IBM and Engineering.com Partner to Provide CATIA for Educational Institutions in North America
Vijay Srinivasan and Michael R. Zick, IBM PLM Solutions

Evolution of HEAT program to provide better support for teachers and students in U.S. and Canada

Today’s students are tomorrow’s leaders – in design offices, factory floors, and executive suites. It is important to educate and train them in the latest advances in PLM while they are still in schools and colleges if we want to derive the full benefit of PLM when they enter industry. Also, industry wants a large pool of students, trained in PLM solutions and their applications, who will come prepared to contribute to the innovation and productivity demands facing their future employers.

IBM recognized these needs quite some time ago and initiated the HEAT (Higher Education and Training) program in the mid-1990s. Under this program IBM has been offering a specially priced version of the CATIA software, and related training and support services to educational institutions. The specialization is in the price only – the actual software the students use in the classroom is the same as the one used by designers and engineers in industry. Since its introduction, hundreds of schools and colleges have benefited from this program and have produced thousands of students trained in CATIA V4 and V5.

Today the needs have become even stronger. Many educational institutions are pro-actively developing curricula in their schools using CATIA and related applications such as visualization, PDM, and analysis tools because they know that their students will be using them when they enter industry. To meet such increasing demand IBM decided to partner with ENGINEERING.com, which is dedicated to serving the educational market in U.S. and Canada. As you may know, ENGINEERING.com has been selling the Student Version of CATIA to students enrolled in schools that participate in the HEAT program. Adding HEAT is a natural extension. This extended partnership strengthens IBM’s commitment to PLM education.

Our current partnership with ENGINEERING.com for the HEAT program serves educational institutions in the U.S. and Canada. If you are in the U.S. or Canada and would like to find out more about acquiring CATIA for educational purpose, we invite you to contact ENGINEERING.com by visiting the web site catiastudent.com or by calling 1-877-997-9917. We also refer you to a letter of introduction that appears in this issue from David Livingstone, who will be your primary contact at ENGINEERING.com.