Last week's big news in the fields of PLM, automation and asset management/maintenance is the surprising partnership between Aras PLM and AVEVA.

AVEVA is big on IT solutions which, among other things, are classified under the Asset Lifecycle Management umbrella. The company has over 20,000 customers in more than 100 countries and develops applications on its industrial cloud platform that enable companies to "harness the power of their information and improve collaboration with customers, suppliers and partners," according to the press release.

The core of this new partnership is that AVEVA will license the Aras PLM platform, Innovator, to deliver a series of scalable, Asset Lifecycle Management solutions which will integrate Aras' open and flexible portfolio of applications with AVEVA Unified Engineering and AVEVA Asset Information Management.

“Lifecycle management capabilities play a critical role in the large-scale digital transformation of all the industries that we support,” said Peter Herweck, CEO of AVEVA. “By unifying data, they provide the basis for automating many business processes and, because they are based on accurate, real-time information, they also provide customers with assurance and trust in the accuracy of the engineering digital twin. Our partnership with Aras takes this a step further, by enabling customers to take advantage of innovative cloud-based Asset Lifecycle Management solutions to accelerate their digital transformation.”

A Feather in Roque Martin’s Cap

For Aras PLM, the partnership is another recognition of the strength of the PLM platform, Innovator. Moreover, the joint venture with AVEVA is a feather in the cap for Aras’ relatively new CEO, Roque Martin.

In an earlier engineering.com interview, Martin said that new partnerships of the same magnitude that characterizes today’s deal are to be expected.

“We have that potential,” he asserted, pointing to the partnership with Ansys.

This partnership allowed Aras to go quite deep on simulation management, which was a new topic for the company. “The next couple of OEM relationships will expand Aras into other markets,” Martin says.

Today’s deal is a confirmation on how that new route can look. In the press release, Martin comments, “Aras’ powerful low-code platform and business-ready applications enable global enterprises to adapt with speed and agility in the most complex scenarios.”

The Aras leader further states that the collaboration–as mentioned above–will help develop a series of scalable Asset Lifecycle Management solutions to deliver the industrial digital twin.

“This is well-aligned with AVEVA’s agile approach to industry solutions. Our cloud-native platform technology and collaboration with AVEVA support the evolution from document-centric to data-centric project execution and operations in asset lifecycle management,” he says. Aras’ low-code platform with applications to design, build and operate complex products, will fit extremely well into the AVEVA environment.

AVEVA software can visualize all types of data, from HTML5-based viewing of 2D engineering drawings, documents and spreadsheets to high quality, interactive 3D models in the web browser. Users can combine multiple models from different sources in a single view. The 3D model can also be used to easily visualize the status of planning information.

Tough Competitors to Siemens, Dassault and PTC

So, what is AVEVA’s focus? Generally speaking, the company can be described as a global leader in industrial software, driving digital transformation and sustainability. It offers solutions that solve design, process, maintenance, training and information flow problems in many industries.

A core element of what AVEVA produces is the above-mentioned Asset Lifecycle Management (ALM), but what does this mean? According to the common definition, ALM is the process of optimizing an asset's reliability and operational performance during its lifespan. Another abbreviation often heard in this context is Enterprise Asset Management (EAM), which is a term that defines the management of the maintenance of the physical assets of an organization throughout each asset's life cycle. While their focus is different, EAM and ALM are related.

AVEVA’s common project database—AVEVA Engineering—can manage and control multi-discipline data, and is a pillar in the company’s offerings. This solution enables multi-discipline teams of engineers to work effectively together to develop and maintain the detailed definition of all the key engineering items involved in plant or marine projects.

The company’s toughest competitors are well-known and familiar names in the PLM and automation arena: Siemens Digital Industries, Rockwell Automation, SAP, GE Digital, ABB and Dassault Systèmes.

In terms of staffing, AVEVA includes more than 6,400 employees, 5,000 partners and 5,700 certified developers.

Sights Set on Solutions for OEM Companies

According to the release, the partnership being entered into seems primarily aimed at delivering solutions at the OEM level related to industrial Asset Lifecycle Management needs.

In this, AVEVA envisions an integration of Aras’ cloud-based technology and AVEVA's hybrid cloud solutions, which they believe, “provide customers with new capabilities for change and configuration management, requirements management and whole asset visualization across the breadth of AVEVA’s industrial software portfolio.”

“Aras complements AVEVA’s information management capabilities as proven in some of the world’s largest energy projects, providing our customer base with more holistic solutions for their Asset Information Management strategies,” summarizes Herweck.