eMatrix, Teamcenter, Smarteam - any experiences?

Hi all!

My company is in the process of PLM software selection.
We've sent Request for Tender outlining all our requirments to vendor
representatives of MatrixOne (with their Matrix), Smarteam and Teamcenter
(from UGS). These days they'll make presentations (3-4 days per vendor)
after which we hope we'll be able to make decision which way to go.

I would appreciate any educated/experience based input anyone might have in
regard to these three packages above i.e. good, bad, hard to implement,
slimy vendor etc.

Cheers,
MM

 

Sorry for the late reply but here is my 15 cents.

Although I have no experience with Teamcenter and Smarteam, I have alot
of eMatrix experience.

eMatrix has many comprehensive applications that are very well thought
out but are inherently complex, such as any good PLM deployment would
require. I have investigated the data models for their `centrals` in
alot of detail and they have thought out their schema quite well.

We are currently maintaining and building on a customized tcl based web
app on top of a eMatrix core. The true beauty of eMatrix lies at the
core. The core models of the Business Object Server are well thought
out and enable pretty much any customized system to be deployed on
these frameworks. From PDM to PLM or even CRM and ERP can be deployed
on eMatrix core.

If you are interested in building customized toolsets to layer on top
of your vendors core products, be sure to investigate the core
frameworks of Teamcenter adn Smarteam and see if their systems are as
extensible and flexible as matrix one's. If you are interested in out
of the box capabilities only and Teamcenter and/or Smarteam have the
functionality you are looking for, you can level the playing field and
pretty easily put together a cost/benefit analysis across these
systems.

Regards,

JsD

 

Thanks JsD. We've already purchased eMatrix and are in the training phase 1
(core team members Business Model learning - Thick Client, administration
etc.) and defining structures for the whole organization.

We got LOTS of expectations and eMatrix was the closest to all we wanted,
plus! Teamcenter was last in our evals - boy, did they suck during the 3.5
days presentation... Probably a great application, but these guys manage to
make huge disservice to it. One would need to have seen it to believe!

Smarteam was tight second, but price of software and services... wow! And it
looked quite a bit more difficult to drive/administer compared to eMatrix.

 

It is ashamed that the pre-sales team did such a bad job with
Teamcenter. It has by far the most comprehensive functionality and
scalability of any of the PLM systems. You would be surprised by it's
capabilities. There is a reason that it owns the PLM market and
obviously someone did a lousy job showing it to you. I no longer work
for UGS but do Teamcenter implementation for many companies and I have
not come across anything it cannot do. eMatrix comes across good with
the flashy browser, however, if you look closely at it's underlying
functionality it cannot compare. Teamcenter does a lousy job of showing
flash but it has alot of muscle under the covers and can do just about
anything you want it to. Good luck with your direction.
Jason