I work in a fairly large company that has locations worldwide.  Currently, there are 3 locations (mine included) that use InnoCielo Meridian Enterprise from BlueCielo (aka Meridian).  And all other locations (I think around 8-9 in all) kinda do their own thing with their own systems.  Almost all of these other locations were acquired companies that already had their systems in place.  We are looking to commonize all major systems in all locations, including CAD, PDM, ECM, etc.

Currently, management is thinking of switching all other location over to Meridian for the PDM.  But, we have had SO many problems with this package, that a lot of people are trying to convince them to look at other packages before making this huge investment.  I couldn't begin to explain how bad the problems we've had with Meridian.  Anyway, my vote is EPDM based on a demo that I saw from a SW employee at a local user group meeting.  Most others (including middle management) are also convinced that switching is the right thing to do.  But now we need to build a case so-to-speak, to present to upper management why we should look elsewhere.  Whether that be EPDM or not.

So, I'd like to hear some feedback/opinions from people running EPDM, that is in a similar scenario as ours.  And that is:

• Multiple locations worldwide.
• Fairly complex workflows, with multi-department approvals, etc.
• Vault contains mostly SolidWorks data (but many others as well)
• Visibility only to specified departments, depending on type of data (only engineering has write access to CAD, manufacturing has read-only access to CAD, only HR has visibility to personnel, etc.)
• Remote visibility to vault (i.e. salespersons on the road)
• Vendor access to specified documents.
• Vaults synchronized corporate wide.

I'm asking anyone with a similar setup using EPMD, to give me any feedback, good or bad.

Ideally, I'd really, really like to here feedback from anyone that has used Meridian in the past, and is now using EPDM, even at the user level.  For that matter, I'd also like to hear opinions of people that have even used other packages that is now using EPDM.

Thank you in advance for any feedback you can help me out with.

Seth