At the risk of starting a firestorm, I'm interested in hearing from Windchill users on the value of maintenance, specifically with Windchill.
First, some background
We are a small company with only 8 seats of Creo. The nature of our business (design consultancy) meant, traditionally, that projects live within our walls for a short time and then are handed to the client. Typically that might be from concept through preliminary engineering until tooling or production release. The value of Windchill (although PTC requires us to buy and pay maintenance on it) was not worth the pain in implementing and maintaining it.
Recently, we've been doing more sustaining engineering for clients. maintaining their database and implementing running changes and ECOs. That, and larger projects with larger database sizes, have pushed us into looking to implement PDM Link. That is likely to come this year.
On the maintenance side, the primary, near exclusive, value to us from maintenance is access to new releases to keep up with our clients. We rarely use tech support, it's simply not fast enough for our needs. With PTC stretching out the release schedule to over 2 years, it makes no financial sense for us to pay maintenance each year and have moved to paying only every 3rd year or longer.
And so my question;
As we implement PDM Link, I'm wondering if we should rethink our philosophy on maintenance. Will we likely find more value in access to tech support & the KB?
I'd be interested in your thoughts, especially those from smaller organizations like ours.
