ACADEMIA

UGS Corp., a leading global provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) software and services, today announced the shipment of its NX 4 digital product development software on the popular Linux open source operating system. UGS is the world's first PLM software and services provider to offer a complete solution for the Linux environment. "This is a landmark step in the PLM industry and creates significant advantages for UGS customers," said Chuck Grindstaff, executive vice president, Products, UGS. "We announced our Linux plans last year and are now the first among our competitors to provide a complete world-class PLM solution for this popular operating environment. UGS' ability to bring this solution to the market first is consistent with our PLM Open strategy that promotes enhanced collaboration through open, standards-based offerings. As a result, our customers can immediately take advantage of the low cost of ownership and excellent performance of the Linux environment." As the world's leading open source operating system, Linux offers customers an enterprise class operating environment at a low cost of ownership. Linux and x64 are two of the technologies most requested by UGS customers. As part of its Linux strategy and commitment to open standards, UGS now offers its NX flagship product on the latest 64 bit technology from AMD and Intel. UGS will also offer Teamcenter on Linux later in the year. "We already have migrated our whole CAE environment to Linux," said Erwin Pignitter, senior vice president, Information Management, MTU Aero Engines. "Now we are strongly looking at UGS to provide us with their products on Linux so that we can migrate the CAD and PLM environments as well. We have been beta testing NX 4 on Linux and are very pleased with its performance and stability. Now we are working closely with UGS to migrate 400 NX seats and all our Teamcenter components to Linux. We are very happy that UGS made clear commitments for Linux product releases. We expect to save 20 percent in total costs with our Linux initiative." UGS chose Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for the superior scalability and reliability required for high-end engineering. "Having a mature and established platform is critical to enable UGS to develop, deliver and support our products with the quality our customers expect," said Chris Brosz, vice president of Technical Operations, UGS. "Novell was the first to offer support for x64 technology and has a proven track record serving global enterprises." UGS and Novell are working closely to provide a robust and fully supported implementation of UGS software on SUSE Linux Technology. "We are very pleased UGS has chosen SUSE Linux Enterprise Server as the platform with which to lead their open source strategy," said Jeff Hawkins, Vice President of Product Management. "SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is the Linux of choice for high-performance computing. Today it powers three of the top five supercomputers in the world. This offering will be of particular interest for customers looking to deploy Linux on the desktop by migrating their existing UNIX workstations to a cost-effective and highly scalable solution offered by Linux on standard PC hardware." Functional benefits include: * UNIX Migration: Customers can now take full advantage of the price/performance benefits offered by the latest AMD and Intel x64- based workstations and servers. * High Performance: 64-bit applications can address the amounts of memory required for the design and management of extremely large, complex models, improving time-to-market. * Backward-Compatible: Customers can run the latest 64-bit applications along with existing 32-bit applications on the same machine. * Open Standard: UGS PLM Open ensures commitment to Linux and its standards base. UGS is also a member of the Free Standards Group, supporting their Linux Standard Base (LSB) initiative. For more information, visit its Web site .