PTC Inc. (PTC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, Justyna? Can you hear me.

Yes, I can hear you. I think we can start. Good afternoon. Welcome to the next webinar organized by Arorian Technologies. My name is Justyna Owlasiuk, and I have the pleasure of moderating today's meeting. The title of the webinar is Migration of On-premises Codebeamer Server to Cloud. And more about that we'll tell you soon with our specialist lead consultant, Deepak. Could we skip to other slide, Deepak? Thank you very much. Before we move on to the main part of the meeting, a brief note about Arorian Technologies. We are a global company that provides consulting, implementation and support services for PLM and ALM in many industries. We not only use products of other companies, but develop our own that's responding to our customers' needs. And now the last thing before we start, a short technical information. If there are any questions during this webinar, please use for that Q&A option here on Teams. It should be seen for you on the top of your screens, not chat but Q&A option. We will back to the questions at the end of this meeting. And now I would like to give the floor to Deepak.

Thank you, Justyna, for your warm welcome and guiding for introduction about me. Let me know if my screen camera is visible.

Yes, operating fine.

Okay. Thank you. So today's agenda is not only about Codebeamer, but how we can migrate on-premises Codebeamer server to the cloud and cloud in terms of PTC Cloud, Azure Cloud and AWS cloud. So we will understand the step-by-step migration process, and hopefully, we will learn something new in the today's webinar. So let's explore the possibility together. I just wanted to set some background for those who not belongs to ALM, PLM domain. But for the -- so I would like to explain some few words about Codebeamer. So Codebeamer, is a tool that supports like application life cycle management. In the application life cycle management, we can say it's n number of domains. So domains like requirement management is there, software development is there, quality is nothing but a test management, risk management, product management and the way we -- strategies, like we define for the developer software. It's like Agile, scrum, DevOps, that is one. And on top of that, we can apply some analytics to get better results. So in the requirement management, mostly we capture the requirements for software. We'll develop software according to the requirements. We test that. If there is any bugs, we can raise the bugs, and we can manage this whole life cycle software development. And in the product management, we can release that into -- like release of product for end users. We maintain their releases, everything. So overall, all these process combining together using one software, that is the ALM tool. In the market, there are n number of ALM tools like RV&S, Polarion, Jama. But newly in this current year, Codebeamer is one of the leading tools for ALM. In April 2022, PTC acquired this Codebeamer and rebranded as a PTC Codebeamer and they introduced some new releases with the Codebeamer. And with the new releases, they introduced some new features like to support the integration between Windchill servers; eventually, the PLM application, PLM software. And they also integrate with the other PLM domain tools. So we can see in the screen, there are some new releases. After 22 April, there's 22.10. That is a long-term support version by PTC, this is HUSKY. And 2.1 is the current and latest version. So why we go for cloud and when we go for cloud, that's the basic question of this webinar. So when we go for these options. So we have categorized some of the factors, like we decided some factors that we'll need to consider before go for cloud. First is the deployment. Deployment is nothing, but the code you want to deploy in the process, the risk process you decide. So in on-premises, the deployment can be easy because you have a control on all the infrastructure. You can decide on which server you want to connect and all VPNs, and whatever, the connectivity between all these machines. Data control. I can say, data is fully controlled and managed by the on-premises organization because there are some pros and cons. Fully controlled means whole and sole the responsibility of the data of organization. Accessibility, I can say, how you can access these VMs and machine and infrastructure. And the application that also need to consider. The better are more if you have more options to access. Customization in mostly PLM/ALM domain product is -- comes with some basic features and we can say some complex, which depends on the usage. But customers want customization on top of it. So that should be support, this on-premise should be -- adopt this kind of customizations and the security on database level, on application level and OS level. So the security is always a major considered factor for this should we go for cloud or not or should we stay in on-premises. Auto scaling, I can say the auto scaling, for example, today, we have 100 employees currently working on one machine. And tomorrow might be they get reduced by 10. So in that case, you can't [ treat ] the hardware. So that [indiscernible] is a matter for auto scaling. But in cloud, you will get more options. We'll talk about it. In maintenance, I can say maintenance part, again, in on-premises, IT team is taking care of these servers and all. So in case of any failure or deduster, they need to maintain the workload and everything and they need to make sure the work should not be stopped in the on-premises. The cost is always higher in the on-premises because they need to invest some upfront cost for hardware purchase in terms of licensing and everything. So for better understanding, we can compare with the cloud. In the cloud, we can have a