At Centric Software Inc., CEO Chris Groves thinks weeks should be enough, especially if the PLM software is smart enough to find the required data wherever it occurs in an enterprise. "Our philosophy: Let's connect to the information wherever it is, but give the user easy access -- and security as if it were stored in a central place." ("A Utopian dream" is how San Jose, Calif.-based Groves labels the conventional PLM goal of a single version of the product truth in one repository.)
To further optimize that data discovery capability, new search technology, Centric Insight, has been added to the company's Product Intelligence Solutions.
The search technology, part of the acquired assets of Product Sight Corp., Bellevue, Wash., facilitates data access from both business and engineering systems, including office documents (Word and Excel) and e-mail messages.