PTC’s Project Lightning

Armed with a chilled beer I sat myself down for the PTC Partner web meeting this evening. The invitation email said that Brian Shepherd, Executive Vice President of Product Development, would be updating partners on PTC’s product road map. Somehow I got the feeling that he was going to give us more information about Project Lightning (see “What is PTC’s Project Lightning?“). And I was right. However, the contents of the hour long presentation were confidential. So unfortunately I cannot disclose anything here.

Now if you have been keeping track of my blog, you probably know that I like to flirt with danger a little. The thing about confidentiality is that I respect it 100%. I also adhere to it 100%. So whatever PTC said and showed in the web meeting was confidential and will remain confidential, at least on this blog. But I don’t believe the questions that attendees asked Brian can be considered as confidential information of PTC. So here goes:

1) Will our investment in Pro/TOOLKIT be of use on the Lightning Platform?

2) Is Project Lightning a CAD only solution or will it cover Windchill as well?

3) What are the plans of incorporating Direct Modeling in Pro/ENGINEER?

4) Is Lightning going to be a Cloud platform?

5) Will Lightning be a Windows only platform?

The last question was mine and was probably a bit too nosy. So Brian replied that he could not offer a useful reply which is quite understandable.

So I guess this makes you none the wiser as to what Project Lightning really is? Or does it? I can tell you one thing though. PTC’s Project Lightning is going to be one big heck of a deal.