deployment. Deployment can be achieved through the AWS CloudDeploy tools. And other services means not only AWS, but we can define our own processes for deployment using third-party tools. That is allowed here. And cloud services also provides in-built options for the same. Maintenance, always, I can say easier because we have backups of servers, we have replica of regions. So one region can be shut down while other regions can still supporting and providing services. Auto scaling is very easy. We can configure some of the services like they can increase and decrease according to the load on the machine. Accessibility, I can say yes. Cloud not only provide a [ secure cell ] accessibility, but also console web-based interfaces to access the machines and that will ease for engineers to do their work connecting to that machine. Customization, yes. Because customizing is possible because there are some open-source and paid versions are available for cloud integrations. So user can use according to their budget and cost purpose. So that is one factor. Security is always up to date in the cloud. Whatever is going through in globe, worldwide-ly, if there is vulnerabilities or some of the virus are created or published, so they need to -- they will always have some options to protect from these kind of attacks. Data control, I can say here the cloud service provider has partial ownership of the data. But again, there are some laws according to the region of servers. If they are in India or they are in Europe, that laws will vary according to the usage. The cost. Cost, I can say, we can keep it in control compared to the on-premises, whatever we can opt for free tier services and we can reduce the cost. So we conclude that there's some factors we need to consider for cloud migration: so security, as I discussed; cost; compatibility; user interface; architecture. Here, architecture is also important factor. Which kind of architecture you are designing for your infrastructure, that also helps to reduce the cost and resources. The resources are nothing but people who are working on the project, who have good expertise so they can design and they can spend time on the particular solution. So that's also an important factor. If you have a cloud team, they will really help to optimize your solution or cost and auto scale. What is the current in the business? So PTC offers PTC Cloud that help to those who don't want to spend time to implement infrastructure, everything. So PTC has a solution for those. They can simply opt for these choices. Like they want Windchill server today, they just need to connect with the PTC Cloud team and the PTC Cloud team will set up everything from the scratch. Like you don't need to install anything. You don't need to maintain the servers. You don't need to update the patches, nothing. Everything will be handled and managed by PTC. So PTC currently supports the different products on the cloud that we can call as a SaaS product. The Windchill SaaS thing works as a SaaS and Codebeamer as a SaaS. And the main goal of PTC is to reduce the cost of -- means in terms of timing and the ownership of users, burden on the IT engineers, increase the agility and scalability and time to value for the end users. Apart from that, there's also a Docker Image available by the PTC for Codebeamer. We can use the Docker Image to set up a serverless architecture like Kubernetes and other stuff. We can use in that if you want to set up this kind of architecture. And there are 2 more flavors of Codebeamer. So there's official support in the Codebeamer guide by PTC, there's AWS Cloud and Azure Cloud. In AWS Cloud, the only thing is that you must have some person who has a background from AWS Cloud and they can able to use these services optimistically. And Azure -- for Azure there is SaaS Azure options, Azure private cloud options to host this Codebeamer. So we'll focus today on this AWS Cloud because of this -- it's supported, but also we implemented in our organization. We are following this currently and we want to share this knowledge. In architecture, you can see we have this AWS console region. So Codebeamer is a web-based application, like any other Tomcat application where you host application and you can access that application through browser. So similarly, I'm showing you, it is a user who has hid a URL in the browser and that we connected to this request. So basically, we know that AWS has an own domain name service that is called Route 53. Basically, the first request comes through Route 53. And you can see there are 3 services: Route 53, web firewall, IAM services. These are the global services of AWS. So those are out-of-region services. And AWS works on some like -- categories like global services, core services, development services, monitoring services. So these are the global services. Once the request comes to here, it will filter using the firewall. It only allows a particular [ port ] communication. It will deny other communication or DOS attacks we can prevent from there. And this Route 53 has a special feature, like it will always check the health application that it's connected. So we define 2 regions, one is active and one is passive region. And it is just because of the -- to manage like deduster management purpose. In case of any service failure, we should have ready with another region. So if you want we go in detail so -- and if you have any questions, please write in the Q&A session, I will explain. Because of time constraint, it is not permissible for me to explain each and every service, but all questions are welcome. And so we'll make sure that this data and these services would be in sync with the [indiscernible] service. You can see these lines, it's just the connectivity between the active and passive in the back end. So just come back to the actual problem or