SDRC to become solutions provider

NEW DELHI, September 16 : SDRC India Pvt. Ltd., the subsidiary

of the CAD/CAM company SDRC, is planning to align itself to its global

vision of becoming a solutions provider as against the traditional focus

of a technology provider. This translates to the setting in place of

process consultants and increase services for implementation. It already

has increased its local partners by appointing Tata Elxsi and NIIT for its

I-DEAS Master series and Siemens for Metaphase. For its Artisan series, it

has appointed five distributors.

Asia Pacific Operations new VP and GM Scott A. Berkey said, "Most

companies are looking to reduce the time to market products. We will step

in to help them reengineer their business processes to this end, as

solutions providers." The company has introduced the SPACE program,

or SDRC Partnership for Competitive Excellence, for companies that want to

reduce their design development time. SDRC will hand-hold the companies

for 3-5 years to achieve the required design time collapsing.

The company is also looking at investing close to $5 million for

infrastructure development, which will be mainly in IT hardware, software

and networks. It opened a development center in Pune early this year. SDRC

is also hopeful of increasing its market in the country. "Many MNCs

are moving their design centers here and there is a huge market

potential," said Country Manager-India Narendra Reddy.

The company is targeting a total customer base of 1,000 as against the

existing 500 by the end of next fiscal, which is Jan to Dec. The company

notched a turnover of $6.5 million in the last fiscal and cornered 40%

market share of the total of $18 million CAD/CAM products and services

market. The CAD/CAM market is growing by 25-30% and the Product

Development Management tool segment by 35-40%. "We are confident of

capitalizing on this," added Reddy.

The company recently bagged a Rs 1.5 crore order from NTPC through

Siemens. Its other clients include Telco and Bhel in India and the likes

of Ford, Toyota, etc, globally. Having traditionally been identified with

the high-end market, the company introduced the Artisan series, competing

with Autodesk in the mid-range, to broadbase its presence and is pushing

it through channel partners.

Globally, the company had acquired Imageware, thereby gaining

capabilities in styling class I surfaces and reverse engineering. The

Imageware products, in addition to being marketed independently, are also

being integrated with the I-DEAS series. SDR has also acquired TD

Technologies and tied up with Aspect Development. The acquisition of the

former will enable integrating systems requirements driven design

development. Aspect provides a catalogue technology, enabling access to a

repository of design data. The two companies will jointly develop and

market PDM products based on this technology.