Vendors of product life-cycle management (PLM) software are making their tools easier to deploy and use as interest in the technology grows among small and midsize businesses.

One example is the five-year partnership announced last month by Microsoft Corp. and Dassault Systemes SA. Under the agreement, Dassault"s 3D SolidWorks products and PLM software offerings such as Catia, Delmia and Enovia will be integrated with Microsoft"s SQL Server, BizTalk Server, SharePoint Portal server software and .Net products.

The integrated products will allow manufacturers to more easily create, edit and share product-related information and 3-D drawings between Microsoft and Dassault environments, said John Squire, vice president of marketing at France-based Dassault.

Such interoperability is crucial to spurring adoption of PLM among small and midsize manufacturing companies, which tend to be Microsoft-centric, said Don Brown, managing partner at Collaborative Product Development Associates LLC in Port Chester, N.Y.

Dassault isn"t the only company attempting to broaden the appeal of PLM products.

Parametric Technology Corp. in Needham, Mass., disclosed plans last month to use an IBM Corp. on-demand service center to deliver a hosted PLM service for small and midsize businesses. The service allows such businesses to use Parametric"s Windchill product management software under subscriptions starting at US$100 per month.

Similarly, Agile Software Corp. launched a small and medium enterprise initiative in October. The San Jose-based vendor is offering a hosted PLM service and a prepackaged PLM suite for smaller businesses.

And in September, MatrixOne Inc. in Westford, Mass., announced an integration of its PLM suite with Microsoft"s Office environment with an eye to spurring broader adoption of its products.

Such moves come at a time when the adoption of PLM technologies -- traditionally used only by very large companies -- appears to be gaining attention among smaller manufacturers, said John Moore, an analyst at ARC Advisory Group Inc. in Dedham, Mass.

According to a report released this fall by Boston-based AMR Research Inc., companies with annual revenue of less than $1 billion will invest a total of over $5 billion on PLM technologies by 2008 in an effort to gain more control over their product information.

"Vendors are starting to realize the market potential of small and medium businesses," said Stephen Segal, CIO at Loewen Inc., a Steinbach, Manitoba-based maker of high-end custom windows for luxury homes. "We are seeing Tier 1 vendors repackaging and offering high-end tools that had been developed and available only for complex markets."

Loewen is in the midst of deploying Dassault"s PLM technology to its engineering and design groups. Eventually, the company plans to use PLM to expose product information to sales and marketing groups as well as customers. "We couldn"t even look at PLM two or three years ago" because of its complexity and costs, Segal said.

EV3 Inc., a Plymouth, Minn.-based maker of cardiovascular equipment, is taking advantage of MatrixOne"s industry-specific PLM packages to implement a capability for managing product development information through its entire life cycle. MatrixOne"s support of functions and processes specific to the medical device market, including templates for complying with U.S. Food and Drug Administration and European Union requirements, have made the technology relatively simple to deploy, said CIO Pete Schaubach.