The industrial software market seems to be undergoing quite a consolidation right now. I’m not entirely sure what that means. There are a couple of underlying factors but slowing growth of the market is often one. Another is that larger companies usually find it more expedient to innovate through acquisition. A portfolio manager or CEO can see what is working in the market and see gaps in their own offerings. Then it’s simply a matter of negotiation.
I don’t know Aras as well as I know many other companies, but interesting that I finally wrote about its digital twin and digital thread strategy this week and then comes the announcement of its acquisition of the Impresa Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) business from Infospectrum.
Aras states it gains a suite of complementary MRO capabilities to help Manufacturers and Owner-Operators digitally transform development and maintenance of complex products. With the Impresa acquisition, Aras will deliver PLM and MRO on a single platform that extends the Digital Thread to the field and provides the foundation for Digital Twin.
The Aras Impresa MRO software will be available as part of Aras enterprise subscriptions and is immediately available at no charge for current Aras subscribers.
As the justification for the acquisition, Aras says, “To stay ahead of competition, manufacturers must continuously innovate next-generation products and offer the flexibility of capacity-as-a-service offerings. As a result, they need to transform how they develop products and plan to service them in the field. Connecting their PLM to MRO gives these companies a path to achieve both goals with a closed loop between product development and field data.”
And further, “Adding PLM functionality enables Owner-Operators to bring product engineering to their maintenance practices. With a combined PLM and MRO solution, they gain the PLM capability necessary to manage designs, decisions, and part selection related to maintenance and service of their assets.”
Peter Schroer, Aras CEO, states, “Companies choose Aras as a digital transformation partner to modernize their most complex engineering and manufacturing processes today and for the future – and have been asking for an MRO application to extend their journey. With the acquisition of Impresa, we are adding a highly-talented team and proven solution to further expand our MRO capabilities and to be first to connect MRO to the Digital Thread on a single platform.”
As part of the transaction, Aras will acquire technology, intellectual property, and subject matter expertise. Aras plans to immediately begin incorporating the Impresa MRO technology onto the Aras PLM Platform to continue to deliver full product lifecycle traceability on a single platform and code base.
