Agile Expands PLM Offerings

Agile Software Corp. will extend the reach of its PLM software to new vertical markets with its acquisition of Eigner US Inc.

Agile provides supply chain management and product lifecycle management software to the electronics, high-tech, life sciences and consumer products industries. Eigner makes PLM software for the automotive, industrial equipment, aerospace and defense vertical markets.

Combined with Eigners 250 customers, which include companies such as Lockheed Martin Corp. and Siemens AG, Agile will have more than 1,000 customers, said Agile officials, in San Jose, Calif.

A private company founded in Karlsruhe, Germany, Eigner now has its headquarters in Waltham, Mass. Terms of the deal with Agile, which was announced last week, were not disclosed.

"The real value that [Eigner] brings for Agile is the ability to integrate all Agile products to the engineering tools," said Norm Fjeldheim, senior vice president and CIO at Qualcomm Inc., who is using Agile software to manage his companys product data records. "Right now, I have to try and integrate Agile into my engineering tools. We can accomplish that now, but its kind of painful."

With Eigner, "we can take the information we have [from our engineering tools] and drive it into Agile without having to manually put it in or leave the system, which are productivity issues and error prone," said Fjeldheim, in San Diego. "We like having a central repository for this."