Atego Systems

Atego Systems emerged in January 2010 from the merger of two established players in the software development tools market: Artisan Software Tools and Aonix. This strategic consolidation created a significant independent supplier of industrial-grade development tools focused on complex, mission- and safety-critical systems. The company established dual headquarters in San Diego, USA, and Cheltenham, UK, leveraging the global footprint of its predecessors with offices in Germany, France, and Italy.

The company's history is one of strategic acquisitions and mergers. Its lineage traces back to Aonix, which was formed in 1996 and later acquired by The Gores Group in 1998, and Artisan, which had been actively consolidating the market with its own acquisitions. This series of mergers culminated in the formation of Atego, which continued the strategy by acquiring companies like BlueRiver Software and the ApexAda compiler family from IBM. This positioned Atego as a key provider for demanding engineering sectors including aerospace, defense, automotive, and transportation.

Atego provided a suite of collaborative development tools and runtime environments. Its core business revolved around enabling engineering teams—spanning architecture, systems, software, and hardware—to manage the entire lifecycle of complex product development. The company's main offering was the Atego Vantage platform, which integrated Model-Based Systems and Software Engineering (MBSE), Asset-based Modular Design, and variable Product Line Engineering (PLE). This platform connected requirements engineering, architecture modeling, physical product definition, and system verification, allowing clients like Alstom Transport and PSA Peugeot Citroën to standardize processes and build digital models of intricate systems. The product portfolio included Artisan Studio for modeling with support for standards like UML and SysML, and Aonix PERC, a real-time embedded Java virtual machine.

On July 1, 2014, PTC (formerly Parametric Technology Corporation) announced its acquisition of Atego for approximately $50 million in cash. The acquisition was a strategic move for PTC to enhance its Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solution portfolios. By integrating Atego's model-based systems engineering (MBSE) capabilities, PTC aimed to strengthen its support for customers developing smart, connected products that require tight integration of mechanical, electrical, and software components.

Keywords: model-based systems engineering, application lifecycle management, embedded systems, software development tools, product line engineering, safety-critical systems, aerospace and defense, automotive software, systems modeling, product lifecycle management