noSQL Use Case for PLM

September 15, 2010

I had a chance to read SQL vs. noSQL article in Linux Journal yesterday on the plane. I found it interesting and despite a bit up-level of a technical terms, beneficial for our PLM discussion. Navigate your browser on the following link and read this paper. The noSQL story is probably one of the most dramatic in the modern history and present of data management. It considered as a heretic in the early beginning. Now noSQL comes to the point when we can talk about real advantages and disadvantages of both usage – traditional SQL and noSQL databases. So, what is the noSQL story is about?

SQL and RDBMS predictability

The story of SQL databases is very tight connected to two definitions: RDBMS and ACID. ACID means Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability. RDBMS – Relational Database Management Systems. The story about RDBMS, SQL and ACID is a story about development of transactional systems. If you develop a financial system, you want your system be predictable. You cannot take a guess about what is going on in your financial records. The same is when you schedule your manufacturing shopfloor operations. ERP leveraged RDBMS systems heabvily in their history. A vast majority of ERP systems today based on SQL /RDBMS systems.

noSQL Case

The noSQL came to us from the internet examples of the past decade such as Google, Amazon S3 and others. The fact, modern internet kids are using it added additional flavor of importance. However, what is the real case behind? Instead of using relational tables and keys, the modern noSQL databases are using simple "key-value" stores. Each piece of data going to the database is given a key and key be easy retrieved back using the same key. This portion of simplicity provides a significant value. The step beyond key-value is to have "document stores" that can access documents according to the specific key values.

PLM Use Case

Product Lifecycle Management has traditional roots in SQL databases. Started as pure data management discipline, PDM and PLM systems came to compete with other enterprise systems. It was an obvious decision back in late 1980s and beginning of 1990s that to establish a full data control you need to manage your data using RDBMS. However, this decision was taken time ago. Since then, PLM developed lots of use cases. These use cases can bring an importance of predictability down and importance of flexibility and simplicity up.

What is my conclusion? Development of PDM and PLM systems is not a simple case. The complexity of systems is high. However, some fundamental decisions and architectures of PDM/PLM were laid about twenty years ago. The urgency of reducing complexity and flexibility in PLM architectures can raise a noSQL case for PLM. Just my opinion…

Best, Oleg

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Will ERP Take a Lead in PLM Redefinition?

September 14, 2010

I had a chance to read an article by Michael Fauscette “Workday takes the Gloves Off?“. I’m tracking Workday for last 3-4 years. The trajectory is very interesting. For those of you who don’t know, Workday is the outfit created with a significant influence of ex-PeopleSoft people lead by Dave Duffield, the founder of PeopleSoft. Take the time and have a look on Michael’s article as well as interview with Dave Duffield about why he founded Workday. My favorite passage is the following:

Q: What’s missing in the marketplace?
Dave: Before the software-as-a-service model started gaining momentum, I felt like the industry had lost a passion for innovation and a focus on the customer. We’re focusing on both to help breathe new life into this business.

Similar message is coming from Michael write-up:

Workday’s vision is to redefine ERP software not only from a business / delivery model prospective (SaaS / cloud) but also from the focus on usability and modern design. Business is becoming people-centric (people as the platform) and workday is approaching its software from that basic design premise, a very powerful concept. Software and technology, in particular ERP have gone through a few phases; the mainframe, then the shift to client server, the emergence of the Internet and the subsequent advance of the social web, the rise of mobile computing and global hyper-connectivity. Many of the enterprise systems in use today are still based on designs and technology from a previous phase, and the user experience is quite dated. Workday claims to be the only modern ERP system in the last decade, and while it’s a little more marketing than actual fact, it does make one think.

Another interesting information came out of the following slide presenting ERP technological evolution. Take a look on the picture below. You can see a clear simplification on the side of the system stack. A “business logic” and separate RDBMS storage for years were a strong part in every enterprise architecture diagram. Now it replaced by data+logic and persistent storage.

It made me think about some interesting parallels with PLM world:

User Interface Simplification

Complexity of user interface is one of the most problematic points in PDM/PLM software. Over the past few years I’ve seen some movements towards new concepts of UI experience. PLM vendors are trying to move to 3D-like visual interfaces and create a simple UI paradigm. Another option is definitely presented by software like SharePoint and it drives another user interface simplification. It still not clear what will be the winning combination for PLM

Internet Architecture Allignment

The overall influence of internet software architecture becomes significant. In my view, we are going to see more examples of usage different elements of internet architecture in enterprise applications. Such things like noSQL and other will drive future innovation in this space.

Openness

Enterprise software will have to make a significant shift towards openness. Usage of open standards, open source, meta-data driven development will shift systems to become more open and will reduce a barrier of system integrations.

