution," said Victor Nassar, president of Nasco Technologies, a PTC partner in Gurney, Ill.

PLM is critical to companies such as General Motors, which is midway through a project intended to cut product development time to 18 months from 48 months, said Dan McNicholl, CIO of GM North America. The car manufacturer is eliminating hard-copy design drawings and deploying a common database for all of its applications.

"We're creating one pipeline; everything plugs into this," McNicholl said.

Carl Rose, president and owner of Houston-based Impac Systems, a new PTC partner, said he dropped another vendor to join PTC's program, specifically for access to the developer's PLM line. "They offered me a business proposition that I couldn't refuse," Rose said. The software also offers a compelling GUI for smaller customers and carries a price more attractive to that market, he said.

To date, PTC reports that more than 100 VARs have joined the Channel Advantage program, which includes three tiers: Platinum, Gold and Silver.