San Jose, CA - November 17, 2003 - Agile
Software Corporation (Nasdaq: AGIL), a leading
provider of product lifecycle management (PLM)
solutions, today announced Agile 9, Agile's
unified release for managing the enterprise
product record across the product lifecycle. Agile
9, expected to be available in January 2004,
supports the product lifecycle business process,
technology platform, and integration requirements
of companies in a variety of different industries
including aerospace and defense, automotive,
consumer packaged goods, electronics, industrial
products, and life sciences. With Agile 9, global
enterprises have an unprecedented breadth of
capabilities for harnessing the product record as
the key intellectual asset to drive competitive
advantage, profitability, compliance, and
long-term growth.
"Agile 9 is the latest release from Agile,
engineered to meet the needs of global enterprise
customers. The standards-based architecture,
scalability, and increasingly comprehensive
support for PLM business processes and
stakeholders bodes well for Agile customers and
the PLM market in general," stated Gisela Wilson,
director, product lifecycle solutions,
International Data Corp. "With the release of
Agile 9, manufacturers pursuing competitive
advantage from their product portfolio should
place Agile on their list of companies to evaluate
for an enterprise PLM investment."
Agile 9 provides a broad suite of business-ready,
best-practice PLM solutions built on the Agile 9
enterprise PLM architecture. The suite features
the new Agile Product Governance and Compliance
solution for managing product compliance to
industry standards and regulations, the expanded
Agile Product Portfolio Management offering, and
greatly enhanced versions of the Agile Product
Collaboration, Agile Engineering Collaboration,
Agile Product Cost Management, and Agile Product
Service and Improvement solutions. The unified PLM
solution suite leverages a single enterprise view
of the product across business processes and the
extended enterprise-throughout the entire product
lifecycle-from concept and development throughout
launch and production to service and disposal.
"Harris Corporation was an early-adopter of Agile
technology," said Bill Miller, vice president of
information services and CIO for Harris
Corporation. "We've leveraged Agile's key
strengths of being rapidly deployable, adaptable
for configuration to our changing needs, and
friendly to use across various Harris
organizations. Many of our internal users have
come to depend heavily upon Agile for timely
access to product-related information. We continue
to find more opportunities to utilize Agile for
managing product data across our entire
enterprise, including manufacturing, quality, and
customer service. Agile 9 promises to deliver new
capabilities which will further the utilization of
product data to deliver bottom line business
value."
At the heart of Agile's newest release is the
Agile 9 PLM platform, delivering the
next-generation, global enterprise PLM
architecture. The n-tier, standards-based,
service-oriented architecture provides visibility,
management, control, collaboration, and decision
support of common product record information
across all Agile solutions. The Agile 9 platform
includes a broad range of new and enhanced common
services and capabilities, as well as rich new
integration and decision support functionality.
"Products are the lifeblood of our customers; they
define competitive advantage and profitability.
That is why a comprehensive, systemic approach to
managing the enterprise product record is critical
to the success of our customers," said Bryan
Stolle, chairman and CEO of Agile. "Agile 9, the
next-generation solution for product lifecycle
management, provides a broad suite of
best-practice solutions based on a common, global
enterprise architecture giving companies a system
of unprecedented scope for leveraging the product
record to accelerate revenues, drive innovation,
reduce costs, improve quality, and ensure
regulatory compliance."
Agile 9 Delivers Best-Practice, Business Ready
Solutions
Agile 9 delivers a broad suite of PLM solutions
that are built around the enterprise product
record, the single system of record for product
information required to maximize product
profitability across the lifecycle.
New Agile Product Governance and Compliance—Agile
Product Governance and Compliance enables
organizations to manage product and program
compliance against standards and regulatory
requirements, ensuring effective compliance
throughout enterprise operations. The solution
features two business-ready components: Agile
Environmental ComplianceTM provides lifecycle
capabilities to meet environmental regulation
standards such as the Waste of Electronic and
Electrical Equipment (WEEE) directive and the
Restrictions of Hazardous Substance (ROHS)
regulations. Agile System ValidationTM provides
off-the-shelf software validation capabilities for
Agile implementations for companies in regulated
industries. For instance, the Agile System
Validation solution capabilities help medical
device manufacturers in complying with the
validation requirements put forth in the FDA
Quality System Regulation, 21 CFR Part 820.
Expanded Agile Product Portfolio Management—This
out-of-the-box solution enables organizations to
optimize their product development investments by
providing tightly synchronized program and product
information, maximized resource utilization, and
cross-program visibility and decision support
throughout the product lifecycle. The solution
offers expanded capabilities for core program
management, cross-organizational resource
management, and configurable executive dashboards.
Enhanced Agile Product Collaboration—In Agile 9,
the suite's flagship solution adds
multi-organization functionality that enables
visibility and management of site-specific product
information across global operations and the
extended supply network. With Agile Product
Collaboration, each stakeholder in the extended
design and supply chain has secure access to
critical product record data, including bills of
material, attributes, manufacturers,
configurations, specifications, documents, models,
work instructions, revisions and more.
