Altium Concorde Pro

[julianhigginson]

Anyone seen this yet? I just attended a webinar about it and I'm quite interested.

On first impressions, i really like it.. it has proper component life cycle management as well as workflow and it looks like it makes sense to use from the walkthrough i saw.

Big news is it's a 100% subscription model - no perpetual license.  though because it's still nominally "a product" there's still an upfront licensing cost just to play (208/month on altium's website when I just looked!) then $42/seat for the number of concurrent users you need.  So it still punishes small shops compared to bigger shops... one user working on their own (OK probably a standard DBlib is all you need there anyway, but....) a single seat user pays $250/month, while a 10 seat user pays 628/month or 63/seat...  for $63/seat this is a total no brainer.. for $250/seat it's still kind of good I think, but definitely needs to be thought about. Especially considering the server requirements on top of the licensing... but licensing alone is way more than doubling the base AD subscription at that point!

Still, at least the price is now in reach of small shops, unlike vault....
Speaking of vault, that thing is looking pretty musty and deprecated these days.

The windows server requirements still look painful, and the ability to share parts database across the world with a  distributed team looks like it's a matter of having a windows server guru on your team to keep everything protected and up to date and basically not get it wiped and turned into a bitcoin miner or botnet every 2nd day. the guy running the webinar said they're aiming for a hosted/cloud offering and suggested that could be a thing next year...  which to be honest, for a parts database to be used by a small team, I'd much prefer. (I'd prefer a ready to go VM appliance I could just spin up and host on any cloud provider myself, most of all..)

Not sure how I feel about a purely time licensed add-in for altium.. I guess that it's a non-essential part of the product and if worst comes to worst and altium suddenly fell off the face of the earth (I don't think they will) you could always generate a simpler library by library-ising all your altium projects that used their parts...
But it's an interesting indicator of things to come.

[ddavidebor]

It's not a new product, it's a rebranding.
Basic answer: Altium Concord pro is yesterday's Altium Nexus. Altium Nexus is Altium Nexus with workflow and integrations targeted at big companies. Altium Designer is the standalone product.

Here is the official answer from Altium: (to the question - more or less -  "what are you doing I don't understand a thing we just bought nexus...")

Hi Bryce,

First let me say your confusion is quite understandable, and on behalf of Altium please accept our apologies.

Second let me assure you that in now way are you left unsupported. I'll attempt to explain by clarifying a difference that's at first subtle, and to be honest a branding error on our part, which we are now trying to clear up.

Previously, there was a product: Altium Vault Server. You could install it on-premise, and it worked with Altium Designer, and gave library and data management, lifecycle management, and managed content facilities (sheets, projects, output jobs, templates etc.). Setup, configuration, organization of data and all the rest, was left up to you, the customer, with basically no assistance other than technical support from Altium (and training, if you bought it).

Altium Vault Server was superseded by the product named NEXUS SERVER. But unfortunately this is where we began the confusion. Because there's now also a solution named Altium NEXUS. The solution included a new CAD program based on Altium Designer (essentially identical), named Nexus CLIENT. When using Nexus CLIENT and NEXUS SERVER together, coupled with customization, setup, business integration, and configuration services, provided on-site by an Altium FAE, you have the ALTIUM NEXUS solution. This includes configuration of the workflow management capabilities of Nexus Client + Nexus Server, setup of users, roles, and workflows along with alerts and gates.

Existing Altium Vault customers (not using the "solution") were migrated to Nexus Server and had the option of using Nexus Client because AD18 had the local "Vault" connectivity removed. The plan at the time was that people needing data management would all eventually migrate to Nexus. However after much customer consultation and feedback and a practical honest look at what most customers need and want, we also know that the Nexus Solution is not a realistic bid for most all but the most specialized "Hi-Rel" customers (ie. automotive, medical, commercial air etc.).

Therefore, we have introduced Altium Concord Pro, which supersedes the Altium NEXUS SERVER, and Altium VAULT SERVER. And if you are a Nexus Server customer NOT using workflow management, you can move to Concord Pro (free in your case as I assume you're on subscription since you just recently bought the software).

If however, you ARE using the workflow capabilities, then you should stay with Nexus and adopt the solution, AND YOU WILL BE SUPPORTED in doing so, but if this is the case we need to connect you with the right applications engineer to evaluate whether this is indeed the right solution for your business. I'm happy to help make that connection if you need it (you may already be working on that).

The Nexus Client, and Nexus Server, are maintained and supported. Product names can come and go in software, to be honest, and knowing us we are more than likely to keep doing these sorts of things - sometimes with good reasons, and sometimes possibly even irrationally - however one thing I will assure you of is that we will always strive to keep you supported and productive as possible with design and data and library management tools we sure hope you come to love and value.

I hope that helps...

Kind regards,
Ben.

Note: FAE means Field Application Engineer

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Regarding the library capabilities, my company is working on a product for library management based on existing Altium DBLib functionality.
While it does have drawbacks, such as not completely being able to use 100% of the cute new functionality of the Component panel and (for now) not having the "used in" field for components, is also much more flexible (and cheap).

[julianhigginson]

I remember your library product announcement.. it sounded really interesting to me too. how is it going?

Yes concord seems related to Nexus, sure. Actually going to the nexus pages on the altium site it looks like they just cut 3/4 of its functionality out and left the component stuff (and the MCAD integration? that's a puzzling thing to bundle with components)

At the end of the day though, whatever it is, looks to me that it's finally very close to the parts control and workflow thing I was hoping for when vaults were first released back with AD10 or whatever it was... And they are finally managing to make a significant add-on to the basic EDA tool that doesn't require you to be a 20+ seat company to even consider it.

I guess we'll see what happens, but if they can work on making it into a maintained VM appliance that you spin up on any cloud host, rather than a big windows server application, it looks like it could be very useful to a lot of companies.

[ddavidebor]

I remember your library product announcement.. it sounded really interesting to me too. how is it going?

It's almost MVP (Minimun Viable Product). I'm using it daily for design. Currently still have 2 issue to solve:
* functionality to import from an existing dblib is currently being developed
* Not sure about how to distribute it from a tecnical and commercial standpoint

[julianhigginson]

It's almost MVP (Minimun Viable Product). I'm using it daily for design. Currently still have 2 issue to solve:
* functionality to import from an existing dblib is currently being developed
* Not sure about how to distribute it from a tecnical and commercial standpoint

that second one's a biggie! good luck.
:-)
I'd be keen to hear when you're ready to beta test it in the outside world.