What is my conclusion? It is interesting to see how ERP becomes a pace where innovation happens again. ERP was often used by PLM vendors as a reference for a very complex place. It seems to me ERP learning the lesson. PLM vendors need to learn it too. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg
Freebie. Workday didn’t pay me to write this post.

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Can “Try For Free” Model Work in PLM?

September 13, 2010

In my view, “Free” is continuing to pull people. Recently, I’ve seen few articles in PLM Blogosphere that was talking about “free” PLM offerings. You can point on a very good article by Zero-wait State – PLM Perspective: Free PLM Software Tomorrow. Jos Voskuil wrote – Free PLM Software Doesn’t Help Companies! Time ago, I posted my PLM Prompt: Is Free the Future of PLM?

Preparing to my roundtable discussions during this week Technia PLM Innovation Forum and next week isicad 2010 / COFES-Russia, I researched is there something new on the horizon of “Free” and PLM. So I came to an interesting announcement of PLM Plus about their Try For Free offering. You can see it by navigating your browser on the following link.

What is my take? I can see a very small number of companies are innovating now in PLM space. I can literally find a few. I can see PLM Plus is one of them. I haven’t heard from them a very long period of time since PLMPLus Dawns the Ref Gloves of Simplified Internet-based, On Demand PLM. I can see different pros and cons about “Try for free” model.Pros – you don’t need to invent up-front money to buy licenses, you can decide to give up if it doesn’t fit your organization. Cons – the organization needs to invest time and resources to work with “free trial”.

No conclusion for today. I subscribed to my “free trial” of PLM Plus. Let see how it works…

Best, Oleg

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How To Choose PDM? (another visual guide)

September 13, 2010

Last week I published my visual guide how to choose PLM. This post was the most popular during the whole week. So, I decide to try another one this week about Product Data Management.

What do you think is the future of PDM? The demand for tight integration with CAD system and need to keep up with CAD system release schedule put PDM very dependent on CAD vendors. Most of non-CAD-related PDM implementation moved to PLM that focuses on wider aspects of data coverage in this organization. See my previous post – PDM vs. PLM: A Data Perspective.

I’d interested to know your view of the future PDM trajectories. Do you see it differently?

Best, Oleg

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PLM Usability and Social News Aggregators

September 11, 2010

Yesterday discussion about PLM usability made me think more about how to come with ideas to improve usability of PLM systems. I wanted to come to something different than just claiming "yet another system that provides a different level of usability". Such a type of messages is often failing when a customer actually started to work with a system. Polished user interface looks great. However, when a user drill down to nuts and bolts, appears as another lipstick on a pig.

Thinking about usability I found a very interesting trend in news reading applications. Do you remember old teletext systems? Ha… their time is over. News is a special space. We are all reading news. They are coming from multiple places. Few years ago, we had a single source of news – emails. Subscription on emails was a simple space to be informed. Google alert service didn’t change much in this mechanism, since alerts still can be delivered as emails. However, social media revolution changed a lot in the news industry. These days, a significant portion of news is coming from alternative sources – social networks, microblogging, video, etc. I found few interesting applications that representing a new class of news aggregators.

Flipboard

This iPad application aggregate news coming from multiple channels as well as you twitter and Facebook accounts. What I specially like in this application is the ability to visualize hidden resources such as video and pictures links. Normally, social net stream on twitter and other social networks is very boring. You need to follow links to get to a picture or video. Flipboard changed this behavior. Now you can see it. Now, imagine you Bill of Material discover becomes as simple and natural as reading social news streams in Flipboard.

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Pulse News

Another news aggregator – Pulse provide multi-dimensional stream scrolling. What I like in this app is the ability to visualzie structured streams of information. This can be an interesting experience for reviewing of information normally presented in PDM and PLM systems as boring streams.

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What is my conclusion? The bad old days of enterprise software are over. Consumer apps are bringing a new and different way to consume information. Gen-Y is coming to enterprise organization and have these new behaviors in their mind. Do we still want to see boring Bill of Materials’ sheets and endless structured trees? Nope. It seems to me time for change is coming. Bill of Material in PLM systems looks like old teletext. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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PLM: Lipstick on a Pig or Missed Opportunity?

September 10, 2010

I had a chance to read AESSIS blog post – Why Some People Don’t Like PLM?Graham started absolutely important discussion about mainstream adoption of PLM in the organizations. I had a chance to write about this in the past. Navigate your browser on the following link – Complexity Kills or 3 ways to improve PLM adoptions. I specially liked this passage from Graham’s post:

…I think the bottom line is that PLM requires people to change their behaviours. This is hard to do. Just look around you. People continue to do all kinds of things that are bad for themselves and others. And managing information poorly, not sharing it, not organising it etc…seems pretty benign compared with some things I could mention… and yet it costs organisations billions. People don’t want to change despite obvious benefits to the wider organisation.

