SolidEdge and the Future of Micropayments in CAD/PLM?

May 17, 2011

In order to succeed in today’s business environment, software vendors are thinking how to innovate not only with product and technologies, but with business models. Earlier this week, Siemens PLM made an announcement about the availability of their SolidEdge Design Pad product for rental in Japan. Here is the quote from the press release, which is in my view is the most interesting:

Solid Edge DesignPad can be ordered through an easy to use an on – line system. In addition to obtaining an instant annual rental subscription license of SolidEdge software, customers will also have access to an online user guide, explanations of features, demonstrations, and a self-help menu to facilitate training and accelerate productivity.

You can ask me why SolidEdge? Why in Japan? Randall Newton of GraficSpeak made some comments on this, which makes sense to me:

It appears Siemens PLM is testing a new business model for selling Solid Edge technology. Japan is a medium-sized marketwith a keen appetite for the new and innovative. No doubt the plan is to work out the kinks before rolling out Solid EdgeDesignPad worldwide.

Micropayment and the future of business models

The announcement made by Siemens, actually, made me think again about CAD/PLM and business models. Last year, I posted about the future of business models – Faltered Licenses and FuturePLM Business Models. In this blog, I was thinking about few possible future business models for PLM – subscription model, advertising model and reverse model. I can see some overlap between them. SolidEdge Design Pad rental can be easy qualify as a subscription model. However, it made me think about another one – micropayment. Micropayment is not completely new business model. Take a look on Wikipedia article.

Micropayments were initially devised as a way of allowing the sale of online content and were envisioned to involve small sumsonly a few cents.[5] These transactions would enable people to sell content on the Internet[5] and would be an alternative to advertising revenue.[6] of

Here is the idea – micropayment together with rental model can be one of the possible future models. Think about – you get the application and pay only for the time you use this. I think, users will love this. Internet companies are examination an opportunity of micropayments. I found some interesting examples of Google One Pass – an innovative way to access published information.

What is my conclusion? I’m expecting software vendors to evaluate and play with additional business models soon. Big vendors like Siemens PLM, Dassault and Autodesk can afford these experiments by playing with some of their product portfolios. SolidEdge is one of these examples. Recent annoucement of Autodesk 123dapps is another example. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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Europstep and Standard-based PLM

May 16, 2011

I’m going to attend Eurostep Share-A-Space 2011 forum later this week in Stockholm, Sweden. The history of the invitation to this conference is going back to my long time interest in the topic of standards. I’ve been researching and learning about this topic many years. I posted few blogs about what is my view on what happens with standards in engineering and manufacturing in general and how I see standard-related activities in PLM. If you had no chance to look over this particular topic, here is the partial list of my posts related to standards: Open Standards and Data Sharing, PLM and Open Standards: Money Talks? and PLM Standards: From Formats to Frameworks

As a result of my posts about standards, I had a very interesting discussion with Hakan Karden of Eurostep, and he invited me to attend Eurostep Share-A-Space 2011 forum. So, I’m heading to Stockholm this week and hope to learn more about what Eurostep is calling "Standard based PLM".

Standards: A toothbrush approach?

A common problem with standards is that every company in manufacturing has their own way of doing things, but they do it differently to how other companies do it. However, they don’t want to do things the way other people do it. I can see two main reasons – 1/ the way engineers and manufacturing people see the company value and differentiation with what they do; 2/ high level of diversity in the manufacturing sector (especially when it comes to smaller companies). Company attitude to PLM standards can be compared with how they feel about their toothbrush. Every company has one and nobody wants to use anybody else’s.

STEP

Standard for the Exchange of Product Model Data (STEP) is an ISO standard that describes how to represent and exchange digital product information. If you have never seen and heard about it before, it is a time to navigate your browser to the following Wikipedia link about ISO. In my view, this is the most comprehensive and mature standard when it comes to CAD, PDM/EDM and CAx systems. It started almost 30 years ago (1984) and was intentionally directed to become a single, complete, implementation-independent Product Information Model, which shall be the Master Record of the integrated topical and application information models.

Standard Based PLM?

Product Information model is one of the central pieces of every PLM implementation. What if we can use STEP as a standard to implement it? This is sounding a good idea. However, in my view, devil is in details. It always looks good on slides and gets very complicated when start to implement that. STEP is a mature standard and support by many applications must exchange and save data in a neutral format. From my perspective, there is a difference between how you exchange information vs. how you need to manage information. I found that standard based approach can be interesting when you’re implementing a system that helps people to collaborate. I found a reference to Implementing the Engineering Collaboration Hub project. Navigate to the following link to read more about that. This implementation reminded me some BPM (Business Process Management) examples of interaction between multiple systems. In a big company, PLM is always a system that involved into serveral interactions with other systems. The benefit of a standard data exchange framework is obvious in this case.

