Technia and PLM Implementation Secret Sauce

November 16, 2010

The following announcement came to my attention yesterday. Technia annouces Technia Value Components Release 2010-3 future increase the value of ENOVIA. I found it interesting. Technia is a Sweden outfit with a deep and diverse set of skills of PLM implementations. Technia came to my attention first time as a reseller of MatrixOne (acquired by Dassault in 2006). Technia relations with MatrixOne have a long history of customer implementation and development.

I specially liked the following passage from the announcement:

With the experience from +50 larger PLM implementations, Technia seized on the fact that many organizations request similar customizations of their ENOVIA/MatrixOne systems. Technia developed the TVCs to componentize these common changes and streamline implementations. TVCs not only close the gap between requested and out-of-the-box functionality, but also reduce the time and cost required to investigate the impact of each change. This leads to faster implementations with lower risk, as well as reduced Total Cost of Ownership.

Implementation Toolkit?

Navigate your browser to the following link to see the overal portfolio of TVC and look on the list of TVC components: Structure Browser, Graphic Report, Grid, Personal Browser. You can request demo or AVI of a specific component.

Thinking about the component list, my hunch is that this is a toolkit that can be used to handle various types of implementation use cases. There is no visual resources on the website. Grid and structure browsers, XBOM, Office, Report generator, etc. – all these components demonstrate a toolkit approach. I believe Technia engineers utilized a deep knowledge and experience of almost a decade of implementations.

PLM Portfolio and Implementation Toolkit

In the early beginning, a typical PDM / PLM product was a toolkit based implementation. Going back to Metaphase or MatrixOne, most of the implementations were done this way. However, for the last decade PLM mindshare leaders developed a significant set of PLM portfolios. The combination of out of the box products and toolkit approaches is the most critical element of successful implementations. To have a right balance can be very helpful, especially if you think about future product upgrades. Too much toolkit approach and your future PLM upgrade becomes a bloody mess. It looks like Technia engineers invented something special in their way to implement TVC together with ENOVIA V6. I hope to learn more about this in the future.

What is my conclusion? To combine a "toolkit approach" and major product portfolio of mindshare PLM vendor is a very interesting problem to solve. Based on what I learned from the press release and by combining this information with TVC list on Technia website, Technia engineers invented some "secret sauce" of combined implementation. These two approaches are orthogonal and requires intelligent methods to be applied to solve them. My hunch TVC is used to expand ENOVIA portfolio in the spaces where customization is required. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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Microsoft in the PLM Spotlight

November 15, 2010

Last week in Orlando, I had a chance to attend Microsoft’s presentation during DSCC2010 keynote presentation. Microsoft’s trajectory is interesting. Think about last few weeks of news – Steve Balmer sells stocks worth a billion to save on taxes, Ray Ozzie exits his CSA role at Microsoft.

Role-Based, OWPX and Cloud-y Services

The following two pictures from Microsoft presentation made me think about what will drive Microsoft strategy in the organization. Role-based? OWPX. You can see it stands for Outlook, Word, PowerPoint and Excel. These individual apps are relying on Application Integration and Communication.

The next picture adds clouds on top of 200-like enterprise architecture.

Microsoft stated during the presentation – “Microsoft- IT as a service”. What does it mean? To move OWPX to the cloud? Start owning SharePoint and other Microsoft servers and sell them as a service?

Collaboration Everywhere and Technology?

Another interesting spot in Microsoft presentation is a notion of collaboration. It states – Collaboration Everywhere. It connects all silos of PLM, ERP, SCM, CRM, MES into a single box. I have a hard time to understand what does it mean. From the technological notes on the side of the slide I can learn the following – business process integration, composite apps and integrating data with analytics. For me, it means lots of consultancy hours on top of Microsoft servers to make it work. All – data, processes, applications, etc. are different. Microsoft sells individual pieces. What is missing, in my view, on these pictures is experiences.

DS V6 Organic Architecture

I found PLM experience in Bernard Charles keynote presentation about V6. The slide about Organic architecture put all enterprise architectures in a dust. V6 Organic Architecture sells Lifelike user experience. It sounds very Apple-minded. Apple is focused on experience and cool devices. Mr. Charles was focused on explaining how DS architecture will be focused on delivery a very unique experience to customers. It can be an interesting turn.