The last statement is just brilliant – "people don’t want to change". However, the next conclusion got my blood boiling somewhat. Graham is proposing to think about "incentive" for people to start using PLM. This is a place where I think we have a kind of disagreement with Graham. So, I decide to put some thoughts about that below.

Enterprise Software: Love and Hate?

Have you had a chance to hear the following statement? – "Enterprise software is not fun. We came here to work and not to have fun". Let me guess what is that about? It is probably coming from some kind of enterprise software implementations. Enterprise software consistently sold to executives and IT and not to end users. Then, obvious statement came – you should not love this software, just do your job! However, I see this paradigm slowly changing over the last decade. Usability started to play a more and more important role. Users started to dump consistently buggy and not useful software, and vendors started to think about how to make their enterprise portfolios nicer.

PLM Idea vs. PLM Reality

I can see PLM as a step child of enterprise software. PLM wasn’t born as a pure "enterprise package". Predecessors of PLM – CAD and PDM, had deep roots in engineering and R&D departments. Competition brought the usability revolution to CAD software first. PLM didn’t get there… yet? The original PLM idea was good. To provide a way to manage information about products on all stages of product development. The implementation reality was different. Engineering and product development is a complex field. One size doesn’t fit all. Vendors failed to create simple and easy to implement software. Complexity of PLM environments and implementations made people dislike the changes that always coming with PLM.

Quality, Incentives and Opportunity

I’m thinking about a quality. Something wrong happens with a quality of enterprise software. PLM is just a very good example. Time ago, the quality of cars was awful. It created an opportunity and we got much better cars during the last 10-15 years. Similar things happened with consumer software and the internet. You run away from a low quality website, stop using low quality phones and other consumer software. Nobody is thinking about how to create an incentive to use a bad consumer software. Why we think it should be acceptable for PLM or enterprise software? I think, real incentive is an opportunity to create a better software.

What is my conclusion? Last then years were prime time for "consumer IT". Think about how much was done during these years in the internet, office applications, telecommunication, etc.? In my view, we are coming to the point when we need to start counting next ten years of "enterprise IT". Next ten years will put enterprise IT "on fire", so in 2020 we’ll not need to find incentives to use buggy PLM enterprise software. Will we call it PLM? I don’t know…

Best, Oleg

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PLM Interest to Enterprise Search

September 9, 2010

I can see a growing interest of PLM providers to explore the story of enterprise search. This morning I’ve seen a mutual press release of Aras Corp. and NorthRidge Software. I liked this passage in the press-release:

PLM solutions encompass a wide range of complex data and files in a variety of formats, including CAD files, quality data, regulatory specifications, requirements, BOMs and more. With the NorthRidge Search Solution, Aras Innovator users can locate drawings, documents and other information by searching on keyword terms, phrases in the content or metadata values.

What is specially interesting in this information is that Aras is trying to follow their Open Source strategies and adopting Lucene and Solr a well known Open Source enterprise search solution and search libraries. If you want to learn more about Lucene you still can register to Lucene Revolution, which will happen in Boston in the beginning of October.

Just to remind you the previous events in PLM fast ride towards enterprise search technologies. Earlier this year, PTCconfirmed their OEM relationships with Endecca. Almost In parallel to that, Dassault Systems spent 135M Euros to acquire Exalead – a provider of web and enterprise search solution.

So, what means this enterprise search gold rush for PLM companies. I can see 3 main reasons why PLM solution providers can be interested in making their search and enterprise search arsenals stronger.

PLM Systems Complexity

This is probably the top interest. At the time that PLM concepts getting acceptance in the enterprise, complexity of the tools and implementation becomes one of the most critical showstoppers preventing PLM software vendors from going mainstream in organizations. Search as a paradigm seems to be an option to resolve this complexity.

Enterprise Software Competition

The competition among software vendors is growing. Mindshare PLM providers face a strong competition from other enterprise software vendors such as providers of ERP, Supply Chain, Manufacturing Execution and other software. Each of these enterprise application classes represents a silo of information inside of organization. Enterprise search can be a technology to find information in multiple silos.

Influence of Consumer Software

This is last, but very important. I can see a significant influence on enterprise software in general and on PLM specifically from everything that exists in the consumer software space and on the internet. Search is hugely popular because of the success of Google. It provides a significant impact on decisions of PLM vendors to follow these streams.

What is my conclusion? Enterprise Software and PLM are struggling with a “complexity disease”. On the other side, enterprise search software is struggling with the need to provide additional differentiation to their “boring” search stories. It seems to me as a perfect match between them. What is your opinion?

Best, Oleg

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PLM Collaboration and “New Socials”

September 8, 2010

How to make people to work more efficiently? I think this is an important question. This is a challenge for every product development organization. You have a team of people working on a specific project (or projects). How you can get things done in this team?

