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How to make the best PLM software license decision

Our PDXpert PLM subscription license is significantly less expensive than SaaS PLM solutions.
You'll also achieve tighter control over your product data, much higher performance, and more flexible user training and upgrade schedules.

PDXpert PLM offers the cost benefits of SaaS without the off-site risk

A PDXpert subscription minimizes your up-front cost while providing the operational advantages of keeping your proprietary data on-site. Buy what you need now, and adjust your subscription as your requirements change.

PDXpert lets you:

  • Purchase your PLM software as a subscription,
  • Maintain mission-critical product data under your own control,
  • Choose to accept - or delay - a software upgrade at your convenience,
  • Use low-cost, commonly-available hardware and software, and
  • Enjoy LAN-based performance that is 10 to 1000 times faster than across the Internet.
Which of these features are important to you? On-site PDXpert PLM Hosted off-site PLM
Subscription pricing minimizes up-front investment Yes Yes
Supply chain partners can be
allowed access to your data		 Yes Yes
Simple client software upgrades Yes Yes
Mission-critical data stays within your building Yes No
Single-tenant architecture contains only your data Yes No
Your intellectual property controlled by your employees Yes No
Productive "rich client" Windows user interface Yes No
Optional conversion to perpetual license Yes No
Defer or skip an upgrade to
accommodate your product schedule		 Yes No
Lock-in a validated FDA/ISO change process Yes No
Back-end database easily viewed with standard tools Yes No
Published web prices prove
you're always getting best rate		 Yes No
Published license or service level agreement Yes No
Typical data & file transfer rate LAN: 100 to 1000Mbps Internet: 0.25 to 10Mbps
Productivity impact of internet connectivity failure Remote users only All users
Add more storage for data & files Low cost disk Contract negotiation
Improve network performance by adding bandwidth LAN upgrade Limited by telecom
Backup & disaster recovery Simple, provable Complex, promised
Service cost to reclaim your off-site data $0 $Get it in writing
System downtime per year < 30 minutes (typical) Allows >160 hours*
  • * A 99.5% uptime guarantee may only cover unscheduled events. For example, SaaS acceptable downtime = [(20 min/day scheduled) + (1420 min/day x 0.5% unscheduled)] x 365 days = 9891.5 minutes per year. With advance notice, additional SaaS service downtime is defined as "scheduled" and can be imposed without penalty. Now add downtime associated with network service or other failures between the two facilities.

Unlike SaaS PLM software, on-site PDXpert PLM provides the best data access control, system availability, performance, and operational flexibility.

Just how important is your product data?

Outsource payroll, travel, legal, maybe accounting or even manufacturing. But never outsource access to your competitive advantage: your company's intellectual property.

On-demand PLM moves your product data into an off-site facility with out-sourced IT resources. You rent, rather than buy, your software as a service ("SaaS"). Your data is hosted "in the cloud" where details like physical location, network infrastructure and operational activities are hidden from you.

Cloud-based PLM software

Off-site SaaS PLM solutions are inherently riskier than an on-site PDXpert system. After all, you're handing your mission-critical data to an outside supplier who must expose your product data to the Internet. And that outside supplier has processes, people and infrastructure that you can't interview, monitor or control. How can you be certain what will happen to your data, who has access to it, or how easy it will be to recover if you decide to change your supplier?

SaaS is new & complex... and complexity is expensive

Off-site hosted PLM requires a complex IT infrastructure, significant system maintenance, sophisticated 24x7 staffing and rigid maintenance schedules. Multi-tenant architectures require additional security to isolate clients' data, and force system-wide upgrades that can't accommodate your unique development schedule. All of that extra complexity comes at a price. For example, the price-per-bit of SAN-based disk space and its high-speed infrastructure can be 10 times the cost of standard data storage.

If your primary concern is... Lowest cost solution More expensive
First-year license & support cost PDXpert subscription license Off-site hosted PLM
Long-term license & support cost PDXpert perpetual license Off-site hosted PLM

This added complexity of "cloud computing" relies on new and emerging technologies. As a result, the most experienced development resources may be diverted to working on the SaaS plumbing - and not on improving your PLM experience.

