Spanning a history of 30 years, PTC is best known for its CAD (Computer Aided Design) and PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) products.<\/p>\n
In 2013 it set out to reinvent itself as an Industrial IoT Company. Fast forward & after 5 acquisitions, PTC is now seen as a visionary in industrial IoT both by industry peers and by market analysts<\/a>. PTCs formula is to find the best-in-breed components of an IoT Platform, in approximately the $100M range, and integrate them under the PTC brand.<\/p>\n In this blog, we take a high-level look at each of their 5 acquisitions and provide an answer as to the question ‘was it money well spent’.<\/p>\n Acquired<\/strong>:\u00a030th December 2013<\/p>\n Amount Paid<\/strong>: 118M<\/p>\n Main Purpose<\/strong>: IoT Platform (AEP)<\/p>\n Location<\/strong>: Philadelphia, 2009<\/p>\n Venture Capital<\/strong>: 13M<\/p>\n Similar\/ Competitors<\/strong>: Davra.com, C3IoT,\u00a0Software AG.<\/p>\n The first and without question, in my mind, the most important acquisition for PTC as the CAD and PLM company enters into the fledgling IoT Market. Thingworx serves as the original Industrial IoT Platform – sometimes referred to as an AEP.<\/p>\n At the time it was speculated to be an approximate 20X acquisition and announced the beginning\u00a0of IoT platform acquisition frenzy.<\/p>\n Thingworx, in my opinion, formed the basis of PTC IoT acquisition strategy allowing PTC to understand where the gaps were,\u00a0where to look down the IoT stack (Kepware, Axeda) and where to look up the\u00a0IoT Stack (Vuforia, Coldlight).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Acquired<\/strong>:\u00a0July 24th, 2014<\/p>\n Main Purpose<\/strong>: Device Management<\/p>\n Amount Paid<\/strong>: 170M<\/p>\n Location<\/strong>: Boston, 2000<\/p>\n Venture Capital<\/strong>: 26M<\/p>\n Similar\/ Competitors<\/strong>: Telit, Wind River, Davra.com<\/p>\n Axeda is often the forgotten child of the PTC IoT acquisition family but it was the largest of the 5 acquisitions to date. At the time of the\u00a0acquisition, there were a lot\u00a0of questions as to the similarities with Thingworx.<\/p>\n Over the years it has become more clear that Axeda’s\u00a0remote monitoring and management software was utilized to add advanced device management and remote management capabilities to their IoT stack. The brand no longer exists but its technology still forms an important part of PTC IoT offering.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Acquired<\/strong>:\u00a0May 5th, 2015<\/p>\n Main Purpose<\/strong>: Analytics<\/p>\n Amount Paid<\/strong>: 105M<\/p>\n Location<\/strong>: Greater Philadelphia, 2007<\/p>\n Venture Capital<\/strong>: 11M<\/p>\n Similar\/ Competitors<\/strong>: Skytree, H2O.ai, Predixion, Davra.com<\/p>\n Coldlight was a startup that focused on machine learning and predictive analytics.\u00a0ColdLight\u2019s software aims to tell when a specific component might be nearing failure. ColdLight is thought to serve as the foundation for PTC\u2019s strategy of creating a \u201cdigital twin\u201d for every physical thing monitored. In theory a nice acquisition but unsure what makes Coldlight technology unique.<\/p>\n Acquired<\/strong>:\u00a0Dec 2015<\/p>\n Main Purpose<\/strong>: Edge Data Collection<\/p>\n Amount Paid<\/strong>: 118M<\/p>\n Location<\/strong>: Portland Maine, 1995<\/p>\n Similar\/ Competitors<\/strong>: Matrikon, Maverick<\/p>\n Widely seen as an excellent acquisition,\u00a0 Kepware gives PTC a single layer (through OPC) to access over 150 different industrial protocols. Matrikon often seen as the gold standard in OPC Servers is used by many of PTC competitors. As machine manufacturers continue to embed OPC Servers into their machine the importance of Kepware, and its multi-protocol support, will diminish.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Acquired<\/strong>:\u00a0Nov 3rd 2015<\/p>\n Main Purpose<\/strong>: Augmented Reality<\/p>\n Amount Paid<\/strong>: 65M<\/p>\n Founded<\/strong>: 2008, UK<\/p>\n Similar\/ Competitors<\/strong>: Junaio, Wikitude<\/p>\n Vuforia was offloaded by Qualcomm as still seen as a niche business. Qualcomm is focusing on chips to enable VR and AR. I see this as a very astute acquisition\u00a0at a very good price. Augmented Reality has some excellent use cases today in the Industrial IoT space particularly Manufacturing and Expert Support. There is also a lot of potential to\u00a0integrate PTC 3D CAD designs into Vuforia AR.<\/p>\n <\/p>\nThingworx<\/h2>\n
Axeda<\/h2>\n
Coldlight<\/h2>\n
Kepware<\/h2>\n
Vuforia<\/h2>\n
Summary<\/h2>\n