Collaborative Software

For a long period of time, the ultimate answer on this question was – you need a collaborative software. What is that? In my view, collaborative software is the most vague terms that possible can be applied to a computer system. Just as an exercise, I tried to find an answer about what is collaborative software in Wikipedia. The root article – Collaborative Software, provides lots of information about possible collaborative software, collaborative management tools, collaborative project management, etc. In addition, it points on three separate categories: collaborative working environment, collaborative working systemsand computer supported cooperative work. I don’t know how about you, but I found myself lost in these definitions. My best definition of collaborative software is following – a computer system that helps to people working together.

Web 2.0 and “New Socials”

Last decade of internet software created a new hype of “new social” tools. Also known as Web 2.0, these tools provide a better way to work together in the internet. Messengers, Wiki, Blogs, Chats, Forums, and lately social networks created a new conglomerate of applications widely adopted by Digital Natives (Gen-Y) and proliferating fast into groups of “digital emigrants”.

Social Aided Product Development

I had a chance to read a blog article – Social Media Aided CAD by SolidWorks Legion. One of the topics, Matthew Lorono is discussing related to a newest Social Product Development tool coming out of PTC. The following video represents a promotional video showing how various “social features” used during the design process. Some of them seems to me interesting – the concept of wiki page for CAD model, “facebook-like” pages and collaborative workspaces for task management. PTC is leveraging Microsoft SharePoint infrastructure platform to develop this functionality. Broad adoption of SharePoint as well as marketing power of Microsoft can create a momentum for wide adoption of social product development tools from PTC. Take a look on the following video below and make your opinion.

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Another company that, in my view, belongs to “new socials” is Vuuch. Chris Williams explained me how you can “vuuch different things” – CAD models, products, Bill of Materials and other things in your product development environment to help people working together. In my view, the good translation of Vuuch is “stitching together”. Some of the ideas presented by Vuuch seems to me very powerful – ability to link people with their deliveries, contextual activity presentations. I see these small things as important differentiation factors in your decision to use this tool. In the following video, you can see how Vuuch can be used in design together with SolidWorks.

So, what is my conclusion? Engineers are not a simplest category of people. To create tools for engineers is a very tough job. To make them happy is a challenging task. “New socials” is new kind of tools that use power of “social connections” to help people working together. In my view, PTC is more focusing on leveraging SharePoint platform. At the same time, Vuuch is more dedicated to a new concept of “social links” and precise feature’s definitions. Both companies are trying to make engineers more productive during a design time. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Freebie. PTC and Vuuch didn’t pay me to write this post. However, I paid for my salad during the talk with Chris Williams.

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How To Choose PLM? (Visual guide)

September 6, 2010

I decided to make an unusual post today. Because of holiday (Labor Day in USA), I spent most of the day working on emails, RSS, twits and blog comments. iPad is a primary tool in such a type of work. I had a chance to read blog article by Jos Voskuil – Which PLM (to choose)? Inspired by Jos’ arguments I created a simplified visual guide for people who want to think about what PLM to choose during the long weekend. Jot Free was my tool to create it, so this post went live without touching my laptop.

I hope you’ll find it interesting. This is just my opinion. I’m apologizing by not mentioning all companies and difficulties to put URL to company websites using Jot Free.

Best, Oleg

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Product Design and Collaboration in Multiple Languages

September 3, 2010

Manufacturers are going global these days. Nobody is surprised to have design, manufacturing and support are going across the globe. However, when it comes to collaboration of people working on multiple continents, it can get very complicated. I read an article – RSS Feed Translation for Bloggers and Social Networking firms. It made me think about a possible role of standards protocols like RSS and translation capabilities to provide a multilingual support in PLM and other enterprise systems.

Information Distribution

Product development system can separate information into multiple channels depending on the need. The major differentiation can be between systems that need to operate in a real time (i.e. designers are working together on the same issue) and asynchronous systems. In my view, the second group is much bigger than we are expecting. Most of the cross-continent communication is going asynchronously anyway because of natural time difference. Asynchronous information cane delivered with involvement of mechanisms similar to RSS that will make translation services easy to implement.

On-demand Translation Service

The first time I’ve been thinking about such a translation service was a year ago when I experimented with Google Wave translations. Take a look on the demo of translation work presented by Google Wave.

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So, there is a potential of the translation robot that can do work on-demand. However, the idea of YYZ Translation is interesting since it assumes mixed translation models with partial people involvement.

What is my conclusion? Mutli-language is a big problem. In my view, global companies are spending money to make it work. It is probably a time to make translation more natural and allow to people to consume information in the language, they can do it the best. I’d be interested to learn more how your company working in a multilingual product development and manufacturing environment. Don’t tell me everybody speaks English, please :) .

Best, Oleg

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