What is my conclusion? Microsoft sells servers to the enterprise. Big servers. Lots of servers. OWPX. Is it a strategy? In my view, this is Microsoft’s enterprise lock-in. On the very bottom level, PLM functions depend on Microsoft Servers. Most of PLM boxes run on Windows machines. And it deeply connected on Office / Excel. However, future belongs to experience – the number of Apple devices on DSCC2010 was bigger than ever before.

Just my thoughts..

Best, Oleg

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3DSwYm: Future PLM Mainstream or Copycat?

November 11, 2010

This week on DSCC 2010 I had a chance to learn more about what Dassault is planing as their next step in the development of their Social Innovation strategies. Dassault presented their interest in social software last year by the following joint announcement with blueKiwi. However, for the moment, Dassault is planning to announce their 3DSwYm social collaborative platform. The announcement will be soon and SwYm (See What You Mean) was largely presented and demonstrated during DSCC 2010. I had a conversation about 3DSwYm with Bruno Dalahaye, Dassault Enovia VP Marketing Strategy. This conversation made me think about what actually 3DSwYm is going to be and how it can impact future PLM development.

Yet Another Social Platform?

“Social” in enterprise is trending. I had a chance to write about it in my blog. I can find multiple examples of social systems created with a strategy of so-called “Enterprise Facebook”. I can just mention few of them. MicrosoftSharePoint 2010 Communities, Cisco Quad, Salesforce.com Chatter, SAP StreamWork, Oracle Beehive. In PLM world, PTC introduced their Social Product Development program with is leveraging Microsoft SharePoint platform.

PLM Mainstream Opportunity

A growing amount of social systems coming from enterprise software vendors introduces a significant challenge to present a system for product development. What can be a potential opportunity? Let me go back to original roots of Facebook, which served groups of people (originally, college alumni) to share pictures, videos and messages. The key point, in my view in converting of Facbook to a mainstream social network was Facebook’s ability to share content and messages in a very easy way. Connectivity is also playing an important role as well as the ability easy to find connections.

One of the biggest PLM problem and, at the same time, opportunity is related to the ability of PLM to become a mainstream system. Today, PLM implementations challenging most of the organization from the standpoint of ease of use and ability of all people in the organization to stay connected and to communicate. This is a potential sweet spot for 3DSwYm. The following picture presents a fragment of 3DSwYm demo on DSCC2010.

Content is a King

Content is a very important factor. Think about the internet and social networks. Content play an important role in the ability of systems to drive people’s attention. Pictures, Photos, Videos, Podcasts, Blogs – these are examples of content that drives people’s interest in the internet. However, in manufacturing organization, content is represented by designs, Bill of Materials and other elements of product data. The ability to expose this product data is the ultimate opportunity of Social Innovation system to be used by people. Main competitor is old fashioned email. Email rocks in organizations. Most of the decisions, communications and collaboration are driven by email. However, email is not content-friendly. So, social systems have an advantage. Dassault has very deep roots in 3D content. This is an opportunity, Dassault can use to support their 3DSwYm initiatives in the organization.

What is my conclusion? Social systems have a potential to connect people in the organization. The social-connection is a strong factor. People are connecting to other people based on their organization responsibilities, relations to project, teams and groups. Social system has a potential to drive people’s communication in product development. Content is a king. By enabling 3D content share, systems like 3DSwYm may have a bright future in the organization. Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg

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Swearch and the Future Applification of PLM

November 10, 2010

I spent my yesterday on Dassault Systems Customer conference (DSCC 2010). I had a chance to talk with DS executives and learned a lot of things about DS vision. When I’m still digesting this information, I’d like to share some of my thoughts about what I call – Applification of PLM. I used this term once, when I wrote about PTC Creo Launchlast week.

Swearch – Dumb Simple?

Before talking about PLM, I want talk give you an idea of what I called a dumb simple application. Navigate your iPhone on the following link – swearch.me. What you can see is a very elegant and dumb simple user interface that allows you to swipe search option between Google, Twitter, Wikipedia and Flikr. You can tell me – so what? It is simple…

However, I think there is one thing that Swearch is doing right is supporting the simplicity of switching between different search options without going to a complex word of choice.

DS Exalead and Search Based Application

Dassault is talking a lot about the power of Exalead these days. Exalead was a search company DS acquired few months ago. Navigate your browser on this link to read about my view on DS/Exalead acquisition. The technology behind Exalead had some Alta-Vista historical roots and, according to DS, it is powerful and can change a lot, from the standpoint of delivery of so called “Search Based Application” to the enterprise. Where the idea of Enterprise Search is not new and company like Autonomy, Endeca and FAST are in this market for the long time, DS demoed few examples of public websites (i.e. Yakaz) that can be used as a prototype of future search applications.