Enhanced Agile Engineering Collaboration—Agile
Engineering Collaboration provides a comprehensive
set of capabilities designed to address the
specific requirements of the engineering
organization. With Agile 9, the solution has been
expanded to include integrations to leading MCAD,
ECAD, software, firmware, and desktop publishing
applications; it also provides comprehensive
design collaboration and visualization support.
The added integration capabilities are the result
of Agile's acquisition of Eigner, a leading
provider of solutions for complex engineering
processes.
Enhanced Agile Product Cost Management—Agile
Product Cost Management enables companies to
manage product costs across the product lifecycle
and design their global supply network
concurrently with the design of their products. In
Agile 9, Agile Product Cost Management adds rich
new contract management functionality that enables
pricing and terms information to be leveraged
across organizations, business processes, and key
stakeholders.
Enhanced Agile Product Service and Improvement—The
solution provides a closed-loop product quality
and corrective action system that enables
companies to drive improved product quality and
customer satisfaction. The newest version includes
enhanced functionality around supplier corrective
actions, issue management, and quality reporting
and analysis.
Agile 9: Next-Generation PLM Platform
The Agile 9 platform delivers Agile's
next-generation global enterprise PLM
architecture. The n-tier, standards-based,
service-oriented architecture leverages Web
services, J2EE, XML and analytics technologies to
provide visibility, management, control,
collaboration, and decision support of common
product record information across all Agile
solutions.
"Agile has built its business strategy on
successfully establishing the role of the product
record, the single system of truth about a product
throughout the lifecycle and across the extended
enterprise. Agile 9 provides visibility and
control of critical product information and
processes to each stakeholder, both inside the
enterprise and across the extended supply chain,
for all products at any stage," said Vasco Drecun,
research program director, product value
management, D.H. Brown. "This value proposition
requires a strong application and process
integration strategy to support it. To provide the
foundation for this value proposition, Agile has
designed the Agile Integration Framework to
support user, process and data integration built
on industry-standard J2EE and Web services
infrastructure."
Key components of the Agile 9 platform include
Agile Common Services, Agile Integration
Framework, Agile Analytics Framework, Agile
Content Framework, and Agile UI Framework.
Agile Common Services—Agile 9 is built to be a
services-oriented architecture-the standard for
modern enterprise architectures. As part of this
architecture, Agile delivers a common set of
services that provide consistency across all its
applications. New features include event
notification and subscriptions, full-text search,
and directory services. Common services in Agile 9
also include enhancements to the common
architecture, document management, security,
workflow and administration.
Agile Integration Framework—Agile 9 introduces a
new and comprehensive set of tools for integrating
Agile to other applications and systems, both
within the enterprise and between business
partners. The tools are based on industry
standards such as XML, JMS, PDX/Rosetta Net and
Web services standards using SOAP/WSDL. New
features include standard XML-based publish and
subscribe, bi-directional Web services support,
and process extensions.
Agile Analytics Framework—Agile 9 features a new
strategic decision support platform that enables
customers to develop and deploy enterprise-class
PLM reporting and analysis solutions. The
significantly enhanced reporting functionality
includes numerous out-of-the-box, standard
reports, as well as comprehensive capabilities for
custom reporting.
Agile Content Framework—The new platform framework
in Agile 9 allows customers to synchronize and
share enterprise product record information with
extended design and manufacturing partner
information sources, dramatically enhancing
communication and collaborative processes across
the product lifecycle. It also provides a "live"
connection between component product record data
and dynamic enterprise, commercial and supplier
information through rich content adaptors.
Agile UI Framework—Agile 9 provides a broad and
rich suite of options for users to interact with
the Agile application. New pre-defined portlets
expose key services and user interface components
in the Agile platform to deliver content or
services within customers' portals. Both the HTML
browser-based user interface and Java-Web
start-based rich client have been enhanced. New to
the framework in Agile 9 are viewer APIs, for
viewing and editing CAD drawings and models;
integration to authoring tools, such as those from
Microsoft and Adobe; and integration to products
such as Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Project
through the Web services architecture.
About Agile Software Corporation
Agile Software Corporation (NASDAQ: AGIL) helps
companies drive profits, accelerate innovation,
reduce costs, and ensure regulatory compliance
throughout the product lifecycle. With a broad
suite of enterprise class PLM solutions,
time-to-value focused implementations, and a
unique Guaranteed Business ResultsSM program,
Agile helps companies get the most from their
products. Alcatel, Boeing, Dell Inc., Flextronics
International, Hitachi, Leapfrog, Lockheed Martin,
Magna Steyr, Playtex, Siemens, and QUALCOMM are
among the nearly 1,200 customers in the
automotive, aerospace and defense, consumer
products, electronics, high tech, industrial
products, and life sciences industries that use
Agile solutions. For more information, call (408)
284-4000 or visit
www.agile.com.
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