PTC LiveWorx is
one of the biggest gatherings of up-and-coming XR tech in the
industry. With all sorts of amazing future tech demos, PTC's
Executive VP of AR Products Mike Campbell understands how businesses
might want to implement the most far-out features of XR technology
right away. But he says there's plenty AR can do perfectly right now
that more industries should take advantage of.
Alan: You're listening to the XR
for Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today's episode
is with Mike Campbell, executive vice president of Augmented Reality
Products at PTC. Mike leads the Vuforia product team, and is
responsible for driving the product and technology strategy of PTC's
leading solutions for the development of augmented reality
applications. You can learn more about the work they're doing at
ptc.com.
Mike, welcome to the show.
Mike: Hey, Alan, it's great to
be here. Thanks for having me.
Alan: It's my absolute pleasure.
I've been really, really looking forward to this, because I went to
LiveWorx in... was it June?
Mike: June, yep.
Alan: My God. I had no idea,
first of all, how big PTC was and how important Vuforia and
your augmented reality strategy is going to be and is becoming to all
sorts of different industries. I got to fix a tractor. I got to work
on an ATV. I got to look in retail. Is there any industries that this
won't affect?
Mike: Well, PTC's focus is
really in the industrial enterprise domain. And I would say across
all of the verticals there -- heavy equipment, automotive, aerospace,
medical devices -- I mean, all of those places are ripe for
transformation, thanks to the power of augmented reality.
Alan: It's amazing. You even had
a boat there.
Mike: We did, we did, yeah. One
of our customers is Beneteau.
Alan: Yeah. So let's start from
the beginning here. What is PTC? What do you guys do? Where did it
come from? Let's start there.
Mike: Ok. So PTC is a billion-dollar plus software company headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. We have been around for a long time and we got our start back in the late 80s, early 90s by revolutionizing the 3D solid modeling industry. Basically, we invented a better mousetrap that allowed companies to create products virtually in 3D much faster and more effectively than ever before. Fast forward from then, we not only have a 3D solid modeling CAD offering, we have a great offering used in engineering for lifecycle management. And about 10 years ago, we recognized the trend of the Internet of Things, this explosion of connectivity and ubiquity of sensors, and companies wanting to leverage that information so that they could create products and manufacture products and service products better. We invested pretty heavily at that time. And once we did that, we were thinking a lot about this idea of IOT and products broadcasting information about themselves in the form of digital data. And we were thinking about our 3D heritage and we recognized that augmented reality was a great way to unlock some of that digital data in the context of the physical world, where you do your work. And that's really what got us into AR. I have been at PTC -- as you said -- for a long, long time. And I've been involved in our AR journey since the beginning and it's been a fantastic ride.
Alan: Vuforia was an
acquisition. Was that something that you guys made a decision to--
can we build this in-house, or should we just acquire it? How did
that come about?
Mike: So we were thinking about
AR. We were taking a look at the different technologies that were out
there. And, you know, there are certain elements