Welcom Inc is making a play for the customers of its rival in the project management software market, Primavera Systems Inc. Houston, Texas-based Welcom has built integration facilities into OpenPlan 2.5 to make it accessible for Primavera Project Planner (P3) customers. Welcom hopes that its software’s advantage in scheduling resource sharing for multiple projects will attract users of the Philadephia firm’s software.
OpenPlan is a Windows NT-based tool that allows engineering firms to produce and update schedules. Version 2.5 of the software has an information distribution service that alerts the appropriate person based on rules built into the user’s database. 2.5 supports Informix, Oracle,and Sybase databases as well as Microsoft’s SQL Server. It features improved integration with Microsoft Project, a basic scheduling service as well as a first link to SAP’s R/3 system. The software also contains wizards for faster project creation.
Welcom’s Spider is the remote part of the project software for engineers in the field, enabling them to enter information on how they’re doing and receive information on other teams and the overall status. Spider 2.0 links to OpenPlan so that engineers already in the project calculations don’t have to enter their details twice. It has improved spreadsheet facilities for more accurate reporting of data, and can take data from SQL Server.
Spider, which requires no client software at all, is representative of the trend in the project management software market, says president Tony Welsh, who co-founded the company with Stephen Cook in 1983. Still privately-owned and boasting revenue around the $10m mark, Welcom has always focused on project management, aiming its products at heavy engineering, aerospace and defense and government sectors. The other seachange, says Welsh, is towards hosting services. Welcom is planning to move towards an application hosting model over the next 18 months. Pricing for Spider starts at $7000 for 25 users, $1000 for OpenPlan Desktop and $5750 for OpenPlan’s Enterprise.
