History 101: PDM (Part 5) - Dassault Systèmes VPM V5, CATIA V5, and SmarTeam in the 2000s

While VPM V5 targeted the high end (large enterprises with CATIA V5), Dassault also had a mid-market strategy. In early 1999, they acquired a 75% stake in an Israeli company called Smart Solutions, whose product SmarTeam was a more affordable, department-level PDM. Initially, SmarTeam was positioned for SolidWorks users (Dassault had bought SolidWorks in 1997) and smaller manufacturing businesses. Over time, SmarTeam also became an option for CATIA V5 users who needed PDM but perhaps not the full complexity of VPM. SmarTeam ran on Windows with a SQL database and had a reputation for being easier to deploy. It could manage CATIA V5’s CATParts and CATProducts in a simpler way, offering check-in/check-out, version control, and basic BOM management. IBM (which remained Dassault’s distribution partner) ended up selling both ENOVIA VPM and SmarTeam: ENOVIA for the big accounts and SmarTeam for mid-size ones. This two-tier approach showed how PDM had expanded – it was no longer one-size-fits-all but tailored to enterprise scale or workgroup scale.

By the end of the 1990s, the CATIA ecosystem had fully embraced PDM as a core component. The transition from IBM ProductManager to Dassault’s ENOVIA VPM was more than just a rebranding; it symbolized the merging of CAD and PDM into an integrated solution. Assemblies in CATIA could now be managed through their entire lifecycle: from initial design in CATIA, to iterative changes with check-in/check-out, to formal release with a controlled BOM and change process. The assembly relationships (which parts are used where, in what position, in which configuration) became tightly woven into the database, rather than being an afterthought. This integration laid a foundation for the 2000s, where such PDM systems would further evolve into full-fledged PLM platforms.