In Episode 78 of Razorleaf’s Stay Sharp podcast, Recap of Aras ACE 2025, co-hosts Jonathan Scott and Juliann Grant are joined by Razorleaf Pre-Sales Architect Milan Obradovic, for a slightly different episode than usual. As the go-to guy for expertise in the Aras Innovator platform, Milan runs Razorleaf’s Tech Tuesday On Demand Webinar Series, exclusive content on what’s new for the Aras community.
Juliann and Milan recently attended this year’s Aras Community Event, ACE 2025, and they highlight some of the discussions and interesting news from the 25th anniversary celebration. One notable moment was Aras, a leading provider of product lifecycle management and digital thread solutions, honoring Razorleaf as Partner of the Year, in recognition of their 18-year partnership. Jonathan notes, “Aras has brought a lot of excitement to the PLM industry with a different approach. I remember back in the day … the first webinar we did was talking about open source. And that was a crazy idea in the PLM space.”
Disrupting the PLM Marketplace
As a relative newcomer to the PLM space, Milan found the event energizing. “Peter Schroer had a great quote of how Aras really didn’t have the recognition until someone wrote an article trying to insult the company and refer to them as the punks of Andover [MA],” Milan says. “Wow, I’m a punk-rock PLM guy, too. That drove the excitement to leave the event and continue to learn more and drive the innovation that they’ve been pushing.” Juliann agrees that Aras has been a disruptor in the marketplace, noting that this year will be particularly interesting in how their openness and innovative technology will continue that disruption. “They’re the upstart,” Jonathan adds. “Showing up on the scene and now getting some of that recognition, but trying to keep that punk image. And I agree. I appreciate that about our work with them is they keep things fresh. They keep driving things forward.”
New Industry Impact
An interesting announcement from the CEO’s keynote, Milan says, was the introduction of a new partnership with Sandvik, a company at the forefront of manufacturing tools and machining solutions. While none of the trio is sure exactly how that partnership will impact PLM, it’s worth keeping an eye on, since Aras is actively seeking partnerships with similar solutions providers. “We see things like Rockwell Automation getting involved with PTC and purchasing Calypso,” Jonathan says. “I thought these guys made PLCs [programmable logic controller], but suddenly they’re in the PLM space. You see other things like Hexagon [who] worked in a certain area in engineering and manufacturing, but suddenly they’re buying up PLM and MCAD tool players.” Digital twins require the management of significant manufacturing data, therefore, Milan says, “Handling that data is a common ask we see in our own subscriber community as well. Providing that solution could be something that could help a lot of people in the future.”
New Product Announcements
While there was a lot of product news and roadmap information, the big announcement was Aras’ new InnovatorEdge platform, a low-code API management framework for extending product digital thread ecosystems. InnovatorEdge, Milan explains, will “expand on the functionality that Aras released with the configurable web service—drag and drop item types, expose new properties. And once you have all that exposed, push it out with an API key and expose it to other data systems.” That will enable possibilities like creating micro-apps to expose data to the shop floor or let maintenance users gather information from PLM to track appointments and necessary materials while out in the field, Milan says. “To have it exposed in an application you can just open on your phone versus a full web-based client.”
The event’s other main topic was using artificial intelligence (AI) with InnovatorEdge to drive and provide AI workflows with PLM data and as a productivity tool within PLM. Milan mentions some of the uses Aras envisions, such as “adding the ability for natural language searching of your PLM database. Using AI to enhance search capabilities that are already there within innovator. If I wanted all parts with three bolts on them, the AI search engine would be able to find all those assemblies that have three bolts, which is just really speeding up adoption, allowing people to get more comfortable using the system and find the data that they need.” Given the endless industry talk about AI, Jonathan is especially excited that Aras is sharing clear, concrete use cases for the new technology.
Learn More About Aras Products and Capabilities
The full podcast, Stay Sharp Episode: 78 Recap of Aras ACE 2025, contains more discussion and details on a variety of topics, including how Aras continues to accelerate innovation and disrupt the PLM marketplace. Be sure to check out Milan’s Tech Tuesday On Demand Webinar Series and join us each week for a new podcast.
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