Thanks all. We have a nice solid Novell netware network and are reluctant to depart from it, but sounds like we'll have to in order to use either PDM (EPDM or Vault).
ctopher - did Vault talk nicely to Solidworks in actual practice?
fcsuper & AnnaWood - Yes I was aware of the Conisio origins of EPDM, in fact we evaluated Conisio way back when Autodesk were selling it as their PDM package. (Shows how long we have dithered over a PDM decision). I've always been a bit wary of Swedish software after a bad experience with something called Mechslide (an add-on for AutoCad).
Autodesk seem to be promoting Vault Manufacturing very well - their YouTube presentations seem streets ahead of EPDM. You struggle to find interesting and relevant equivalent presentations of EPDM. I get the impression Autodesk ditched Conisio in favour of building something better, and have done a good job of it.
However, my feeling is that we should probably go with EPDM because the integration with Solidworks will be better and more complete.