In late 2009, Dassault Systèmes, France’s largest software company, launched a search for a location to establish a headquarters for its rapidly expanding operations in North and South America. It already had operations in Los Angeles, Charlotte, N.C., and Auburn Hills, Mich.
But ultimately, the global technology firm decided there was only one place to be: Route 128.
Dassault creates software that helps companies conceive, design, make, and improve products, and Route 128 has become the world’s undisputed epicenter of this fast-growing technology, known as Product Lifecycle Management, or PLM.
Virtually every global player in the industry, from Germany’s Siemens AG and SAP AG, to California’s Oracle Corp. and Autodesk Inc., to home-grown Parametric Technology Corp. of Needham, is clustered around the loop once known as ‘‘America’s Technology Highway.’’ There are so many that one consultant suggested a new nickname for 128: ‘‘The PLM Highway.’’
Today, just about every product that consumers touch — the cars they drive, the planes they fly in, the pots and pans they cook with — is likely to have been created with software developed in the area surrounding Route 128.
‘‘It’s not exaggerating to say that PLM customers are basically every large company that makes things,’’ said Oleg Shilovitsky, the consultant and entrepreneur who coined the ‘‘PLM Highway’’ moniker. ‘‘And it’s definitely our cluster. Nowhere else is as good at this as we are.’’
In addition to global players, nearly a dozen smaller PLM operations have sprouted nearby. They include Vuuch Inc., which employs 19 in Sudbury and develops social media applications to help designers, engineers, and manufacturers collaborate, and Omnify Software Inc. in Tewksbury, which sells a PLM software platform and employs 220, including its sales force.Another dozen firms provide specialized analytic and display tools that support the industry, adding to a pool of talent that is perhaps unrivaled anywhere.
But ultimately, the global technology firm decided there was only one place to be: Route 128.
Dassault creates software that helps companies conceive, design, make, and improve products, and Route 128 has become the world’s undisputed epicenter of this fast-growing technology, known as Product Lifecycle Management, or PLM.
Virtually every global player in the industry, from Germany’s Siemens AG and SAP AG, to California’s Oracle Corp. and Autodesk Inc., to home-grown Parametric Technology Corp. of Needham, is clustered around the loop once known as ‘‘America’s Technology Highway.’’ There are so many that one consultant suggested a new nickname for 128: ‘‘The PLM Highway.’’
Today, just about every product that consumers touch — the cars they drive, the planes they fly in, the pots and pans they cook with — is likely to have been created with software developed in the area surrounding Route 128.
‘‘It’s not exaggerating to say that PLM customers are basically every large company that makes things,’’ said Oleg Shilovitsky, the consultant and entrepreneur who coined the ‘‘PLM Highway’’ moniker. ‘‘And it’s definitely our cluster. Nowhere else is as good at this as we are.’’
In addition to global players, nearly a dozen smaller PLM operations have sprouted nearby. They include Vuuch Inc., which employs 19 in Sudbury and develops social media applications to help designers, engineers, and manufacturers collaborate, and Omnify Software Inc. in Tewksbury, which sells a PLM software platform and employs 220, including its sales force.Another dozen firms provide specialized analytic and display tools that support the industry, adding to a pool of talent that is perhaps unrivaled anywhere.
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