PLM Apps Store Miracle

One of the things I learned yesterday is that DS folks are working on their App Store. The foundation of this App Store is future DS 3D SWYM collaborative platform. 3DSWYM is a website / application DS is experimenting for a quite long period of time. DS was doing doggy-food process of 3DSWYM internally. You can register and get access to 3DSWYM current online version using this link.

What is my conclusion? I think PLM companies got the point of Apps. The idea is simple. I can see the first signs of movement into this direction. Autodesk and DS made some initial apps available of iOS App Store. PTC is talking about Creo Applications, DS is creating 3DSWYM platform of their future App store. I can see a silence moment from Siemens PLM (maybe I’m just not aware?). However, I don’t think a simple copycat of App Store can be applied. The application is the most important thing in this story. In my view, App store is not about PLM Apps department store. I’d be thinking about Swearch as an example of how to execute “dumb simple” things that work.

Best, Oleg

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Hyper-Social Organization for PLM Dummies

November 9, 2010

Today, I had an interesting experience in my life. I had a chance to attend Dassault System Enovia Collaborative Innovation Forum. Be-careful, before you expose yourself to the following links. You will be influenced by a hyper-socially explosion… Ready? Navigate your browser to the following link. This is a conference website, which was actually built by blogger’s community during the event today. I decided to give a first time impression about my “lesson learned” and thoughts about what can be a role of PLM in Hyper-Social Organization?

Hyper-Social Background

How you can get yourself to the Hyper-Social story? My recommendation is to take a look on the following slide-share. It will give you an impression.

Here is my simple explanation on the hyper-social organization. You are probably familiar with the various forms of old social organization and culture. Sport Clubs, Fans of Rock-groups, Movie-stars fans, University Alumni. With the introduction of social media online and social networks like Facebook, lots of the old days social organizations were migrated into new social forms – social networks, social media, online communities. As soon as it happens it exposed and replicated into new businesses. What worked for football clubs started to work for companies’ brands and actively used by new marketing. I think, you’ve got my point – what is good for Lady Gaga, tomorrow can be used to sell Consumer Product Goods, Cars, Electronic and other products

Hyper-Social Organization and Product Development Organization

The first question you need to ask me after reading the previous part – so what? Marketing found a new way to sell products- why should we care? This is a first challenging point. As a company, you cannot be neutral on the way company exists in the online social universe. Depends on your social role in the organization and online social status you are getting involved into lots of online activities. You become a part of affiliated groups or how hyper-social calls themselves – tribes. Sounds crazy? Thinking about this type of tribes? However, this is another definition:

From Wikipedia:
Tribe (internet), an unofficial group of people who share a common interest, affiliated through the internet. The term tribe is used as a slang term for an unofficial community of people who share a common interest, and usually who are loosely affiliated with each other through social media or other internet mechanisms. The term is related to “tribe,” which traditionally refers to people closely associated in both geography and genealogy.

Now, it makes more sense to think about how it exposed to your product development. If you think about a group of people sharing interest in using your products, you can find a new way to communicate with these people. Think about this like speaking foreign languages. I speak “English”, but you speak “Tribes”. The most important point, in my view, in this “tribes story” is a connection. What is matters is connection and affiliation. By making a connection you become part of the community. So, now think about product development organization. If you are selling your product to tribes, you need to play this game. It means to be able to be exposed to the tribe and maintain communication with a tribe. What is the most important “aha moment”? If you want to do that, you need to change yourself. Your organization now mimicking tribe! You behave the same. Voila…

Hyper-social and PLM

So, now this is a time to ask how all this related to Product Lifecycle Management. On the surface, you can tell me that there is no connection. The need to design, engineer, manufacture, sell and support products don’t change. You are right and wrong at the same time. PLM as a technology and product development process organization is going to be impacted. You probably need to have tools that are orienting on how to become more exposed to communities, develop capabilities to share information within people in your communities (tribes).