what is the topic of this webinar, so it's migration of Codebeamer. So basically, Codebeamer, when we install Codebeamer on, on-premises, it must have some installation directory. There must be -- have data directories and repositories. Codebeamer support gate SVN repositories strategy. So you can use a gate at the back end to store the files and maintain [ version ] control of each files. So you also need to -- when you are migrating, so you need to take care of version, from which version, if you want to upgrade your version or if you want to keep your version. So according to the versions, JDKs get changed, so you need to prepare accordingly your installation steps. DB version, you need to -- when that changes -- for example, you're changing your vendor from MySQL to PostgreSQL or PostgreSQL to MySQL or vice versa, any other database that is supported for Codebeamer, you can also consider in this migration. Some global configuration settings you needed to consider. In on-premises, those settings are enabled and you want to keep those settings for on cloud. So you need to taken care. You can add your company's logo, branding in addition to the Codebeamer. So you can show the engineers that this is -- you are working for which organization. You need to also consider licenses, which is the paid license from PTC. You need to consider those also while migration. Because those licenses are -- works in the MAC addresses, is bonded to the physical address of machine. So you need to -- also need to migrate those licenses. And the actual database -- export of database. And I can say the total combined as a package here. So you need to create such package for the migration. So we'll talk about these processes first. So how we can start migration? So first of all, you need to make up some planning, like how you want to be -- migrate the server and your architecture. And once you decide your architecture and cost and budget, everything, you need to prepare such architecture. You need to create set up some cloud infrastructure, some networking setup for EC2s and all, so load balancer, everything. Once you have a machine to access, you can dump your data on the machine using -- like we usually migrate the data from some remote machine. Once you have a data on the machine data in terms of database, SQL dump or actual file of Codebeamer configuration files, you can install new Codebeamer on that and you can replace with the old file structure and the packages of deployment, whatever we consider in the previous slide. It should be up and running. There are some guidelines by PTC and available on PTC support side. You can go through that for more information how to install Codebeamer and all. You can validate your data and the processes functionality of Codebeamer, is everything working? Are you getting all the documents, requirements and the testing? Whatever the object you have in previous servers, are they present on the cloud server? Once you ensure that everything is under place, you can cut over the on-premises connection and you can point to this server that is on the cloud. Then you can start monitoring. And the second last step is an optional thing. It depends on your usage and planning. So you can add a backup service -- backup and deduster management. Do you want to weekly, daily or monthly, whatever the policies -- backup policy you have, you can plan accordingly. Optimization can be done on the -- how you can optimize your processes throughout this life cycle. Documentation, again, is an important part of this cloud. You can create such a documentation where you can optimize your performance and improvement in the instance. Then lastly and nothing but -- for monitoring tools and regular maintenance. Monitoring can be done on 2 levels: on application level, on the cloud infrastructure level. So on the part of monitoring, you can get a billing budget, like how much cost is going -- you are spending on this infrastructure. On application level, you can server dashboards there. Codebeamer in-built dashboard, you can create. There's an in-built option for admins to monitor the health of Codebeamer and everything. So this is a lifelong process for entire Codebeamer. But after migration, once you have a server in place, there is some settings need to taken care. Is there -- Codebeamer has integration with the previous or external services? The integration external services, like DPD, the digital product disability, that is used to create traceability link between Windchill or any of the third-party servers that support OSLC connection. Then there is a Jira integration. So if you want to attach some Jira ticket links and details to the -- your requirement IDN. So that kind of integration is also you can possible. DOORS is there, SMTP. So these kind of previous on-premises connections you need to check and open the port accordingly on the cloud to make sure these are capable or it should be up and running for next cloud version. Again, you can optimize those log-in -- auto log-in. Like you can replace SMTP with SSO log-in and you can optimize the JVM settings for a better performance. So -- and the last is the Codebeamer monitoring configuration, so just for better performance. I think that's it from my side for today. Justyna, you can take the control from here. Thank you so much.

Hello, again. Thank you very much, Deepak. If you want know more about migration, implementation, training or any of these points you can see on your screens, feel free to contact us. And of course, if you have -- if you will have later questions about Arorian Technologies, about Arorian services, you also can send us a message. You can be sure that we will answer you. Thank you very much for your participation today, and I hope to see you at the next Arorian Technologies webinar. Thank you very much.

Thank you, everyone.