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“India is the fastest growing market in the Asia-Pacific
for Solid Edge V14”
 Tony
Jolly, vice president, Solid Edge Business, PLM Solutions, Asia-Pacific
at EDS talks to Abhinav Singh about the latest version of Solid
Edge, where the product is positioned vis-ŕ-vis its competitors,
technology trends in the 2D/3D CAD segment and EDS’s go-to-market
strategy for India
Is the Indian
manufacturing industry a significant market for EDS?
India is the fastest growing market for EDS’s Solid Edge in
the Asia-Pacific region. India has a large number of manufacturers
who use 2D technologies but want to graduate to 3D. Solid Edge can
provide them a perfect platform to use 2D and 3D—it offers
them a combination of both technologies, plus it is faster to implement,
easy-to-use and is cost-effective.
Within manufacturing,
what are the sub-segments that use products like Solid Edge?
The main segments addressed by Solid Edge include all kinds of machinery
design, electro-mechanical design, tooling, jigs and fixture design
and styling of consumer products. We mainly target the machinery
segment, which includes machine tools, machine tool accessories,
packaging machinery, textile machinery, electromechanical machinery
design, tooling, jigs and fixture design. With the extensive surface
modelling capabilities introduced in Version 14, we expect the consumer
goods and industrial design market to adopt the Solid Edge product
in a big way in the near future. We have more than 250 customers
for our product in the Indian market.
How does Solid
Edge help product manufacturers?
Solid Edge is used as a design tool during product manufacturing.
EDS recognised that design data management is an integral part of
the design process in a product’s lifecycle. We recently launched
version 14 of Solid Edge. It provides collaborative design management,
efficient workflow and revision control for managing major projects
that involve thousands of documents. Insight.NET, Solid Edge’s
built-in design management solution, provides more robust tools
for automated project release workflow with complete packages of
documents and a recursive revision history capability making it
easier for users to collaborate via internal and external networks,
while maintaining control of their documents. Version 14 also extends
Solid Edge’s reach into multiple industries and its new Rapid
Blue part-modelling capabilities help companies design complex shapes
prevalent in consumer products and many other industries. It also
helps the user to digitally check each and every part of a product
during its manufacturing course, which in turn helps in minimising
manufacturing errors by up to 50 percent.
Where is product
design technology headed?
The focus is on providing an easy and affordable migration plan
for the large number of 2D users, who wish to move to 3D, but are
hindered by barriers like cost and a new learning curve. Another
trend is that integrating design data management with CAD systems
is becoming increasingly important. These software solutions are
also becoming an alternative option for legacy CAD systems with
a large cost of ownership.
What is the level
of competition that EDS faces from competitors in the Indian market
for Solid Edge?
We compete with two types of vendors. The first lot are those who
focus primarily on 2D with limited focus on 3D CAD. Out here we
outscore them on functionality, ease-of-use, and most importantly,
ease of transition from an existing 2D set-up to a 3D design environment.
The second batch of competitors are vendors with full-scale 3D CAD
capabilities, but with a much higher total cost of ownership.
What is EDS’s
channel strategy with regard to Solid Edge in India?
In India we follow a two-tier channel approach with five main distributors
and 30-35 resellers. These resellers have been provided with all
the training to ensure that their customers are able to use the
Solid Edge software effectively and get the maximum mileage out
of it. We organise certified training programmes for them, which
are part of our global certification programmes. We have two major
training sessions per year. EDS also has a strong team here in India,
which assists our distributors and resellers from time to time.
We have introduced the localised version of the product in many
languages in different countries.
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