What is my conclusion? It seems to me social networking is introducing a new type of organization, which behave differently. The impact is on both sides- manufacturing organization and customer. Will it impact product development processes? A good question… Will it impact communication? Absolutely. The new level of communication has a chance to change product development processes. This is my simple conclusion – a lot of new words, a lot of new tools. The positive is a connection between manufacturing and customers and a result better value proposition of your company products. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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Live Blog: No PLM, PLM, Beyond PLM…

November 6, 2010

Yesterday, I had the unique opportunity to participate in the webinar with a very intriguing name – Why Hasn’t PLM Taken Over the World? You can listen to the recorded podcast of this webinar. Navigate your browser to the following link to listen for the record and to follow Cadalyst On The Edge series. Actually, that was’t a webinar in a traditional view. It was something I called "Live Blog". Few years ago, when I started my PLM Think Tank blog, my idea was to have a forum where people can discuss PLM problems and related issues in an open way without marketing cliche and sales pitches. My impression from Cadalyst On The Edge was exactly the same. It was a live conversation between Chad Jackson, Ben Eadie, Chris Williams and myself lead by Nancy Johnson of Cadalyst.

Lots of questions were asked during the webinar. Here are few very important onces: what is PLM Technology? How manufacturing companies perceive PLM? How PLM implemented and what are the most important challenges? What was done well by PLM and what are the most critical failures? I hope you’ll find time to listen. This conversation made me think about PLM trajectories over the past decade. I decided to put them in the following perspective: No PLM, PLM, Beyond PLM.

No PLM
If I’m thinking about early beginning, I’m getting back to the time when engineering software companies worked on resolving of very critical data management challenges for design systems. The TLAs running back that time were about Engineering Data Management, Engineering Document Management, Technical Data Management and, finally, Product Data Management (PDM). All these systems were about how to manage different engineering resources, mostly drawing and documents. The main focus of these systems was about how to get document and other resources under control. The biggest challenges were about how to fit diverse requirements of manufacturing companies. The systems in "no PLM" domain moved from very not flexible rigid systems that required compilation in order to make an enhancement and ended up with flexible modeling systems running on Windows platform and lately on the Web.

PLM
I can see two main drivers standing behind the industry turn to PLM. First is the increased technological potential of data management. The experience and development of more flexible systems managing engineering data created an opportunity to have more data controlled by the systems. The second one is the success of ERP systems. ERP created the use case for successful management of business processes in the organization. The evolution of MRP, MRPII and other business systems shown the way process management can be implemented for business. Engineering and manufacturing software vendors recognized the opportunity to repeat this case for product development. Based on these two use cases, companies started to form a "PLM vision". During the last decade, vendors developed a very significant foundation for product development business processes. ERP companies also recognized the opportunity to cover this domain as well. It resulted in software development and company acquisitions.

Beyond PLM
This is a part of PLM story is under development, for the moment. PLM industry learned lots of lessons during the past decade implementing PLM systems for a very diverse set of customers. With many success stories PLM gathered for these years, PLM implementations faced significant challengers related to the complexity of implementation, usability and cost of change. The ability to replicate repeatedly business process management for product development is the biggest challenge PLM is facing. This is the main cause of complexity of enterprise PLM implementations and difficulties in taking PLM to a mainstream manufacturing road. I can see few interesting trends happening to PLM companies and PLM industry. Vertical integration and portfolio differentiation. Focus on special values such as simulation, visualization and 3D. Catching up with social technologies. This is not a complete list. However, I think, it reflects some major shifts that happen now in PLM community.

What is my conclusion? Understanding of enterprise IT trends is extremely important for today’s PLM mindshare leaders. Otherwise, they can miss the point of industry transformation. Openness, Socializing, Consumerization, Applification – this is my short list of things that need to be counted for the next 10 years. I had a chance to read the following interesting article – Microsoft Looking Like An End-Stage Company. A good wake-up call. Just my opinion.

Best, Oleg

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Why Do We Struggle With File Names in PDM / PLM?

November 5, 2010

I read David Dillon blog post on SolidWorks Geeks – File Name and PDM. This short write-up made me think about relations between File Naming and Data Management strategies. It is very interesting to see how industry is struggling to solve this problem for the last 15 years. So, I want to share with you what I think about that.

PDM – File Names vs. No Names

Since early PDMs, the question of File Names was always important. The intent of PDM systems was to release end users from File Naming hassle. Some PDMs included options to manage meaningful File Name vs. use automatic numbering mechanism. The community of engineers, actually, split in their decisions. When you are live inside of your PDM system, the File Name can be considered as an obsolete thing. However, when you start thinking about some intermediate work where PDM will not be available, the question of File Name comes again.

File Naming or File Numbering

Do you remember my old blog about Part Numbers- PLM Data, Identification and Part Numbers? I think, in the context of File Names, the same questions are coming again. To use smart numbering system vs. to use internal numbering mechanism supported by multiple PDM/PLM systems? In my view, pros and cons are the same. Intelligence naming system can be very beneficial. However, within time it becomes more and more irrelevant. People have a tendency to forget file names and numbering systems they invented in the past.

