Oracle Agile Is Going Away: What Should Electronics & High-Tech Leaders Do Next?

Navigating a future without Oracle Agile

For years, Oracle Agile has been one of the most trusted PLM systems in the electronics and high‑tech industry. It earned that trust through stability, predictable processes, and capabilities that aligned tightly with the needs of complex, regulated, variant‑heavy product portfolios.

When Oracle announced end‑of‑support for Agile in December 2027, many electronics and high‑tech leaders felt a mix of appreciation and apprehension: Agile served them well, but now they are being pushed into a decision they did not plan for.

The proposed replacement, Oracle Cloud PLM, may not be a like‑for‑like successor, and for many companies, may not align with how their business actually works.

This leaves business leaders with a valuable opportunity. Instead of choosing the product with which Oracle has chosen to replace Agile, innovative leaders can ensure their business is armed with the right strategic platform for the era ahead.

Executives we speak with during our Electronics & High‑Tech Customer Advisory Board (CAB) consistently share the same concern:

We don’t want to lose what Agile gave us, but we also don’t want to be forced into a platform change that doesn’t match our real operational needs.

To make the right choice, leaders must understand their true options.

Option 1: Move to Oracle Cloud PLM, but mind the gaps

Oracle has been actively pushing Agile customers toward its Cloud PLM platform, positioning it as the natural next step in their product lifecycle journey. But reality may be more complicated. Oracle Cloud PLM isn’t an evolution of Agile or a modernized “Agile 2.0.” It’s a fundamentally different system built on an entirely new architecture and data model. The new architecture doesn’t map cleanly to the workflows that legacy users in E&HT have relied on for years.

This creates friction. Especially around established best practices and integrations.
Established processes around change management, quality, and governance often can’t be carried forward as‑is. Instead, they need to be re‑implemented from the ground up.

The same is true for integrations. Long‑standing connections to ECAD, MCAD, ERP, MES, or supplier collaboration systems may need to be redesigned, re‑tested, and re‑validated. What initially appears to be a straightforward migration frequently turns into a complete rebuild.

Despite the changes, many organizations will still find that Cloud PLM aligns with their long‑term structure, strategy, and roadmap.

But there are other options for leaders who, rather than planning to rebuild the past inside a new system, see an opportunity to reassess their long‑term digital foundation.

Option 2: Evaluate the modern PLM landscape

With that broader opportunity in mind, many leaders are stepping back to reevaluate what they need from their next PLM platform. They know their next system must match where their business has been and is going. In the highly competitive world of E&HT, they can’t miss the chance to choose the foundation that will support future product complexity, global collaboration, and faster decision cycles.

The strongest evaluations start with needs, not familiarity, beginning with sharper, more strategic questions. Instead of asking how closely a system resembles Agile, leaders ask how well it will support the next decade of product development:

• Can this platform manage increasing product complexity, such as dense PCB assemblies with tight ECAD‑MCAD dependencies?
• How well does it integrate with modern engineering tools, such as simulation environments or real‑time 3D collaboration platforms like Omniverse‑style workspaces?
• Is the architecture ready for next‑generation automation, for example AI‑driven component classification or automated BOM risk detection?
• Can it scale to handle large engineering data sets, such as model‑based definitions or multi‑physics simulation outputs?
• Does it support fast and secure supplier collaboration, such as sharing variant‑specific design packages with multiple partners?

A focused set of questions like these helps leaders evaluate PLM options based on what their engineering and product teams will need in the coming years. By grounding the assessment in these forward‑looking priorities, organizations can choose a system that strengthens their digital foundation and positions them for faster, more confident product development.

Anyone examining the PLM landscape through this lens will naturally encounter Windchill as a leading option, and the next section explores why many EHT leaders have already made that move.

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Option 3: Consider PTC Windchill as a strategic alternative to Oracle Cloud PLM

Companies are not switching from Agile to Windchill.
They are choosing Windchill instead of Oracle Cloud PLM.

Once leaders realize that moving to Oracle Cloud PLM requires re‑implementing core processes and rebuilding critical integrations, many look beyond Oracle altogether. For E&HT organizations facing rapid electrification, growing product complexity, global design coordination, and ongoing supply‑chain volatility, Windchill offers four key strengths for companies coming from Agile:

• Preserve the strengths Agile had, especially the ones Cloud PLM no longer supports
• Manage complexity without forcing oversimplification
• Move to SaaS on your own terms
• Create a product data foundation ready for AI

Windchill appeals to E&HT teams because it supports the engineering realities shaping the industry today. Companies need PLM that can coordinate globally distributed development, support increasing electronics content, and maintain control across complex and variant‑heavy product structures. They also need reliable data continuity across engineering, sourcing, and manufacturing to improve resilience in the face of component shortages and supply uncertainty. This requires a digital thread that is clear, scalable, and designed for how E&HT companies actually build products.

Windchill also aligns with where the E&HT sector is heading. The industry is rapidly adopting AI, advanced simulation, and real‑time visualization to speed development cycles and reduce risk. Partnerships such as the work with NVIDIA enable real‑time collaboration, higher‑fidelity system validation, and better design confidence. With clean, structured, and connected product data, Windchill gives engineering teams the foundation required to take advantage of these next‑generation capabilities and apply them at scale.

For leaders comparing their options, the decision becomes clear. Windchill reduces the disruption of moving off Agile, supports the scale and complexity inherent to electronics and high tech, and establishes a modern digital foundation that strengthens engineering velocity, supply‑chain resilience, and long‑term product quality.

The bottom line: Agile’s sunset is an opportunity

The real decision is not “What replaces Agile?”

The decision is: Which platform will provide the strongest foundation for the next decade of electronics and high‑tech innovation?

Oracle’s announcement forces every Agile customer to choose a path. But it also creates an opportunity to adopt a platform that is purpose‑built for the complexities, the scale, the speed, and the intelligence that tomorrow’s products and markets will require.

For many organizations, that evaluation is leading them to PTC as the more strategic alternative.

Find out more about Windchill today

Windchill is elevating how product development gets done.

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