PARAMETRIC TECHNOLOGY'S NEW SOLUTIONS ENABLE COLLABORATIVE PRODUCT COMMERCE (CPC): CPC Software Uses Web To Develop, Manage Products Throughout Their Entire Lifecycle.

Parametric Technology Corp. last week unveiled the Windchill Factor! e- Series, a new solution for performing collaborative product commerce (CPC), a new category of software and services that leverage the Internet to deliver value across the entire product development spectrum, from product conception through retirement. Parametric execs say CPC solutions will enable companies to elevate the value of product information from an engineering asset to an enterprise asset so they can meet product goals and exceed revenue projections.

Basically, CPC brings all constituents across the value chain together online to collaboratively develop, manage and evolve products throughout their entire lifecycle based on customer and market demand. By leveraging the Internet, CPC provides greater flexibility than traditional client/server environments, allowing users to access, manage, view and publish product and process information -- regardless of location or format -- with a simple web browser.

"We define collaborative product commerce as an e-business opportunity which leverages product intellectual capital across the many new Internet-driven inbound and outbound commerce opportunity streams," says David Burdick, vice president of engineering applications at IT research firm the Gartner Group. "These opportunities include collaborative product design, customer-driven design, collaborative product/component sourcing, product commerce portals and customer self- service applications such as product maintenance and product configurators."

A key goal of CPC, says Burdick, is to harness all product information and application assets into a web-based framework and provide ubiquitous, personalized access to all participants in a given commerce community. "By utilizing web technologies such as HTML, Java and XML along with enterprise application integration tools, the CPC goal of making product intellectual capital universally accessible across commerce streams can now be realized," he says.

CPC solutions provide a federated, web-centric technology that delivers the key capabilities needed to find, manage and use information in a dispersed environment. Databases, applications and processes throughout the enterprise and its supply chain are seamlessly linked together in a federated environment.

To find the information, a federated data model logically knits together disparate IT systems, including legacy and incumbent systems. There is no need to replace systems or rehost data. Instead, a layer of connectivity is added.

Standard web technology, such as browsers, search engines and URLs, search and identify information rapidly. A federated process model allows companies to manage the information by automating and linking their business processes across disciplines and companies. This allows the expedient progression of workflow processes so members of the extended enterprise can easily participate.

A federated application model allows everyone to access and use the information easily regardless of the application it was created in. Web browsers combined with visualization technology enable the viewing, markup and interrogation of graphic information, and this makes each individual more productive in their role.

"CPC will provide a dynamic, Internet-based, inter-enterprise business infrastructure that links product and process information and applications across boundaries of internal organizations as well as suppliers, partners and customers," says Aberdeen senior analyst Jack Maynard. "This inter-enterprise business infrastructure facilitates cross-company collaboration, enables customer driven designs and connects isolated islands of product expertise to deliver product innovations at Internet speed."

The Windchill Factor! e-Series, designed to support changing needs of manufacturers, is focused on all phases of a product's lifecycle from concept and definition to production, service, maintenance and retirement. The series includes the Collaboration Factor!, Product Planning Factor!, Engineering Factor!, Sourcing Factor!, Product Management Factor!, Manufacturing Planning Factor!, Production Factor! and the Customization Factor!.