PDM / PLM No Files- The Bright Future?

I can see a very interesting trend these days. CAD systems are trying to consolidate PDM platform as part of CAD feature. Even 3-4 years ago, it can be considered as a suicide. However, technology changed these days. In addition, PLM vendors started to understand the value of embedded data management into CAD. These systems basically are going to replace an ugly PDM-CAD integration solutions. Having a complete control on CAD system, vendor can invent any data management solutions.

File Names and Cloud

Let’s take few more steps towards the future? Do you think File Names will disappear with cloud? There are some people who believe that cloud is going to release him from local hard discs and file systems. There is a good reason to think that way. However, I don’t see it happens in a visible future. In addition, cloud solutions are trying mimicking local systems (including files) on the cloud.

What is my conclusion? The File Names is dead. Long live file names! I can see a long term trend towards the situations where File Names will become obsolete. We still need file names. Even such a cool device as iPad, requires a file name get things in and out. So, for day-to-day practice, you better think about reasonable file numbering system. However, if you are going to implement modern PDM/PLM systems, you can consider starting to remove file names as an obsolete feature and hide it in data management structures.Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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Google Cloud Printing, PLM and Manufacturing

November 4, 2010

What do you think about “paperless processes”. A good dream I can tell you… So, I decided to talk about paper-related stuff today. I read blog post coming from ReadWriteWeb -Cloud Print “Coming Soon” to Google Docs. I found it very interesting. Since, I’m a heavy Google Docs user, I can see myself looking for the ability to print a document “somewhere” in a different location where I’m now. In a nutshell, Google will allow to route your prints via something called “Google Cloud Print” to one of the available printers. The following passage is very interesting:

Cloud-aware printers will “soon be a reality,” says Google. However, right now, every printer in the world falls into the “legacy” category. To accomplish this, Google will use a proxy, “a small piece of software that sits on a PC where the printer is installed. The proxy takes care of registering the printer with Google Cloud Print and awaiting print jobs from the service. When a job arrives, it submits the print job to the printer using the PC operating system’s native print stack and send job status back to the printer.”

This functional capability made me think about some interesting scenarios in product development, manufacturing and supply-chain I wanted to discuss with you.

Printing in Remote Facility

When you are running development from your remote office or a different location, you might be interested to run your printer job to manufacturing or service / maintenance facilities. It can solve a problem of special applications that need to be installed and used by a person who is not trained in such a type of operation. It can decrease a potential level of mistakes and streamline processes between departments and facilities.

Field Work

I can see a possible situation when engineers or technician located in the field will need to make a print in remote office. There are multiple reasons for that started from availability of application and ending with legal or regulatory requirements.

Supply Chain

Another possible situation is when engineers from supplier and OEM organizations need to communicate between them and to delivery of hard-printed materials can be required to simplify communication. It can be related to their development processes (in case of design-supply) or other contractual or manufacturing scenarios.

What is my conclusion? We are dreaming about future paperless collaboration. However, the reality of our life often requires us to deliver prints. To increase printing capability and make it virtual and available even between organizations can be very interesting and beneficial. Do you think I’m taking a wrong direction? Can you share your “printing scenarios” or problems? Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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PLM Vendors, IT and Cloud Strategy

November 3, 2010

I was reading CloudAve yesterday. The post named – IT: Become Relevant or Die. Read this blog and make your opinion. The discussion about cloud is not new. This is my favorite passage from this post:

There are three things happening in IT now. The first is cloud, the second is mobile, and the third is social. CloudBlog agrees. But, what’s happening with IT is that it’s faced with 2-4 percent growth over the last several years. That is the equivalent of shrinkage when compared with spending in other areas. IT’s projects are becoming less relevant and thus are dying.

In addition, take a look on the video Daryl Plummer of Gartner video interview.

]

Engineering and Manufacturing software business is relying significantly on IT performance. Most of the large and profitable PLM implementations are driven by IT or IT-related companies. For the last year, I’ve heard many PLM companies are making announcements related to the cloud-technologies. To understand what will be a future impact and what PLM companies are doing with regards to do this, seems to be interesting. So, I decided to put my comments behind what I know about cloud strategies of companies in the engineering and manufacturing domain.

