Altium Brings Affordable, High Integrity Data Management to Electronic Product Design.

SYDNEY, June 8, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Altium has announced the release of the Altium Satellite Vault server application, a core element of Altium's advanced electronics design data management technology and a major innovation in connecting the world of design to the broader product development process.

The server-based software application, which can be local-, LAN-, WAN- or cloud-hosted, is used to create secure, fully managed design data repositories (Satellite Vaults) that enable collaborative management of electronic design data across the design, procurement and manufacturing spaces.

Altium's Satellite Vaults complement Altium Designer 10, Altium's unified electronic product development system, by allowing all designers and companies to manage and share their design and release data easily.

The vaults can be accessed directly from within Altium Designer 10 or via a standard browser interface by others in the company, such as manufacturing and procurement managers or any authorized user.

Working together with Altium's cloud-based ecosystem, AltiumLive, Altium Designer and Altium Vault technology provide an advanced, innovative solution to sharing and maintaining high integrity electronic product design data.

Smart data management

Altium Vaults form the heart of Altium's smart data management technologies by providing storage, formal revision management and lifecycle state management.

Design content is automatically validated when released to a Vault from Altium Designer, where the generated content is stored as named revisions that have a definable lifecycle status.

The Vault items typically represent reusable design content, components and released designs for fabrication of bare-boards and electronic assemblies.

Along with managed sharing of validated design content and the potential for business systems integration, Altium Vault technology allows designers to reuse design data with full confidence in its provenance, lifecycle state (suitable for prototype, production, etc) and where it has been used in existing designs.

Vaults also provide intelligent links to the supply chain, providing real-time information about the parts being specified in a design.

Vault servers

The Altium Satellite Vault is one of three Vault systems under development by Altium. To cater for a range of deployment scenarios and company needs, the Satellite Vault will soon be joined by Altium's Managed and Enterprise Vault Server options.

The Altium Enterprise Vault server will offer a fully independent Vault service for those companies where internet access outside the enterprise LAN/WAN is impractical or not possible. In this case, user verification is handled by an associated authentication server, whereas for Satellite Vaults, the validation of user credentials is via the AltiumLive ecosystem.

The proposed Managed Vault system provides cloud-based vaults that are hosted and managed entirely within AltiumLive as an on-demand service.

Availability

The Satellite Vault server is now included as part of the Altium Subscriber plan.

For an annual fee of USD1,500, the Altium Subscriber plan provides access to Altium's continuous supply of new software updates and design content, all downloadable Altium software applications (the Satellite Vault server and much more), plus all other services provided by AltiumLive such as the availability of Altium's advanced bug reporting features.

For many users Satellite Vaults will be the most cost effective way to harness the data management benefits of Altium Vault technology, yet also enjoy the advantages of regular software technology and design content updates, plus full access to the Altium community and company ecosystem.

About Altium

Altium Limited (ASX:ALU) creates electronics design software based on the belief that anyone who wants to create electronic products that make a difference should be able to do so. Altium's unified electronics design environment links all aspects of electronics product design in a single application that is priced to be as affordable as possible. This helps electronics designers break down barriers to innovation, harness the latest devices and technologies, manage their projects across broad design ecosystems, and create connected, intelligent designs.

Founded in 1985, Altium has headquarters in Sydney, and operates worldwide.  For more information, visit www.live.altium.com.

Altium, Altium Designer and LiveDesign, and their respective logos, are trademarks or registered trademarks of Altium Limited, or its subsidiaries. All other registered or unregistered trademarks mentioned in this release are the property of their respective owners, and no trademark rights to the same are claimed.

SOURCE Altium