December, which marks the end of our calendar year, as well as that of many of our customers, is always a busy time. Still, while flying out to meet with one of those customers last week, I had a few quiet moments to catch up and reflect both on the past year and how its events will influence our future. For us at Siemens PLM Software it has been an exciting time – joining the Siemens family, growing our business and releasing an array of significant new product capabilities throughout our portfolio.

One of the achievements we are especially proud of this year is the way we have been able to deliver on the product roadmap commitment we made to our CAD, CAM and CAE customers with the release of NX® 5. Market reaction to this release has been extraordinarily positive and strong. I’m sometimes asked if the opportunity we now have as part of Siemens to pioneer manufacturing execution solutions will dilute our focus on digital product development. My answer is the same as it has always been: our business is PLM and that means every phase of a product’s lifecycle is critical and connected -- from concept and design through production, maintenance and beyond. We are uniting the virtual and physical worlds through a single product data model. CAx plays an essential role in helping our customers bring their innovations to market faster and will also become more broadly integrated into applications throughout the lifecycle as time goes by.