Aras

The last newsletter from Aras, stated the following – Aras Explains PLM Cloud Strategy. The link brings you to the CIMData paper. Details about Aras’ cloud strategy can be found here. Simply put Aras folks are saying “we are ready for cloud – just bring it in”. Following additional publications on Aras’ blog, they are preparing to have some real-life tests in cloud scenarios. I think, “private cloud” can be the most relevant scenario for Aras, focusing on large customers first. I have some concern related to Aras’ cloud strategy in the context of their business model. How it will co-exist with Aras Open Source strategy is not clear.

Autodesk

Cloud was definitely in the focus of Autodesk for the last year. It started, actually, in the end of 2009 when Autodesk acquired Israeli Sequoia back startup Visual Tao. Earlier Autodesk made several statements about their vision towards better leveraging cloud computing. During 2010, Autodesk demonstrated few projects focused on cloud-based applications, such as Project Butterfly, Project Twitch and few others. I can see Autodesk put an effort and significant thinking behind the “cloud theme” and how to make it practically useful for type of customers Autodesk has.

Arena

This company can be for sure qualified as a pioneer of “cloud computing” in PLM. Back to the origins (bom.com) was the first company that said the word SaaS / OnDemand / Cloud (?). My personal opinion – Arena was much ahead of time. The post-dot-com weather of 2000s was very destructive for Arena’s business. Today, I can see Arena is producing a decent set of cloud based application, mature and ready to use if functionality of them is good for you. However, it is easy to check – Arena is providing Free 10-Days Arena Trial.

Dassault

Since V6 release, Dassault is speaking about cloud as part of their strategy. It takes too much time, but it is okay for such a big company like DS. The beginning of 2010 was signed by very loud messages coming out DS SolidWorks annual customer event – SolidWorks World 2010. You can take a look on the following article – SolidWorks Takes off in the cloud. Very recently, Jeff Ray, SolidWorks CEO blogged with some updates about SolidWorks cloud strategy.

PTC

During the last 6 months, PTC heated atmosphere and blogosphere with messages about PTC Project Lightning. It ended with Creo launch last week. However, Creo launch didn’t put any lights on what PTC plans doing with cloud. Even more, during the exec press conference, PTC’s new CEO, Jim Heppelman mentioned that word “cloud” wasn’t mentioned. In fact, PTC had early cloud exposure with their Windchill solution hosted by IBM. This is probably explains PTC’s current strategy with regards to the cloud. Probably, PTC learned their own lessons working with IBM on the cloud and we’ll know about that later.

Siemens PLM

I can provide a definition related to Siemens PLM cloud strategy using one word – NAH… Siemens doesn’t care. At least, in a visible way. In the past, I had a chance to track some cloud-recommendations related to TeamCenter. Siemens PLM has some software products exposed to the cloud. However, no messages are coming with regards to this.

There are other vendors that exposing themselves to the “cloud story”.

Vuuch, company planning to bring the power of social to product development is actually SaaS / Cloud company. You can subscribe to their service online, and you don’t need to install it.

PLM+, Israeli startup focusing on PLM for SMB claims the availability of their product on a service base. However, they are in a long time Beta version since last year.

What is my conclusion? I think, engineering and manufacturing software vendors learned a lot from their “cloud” stories during 2010. Almost all vendors got to the point of “trying the cloud water”. In my view, 2011 companies will shift more towards delivery. It will be interesting to see what PLM and other companies will put on the market to satisfy needs of growing cloud presences? This is the time to watch. Important and interesting, in my view…

Best, Oleg

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Introducing Inforbix Product Data Apps

November 2, 2010

I’d like to take an opportunity and introduce a new company, I founded together with my colleagues - Inforbix. Our vision is to revolutionize the way people in manufacturing companies are accessing heterogeneous product data. Please, visit Inforbix website to get more information about the company, people and our ideas. Also, I’d like to introduce a new blog - Product Data Space. Inforbix is a social company, so you’ll be able to find us on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.  You are also invited to subscribe to our YouTube Channel.

Inforbix and Beyond PLM

I’d like to say few words about my blogging activity. For the last couple of years, PLM Think Tank and, lately, Beyond PLM shared my opinions about engineering and manufacturing software, CAD, PDM, PLM, industry and technological trends. This activity was absolutely independent of my employment in the past and will remain independent of my future role in Inforbix. PLM Think Tank remains daily, and I’m looking forward to sharing new information, thoughts and opinion about what is going on in Engineering and Manufacturing Software Beyond PLM.

Best, Oleg

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