Three years ago we embarked on a new journey with Arena that has led to 10 new releases and updates. Version 15 is the 11th and most comprehensive. What’s new about this journey? New leadership, a new product management team, and focus on product development. Our focus on product development includes 4 drivers:

• Our vision
• Customer needs
• Legacy requirements and
• Our partners

These four drivers shaped Version 15 and will guide our future releases in a few ways:

Our Vision

We aim to be recognized as the simulation suite of choice used by every organization to make strategic and operational decisions that drive continuous improvement in day-to-day operations.  The features in Version 15 make Arena more accessible to every organization’s challenges.

Our Customers

The most interesting part of working with Arena is learning about the innovative solutions that our customers develop every day.  From cruise lines finding optimal layouts on their ships to increase revenue, to oil companies evaluating engineering service schedules, and major league sports venues planning evacuation routes – we love learning about how customers use Arena.

We’d be missing the point, however, if we didn’t ask them what they need in the product to make it easier, more powerful, and relevant into the future.  That’s the role our customers play in product development, and we invite all of our customers to recommend improvements via email, phone, or with an invitation to your facility.  Virtually every new feature in Version 15 can be directly traced to a customer request.

Legacy Customers

We’re proud of our history.  The Arena team has been developing innovative solutions for 35 years.  Over that time, Arena has been utilized by hundreds of thousands of users across the globe.  We’ve traveled to 6 continents over the past three years (most of them multiple times) to meet with new customers and legacy customers.  Many of these organizations have been utilizing Arena for over 20 years with models that they rely on to run their businesses each and every day.

We believe that new releases of Arena should continue to be capable of running models built in any earlier release.  Version 15 continues this commitment (Neat Tip: We met with a fascinating team in the UK recently that is running the same models that were built in the early 90s to manage maintenance planning – they were happy to hear Arena would support migration to newer versions and new operating systems.)

Our Partners

Our partners are an extension of our team.  They help us support and train users across the globe in local languages, and they invest in the future of Arena by sharing customer requests and ideas from their own experience.  In addition to product support, these partners provide Arena services to their local territories. Supporting those partners helps us deliver innovative solutions for every release.  Version 15 includes requests through partners and customers on just about every continent – including North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia.

Thanks to the support of our customers, partners and consultants, Version 15 delivers on our vision by giving every organization the ability to solve more complex business challenges more quickly. It will serve as the foundation for our development path moving forward, and we can’t wait to show you what’s next!

We invite you to read through the Version 15  feature list.  Nancy Zupick, author and consulting manager, shares insight in the Consulting Corner on why we chose select features in the release and how to utilize them in your model.  Sue Strickling, Technical Support Lead, discusses why you should be interested in Arena 64 bit, the problems we can solve with 64 bit, and how to recognize if your computer will supports 64 bit. 

If your license is currently under a maintenance contract you will receive an upgrade for Version 15.  If you’re unsure, or would like to upgrade your maintenance contract to receive Version 15 please contact us, or contact your local Arena partner.