On Wednesday, October 20, 2021, Aras Corporation announced that Mr. Roque Martin will immediately take over the CEO role from founder Peter Schroer. Mr. Schroer will assist with the transition and continue his position on the Aras Board of Directors.[1]
Aras has been a CIMdata PLM Mindshare leader since 2017 and is well known for their innovative business model and solution architecture. Mr. Schroer founded Aras in 2000 with the vision of creating a product lifecycle management (PLM) solution that could be easily configured and updated as business processes and data models evolved. In addition to advances in architecture, Aras pioneered the concept of open-source software within the PLM market with their Enterprise Open Source approach. In recent years, Aras has been recognized for their successive funding rounds including large investments from Silver Lake, Goldman Sachs, and GI Partners and sales wins at well-known companies including Airbus and Microsoft.
CIMdata has followed Aras since its inception and has interacted often with Mr. Schroer from the early days when he wrote code, gave software demonstrations, and sold the product. His engineering background, Masters in Business Administration (MBA), and work at early PLM companies such as Workgroup Solutions and Eigner+Partner GmbH provided the background to assume the challenge of creating a different type of PLM company. CIMdata is pleased to see the success from the hard work of Mr. Schroer and his team, and we are sure we will continue to see his impact at Aras in the years to come.
Aras’ new CEO, Mr. Roque Martin, appears to be the perfect successor to Mr. Schroer. He spent the last seven years at PTC, also a CIMdata PLM Mindshare leader, as General Manager of PTC’s Integrity Solutions business that addresses the systems and software development needs of global companies in industries such as automotive, A&D, industrial, and high-tech. Given Aras’ focus on systems engineering and recent product releases, Mr. Martin’s background should be invaluable. Prior to working at PTC, Mr. Martin spent over 25 years at IBM in a variety of software engineering, sales, marketing, and executive roles. A key role at IBM involved the Rational product line. Mr. Martin was the executive in charge of the integration into IBM of Rational Software Corp., an early leader in the software development lifecycle management software that continues to be widely used today. He later became the worldwide sales director for IBM Rational Software and contributed to their Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) strategy.
Mr. Schroer took Aras from its inception to a Mindshare leader in the global PLM market with a staff of over 600. It’s impressive that the founder was able to take Aras as far as it has come in such a competitive market and to succeed given the challenges the company faced over the years. Mr. Martin’s experience and skills are well suited to what Aras needs to continue its growth trajectory and we are looking forward to seeing how Aras evolves under his leadership.
[1] Research for this highlight was partially supported by Aras.