PTC Forms Business Units

A PTC Partner newsletter alerted me to the news that PTC has formed separate business units for its product lines. Previously PTC has just two primary product lines - Pro/ENGINEER and Windchill. Over the years, due to acquisitions and internal growth, its product lines have dramatically increased. Next year they will have a total of eight major product lines:

1. Pro/ENGINEER
2. Windchill
3. CoCreate
4. Arbortext
5. Mathcad
6. ProductView
7. SharePoint/SPD
8. Insight Analytics

This has put a severe strain on PTC's sales and service employees who need to cover all these product lines. With the result that the "smaller" product lines are being sidelined due to the larger ones like Pro/ENGINEER and Windchill taking the lion's share of the resources.

That's why PTC has decided to form business units around the Mathcad, CoCreate, Arbortext, Insight and a soon to be formed embedded software product line. Each of these business units will have their own R&D, marketing and sales functions, but will be supported by PTC corporate. The idea here is to allow each business unit to pursue its own market opportunities. While separating product lines into individual business units makes a lot of sense for many reasons, PTC will also have the added benefit of being able to quickly sell off a business unit if and when the need arises.

Actually, this news is not new. When searching for information regarding this decision I found this press release issued by PTC on October 1st 2009 announcing the creation of a new Arbortext Business unit. However, I cannot find any mention of that particular press release at the PTC web site. Not sure why.