Our proven on-site deployment provides the lowest cost over time as well as the most control over system configuration, data security, and scheduling your backups, upgrades and user training. See for yourself: a complete PDXpert system costs less than half of an off-site PLM service.

Choose the PLM service model that minimizes your risk

PDXpert PLM software is uniquely crafted to meet the needs of growing companies, with a comprehensive set of features and a simple evaluation and purchase process.

We offer both perpetual and subscription licenses, which let you configure the software to your exact needs. You have complete control over performance, storage costs, maintenance and service interruptions, and - most important - your critical product data.

We invite you to:

Resources

What others say about SaaS

"The 'secret sauce' of how we make our product is on this system. If it was ever infiltrated, we would be in trouble. In this era of hackers, we are interested in the ability to control the software to do what we need it to do within our firewall and security processes, rather than rely on a hosted system." - IT manager, Infinera Corp.

"...If the cloud data center is offline, so is your business." - Tony Bradley, PCWorld

"...You can delete sensitive / erroneous / outdated local data, but on the cloud it will live forever..." - Owen Wengerd, Consultant

"[Subscribers] regret moving to the hosted service... 'We went from an in-house Exchange system ... to [Microsoft] who we felt could do a much better job than us. So far, that has not been the case.' " - 'Microsoft Explains Recent Hosted E-Mail Outages', CIO Magazine

"You hereby grant Autodesk ... a perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, paid-up, worldwide, sublicensable ... license to store, display, reproduce, modify, use and transmit Your Content..." - Autodesk Cloud Terms of Service

"Since you can pick up a terabyte for $50, it's often seemed a false economy to be careful with storage. But in the clouds, the rules are different.... First are the monthly storage charges, and second is the inevitable performance hit..." - 'Strategies for Pruning Data in the Cloud,' PC World

"...Small/micro organizations ... cannot afford having multiple Internet service providers for service availability and reliability. Saving[s] ... can be lost on redundant Internet connections and bandwidth." - CrossTalk

"Until users feel sure they can get a guaranteed connection to the web ... , moving to the cloud will be a leap too far for most." - On Technology, Financial Times

"With that data ... outside the organization, ... there may be legitimate worries of having designs lost or stolen.... Most organizations want ... control over their intellectual property...." - Peter Varhol, Desktop Engineering

"...An overwhelming 96 per cent [of hackers]... believed the cloud would open up more hacking opportunities for them." - Fortify Software, DEF CON 2010 survey

"...Vendors are not pushing the cloud in order to lower their revenues. ... You will pay more." - Ralph Gabowski, CAD Editor, upFront eZine NEWS #633

"SaaS customers [must] consider how to protect themselves against the possibility of their SaaS vendor going out of business." - Managing Automation

"Cloud Goes Boom, T-Mo Sidekick Users Lose All Data. ...This is a code red cloud disaster." - Information Week

"Users have reason to be wary about keeping all their data on a vendor's cloud service without also maintaining their own local backup." - Apple Insider

"An hour of downtime may not sound like much, but ... businesses are bound to view those 60 minutes as a lifetime. Salesforce.com learned this the hard way when its data center shut down last January." - JR Raphael, InfoWorld

"The techniques used by the attackers highlight the dangers of ... storing more data online, instead of on computers under your control." - Yahoo Finance

"The cloud is convenient; I use it on a casual basis. But I cannot rely on it." - Ralph Gabowski, CAD Editor, upFront eZine NEWS #594

"...SaaS solutions may not be right for every smaller or mid-sized firm...if the required functionality is directly tied to the core value your business provides" - Evaluating SaaS Solutions, Saugatuck Technology Inc.

"Many SaaS vendors state that ... you're only charged for what you use. However, for most SaaS deployments, this is false." - Gartner study, Fact-Checking: The Five Most-Common SaaS Assumptions

"SaaS contracts should disclose any fees associated with getting [your] data back." - Liz Herbert, Forrester Research

"Week-Long Verizon BlackBerry Outage Caused by 'System Update'?" - Robert Evans, Slashgear.com