CADTRAIN Goes to PTC University

Q&A with Matt Cohen, Vice President of Customer Education, and Dennis Stajic, Vice President of Education Services, PTC

In early 2005, the PTC/USER Board met with PTC executives to discuss the future of education services and offerings. One of the issues raised was the role of CADTRAIN in serving the user community. For over a decade, CADTRAIN has been a great supporter of PTC/USER and its training products are in wide use among our members. We encouraged PTC to work cooperatively with CADTRAIN to ensure that it could continue to create top-quality learning materials for PTC customers.

PTC really took this message to heart. The seeds planted in this discussion sprouted into a relationship that culminated in the December acquisition of CADTRAIN. By integrating the CADTRAIN offering within PTC University, PTC will be able to capitalize on the best of both solutions and expand its training offering early in 2006.

Importantly, PTC acquired not only CADTRAIN technology but also the entire development and customer service staff, ensuring continuity for current CADTRAIN customers. In addition, CADTRAIN and PTC will continue to work with the PTC/USER Usability and Training Technical Committee to validate future training strategy and help determine product priorities.

Given the importance of CADTRAIN services to PTC/USER members, Rick Snider recently posed a number of questions to the company’s principals who were involved in the acquisition, Dennis Stajic and Matt Cohen. Dennis is the founder of CADTRAIN while Matt, Vice President of Customer Education at PTC, was instrumental in initiating and completing the transaction. 

RS: Dennis and Matt, thank you for taking the time to talk with us. First of all, can you tell us if PTC is retaining the CADTRAIN development and technical support staff after the acquisition?

DS: Rick, we appreciate the opportunity to talk with you. We want to assure our customers that every member of CADTRAIN’s development staff has been retained to continue the development of COACH/LMS and the COACH curriculum. CADTRAIN will also provide direct technical support.

RS: Do current CADTRAIN customers face any change in pricing?

MC: No. CADTRAIN customers will continue to pay the same maintenance fee for their current COACH and COACH/LMS installations.

RS: With this acquisition, will PTC University's offerings be available in COACH/LMS so that we can get down to one LMS environment?

DS: PTC University will provide the “hosted” solution, and COACH/LMS the client site solution. The same content will be available in either delivery mode.

RS: Will the CADTRAIN content be available both as a PTC University subscription and installable on a company’s intranet?

MC: CADTRAIN’s COACH content will be supported for intranet installations for current CADTRAIN customers. The COACH curriculum will also be embedded into PTC University as an optional training library.

RS: CADTRAIN focused solely on PTC's MCAD-related products. Will the curriculum expand to Windchill and other PTC products?

MC: Yes. Incentives will be available to help upgrade CADTRAIN customers to PTC’s Windchill and PLM offerings.

RS: Will the structure of the CADTRAIN content become more like the Windchill training available on PTC University?

DS: The CADTRAIN COACH content will keep to its current format. There are no plans to alter the instructional design but rather to use the multiple formats now available to complement each other for different learning styles.

RS: When new versions of PTC software are released, will the training material be available simultaneously?

DS: CADTRAIN will maintain its current release schedule for new versions of Pro/ENGINEER.

RS: Are there any plans to provide tighter integration with ModelCHECK?

DS: Now that CADTRAIN is part of PTC, integration discussions are scheduled as part of the COACH and COACH/LMS product roadmap.

RS: What about offering CADTRAIN courses in other languages?

MC: Seven CADTRAIN courses are currently available in French and German for WF1 and WF2. We are developing a localization roadmap for additional languages for WF3 and beyond.

RS: Will PTC University customers with a CREATE subscription automatically receive all CADTRAIN content?

MC: Special incentives will be available to help CREATE subscribers access the CADTRAIN COACH library within PTC University.

RS: Thanks again, guys. It sounds like PTC/USER members are sure to benefit from the innovative learning products that will come out of the new relationship between PTC and CADTRAIN.

If you have questions about the acquisition or education, feel free to contact Dennis at dstajic@ptc.com or Matt at macohen@ptc.com.