I wouldn't want to tackle Windchill installation, configuration, or management without access to both PTC's knowledge base and tech support. Creo and Windchill are way too buggy to not have access to the latest maintenance releases, service packs, and patches. Technically, having maintenance on any product would get you knowledge base access to all of them, but if your Creo seats are already bundled with Windchill then you will have full support for Windchill anyway.
I just took a quick look and since March of 2011 I've opened 235 tech support cases. (Sometimes I feel like a beta tester for PTC.)
Pro/Engineer & Creo
- Wildfire 5 - 20
- Creo 1.0 - 2
- Creo 2.0 - 7
- Creo 3.0 - 87
Windchill
- 9.1 - 25
- 10.1 - 1
- 10.2 - 93
By the way, if it's not obvious from the numbers above, we went from 9.1 + Wildfire 5 directly to 10.2 + Creo 3 (all by ourselves!)
Other Details:
- Windchill PDMLink 10.2 M020
- 878 GB File Vault (15 years worth of CAD data)
- 57 Windchill Users (23 heavy, 14 light, 20 view/print)
- 23 Creo Users (CP3 M040)
- 3 Locations (MI, AZ, and China)
- 1 Remote File Server
- 2 Admins (Realistically one is more of a backup. He spends most of this time doing non-PTC related stuff)
At my previous employer I was able to install and configure Intralink for CAD data management. Once configured, you could pretty much forget about it. With Intralink I could be the system administrator and still be a productive CAD designer. Now that I install, configure, and maintain Windchill and Creo, plus install and maintain all the server related equipment and virtual machines (for production and development environments), I have zero time for actual CAD work. (I'm okay with that.)
While I'm a huge fan of using technology to stop the "shouting over the wall" about who has what file open, Windchill is not a low cost proposition. You're either going to dedicate a person wholly to it, pay a VAR to do it for you, or pay PTC to handle it (via the Cloud). Either way, you are going to spend a lot of money. If you have a really good internet connection, the hosted solution might not be bad, but fundamentally you are re-buying the software again. Your existing licenses won't count at all towards your cloud licensing expenses.