What is my conclusion? Life would be definitely easy if we can make it according to the standards. Standards can simplify a lot of things. Actually, they do. We can see lots of very useful standards around us that were formed during years and centuries. Is it something that helps people to run their product development? Yes, definitely. There are many well adopted standards and STEP is one of them. There are some others in CAD, CAx and related fields. In my view, there are some limits on how fast standards can proliferate. One of the factors is acceptance by industry ecosystem (in our case, we are talking about software vendors). If industry vendors will see direct benefits, the proliferation will speed up, otherwise standard can slow down and even die. I’m going to learn more during this week and, of course, will share it with you.

Best, Oleg

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Chromebooks: Another Small Step Towards Cloud PLM?

May 14, 2011

I’ve been watching updates from the Google I/O 2011 conference during this week. Google came with the announcement of Chromebook. In my view, this is a logical continuation of all Google web and cloud efforts – Apps, Chrome, etc. When it is still not related to any CAD, PLM and other cloud efforts, I found the following passage in Google’s announcement interesting:

Even with dedicated IT departments, businesses and schools struggle with the same complex, costly and insecure computers as the rest of us. To address this, we’re also announcing Chromebooks for Business and Education. This service from Google includes Chromebooks and a cloud management console to remotely administer and manage users, devices, applications and policies. Also included is enterprise-level support, device warranties and replacements as well as regular hardware refreshes.

The following video can get you some ideas about what Google is planning to offer.

What is my take on this? Cloud is coming. However, it will not come in a single one-big-step. It will include many small steps towards introductory of new and useful services for people in manufacturing companies. Chromebook is one small single step in this direction. Just my thoughts.

Best, Oleg

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Autodesk, Dassault and Free CAD Options?

May 14, 2011

It is almost two years passed since I put on my blog a question about FREE as a best future CAD/PLM. Navigate to the following link to read my PLM Prompt: Is Free the Future of PLM? I’m monitoring ideas coming of this FREE space. There are few interesting events that happen in this space, that caught me to think again about that.

DraftSight

Last year, Dassault Systems released DraftSight, a free CAD Software for your DWG files. In addition to that, Dassault introduced an idea of community where people can exchange ideas. Dassault introduced the platform called 3DSwYm (See What You Mean). Draft Sight community is one of available communities on the 3DSwYm. The following video gives you some information and feeling about what Dassault sees behind the DraftSight.

You can see a new CEO of SolidWorks, Bertrand Sicot is talking about the level of DraftSight adoption: 300000 downloads, 66000 activations, 16000 members of DraftSight community.

Autodesk 123dapp

A couple of weeks ago, Autodesk CEO, Carl Bass attended Wierd Business Conference. You can read an interview with Carl Bass by navigating to the following link. At this conference Carl Bass announced the launch of a new consumer product called 123dapp. Here is my favorite passage from Car’s interview:

A free, downloadable design tool, 123D allows anyone to design 3-D models, and then turn them into real-life products.“It usedthat in order to make things you needed these big expensive machines,” Bass said. “Now you can produce things at highquality, at relatively low volume and relatively low cost.”

You can see a fragment of the interview with Carl Bass on the following video.

What is my take on this? I think we can see a very interesting dynamic. Both Autodesk and Dassault are playing with the power of free options on the competitor’s side. Known as a strong provider of 3D CAD (both CATIA and SolidWorks), Dassault released 2D CAD for DWG files for free to attract AutoCAD users. On the other side, the introduction of 3D CAD free downloadable 3D design tool, by Autodesk – a king of 2D draft package (AutoCAD) is another interesting step, which is probably has an intent to disrupt 3D CAD business on the low end. I hope to learn more about 123dabc as well as about future Free CAD products in 2d and 3d. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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New PLM: From Definition to Realization?

May 12, 2011

The definition of PLM is one of the topics I’m discussing on blog. I think, in the modern enterprise software, PLM buzzword created a biggest amount of collision, miss interpretation and disputes. I often ask myself what caused such a high level of disagreement? MRP, ERP, CRM… Even SCM – the agreement about these TLAs seems to me smooth. However, each time a discussion comes to PLM, I can hear multiple voices about what it supposed to be and how it supposed to behave.

I read a blog by Chad Jackson on engineering-matters.com called PLM Misnomer What we know it isn’t. Chad took a broad review of what PLM is based on Wikipedia’s definition of a product lifecycle. These are my two favorite passages from Chad’s blog:

(PLM…) definitions can vary quite dramatically. And personally, I don’t have any problem with that. However, in response to a tweet questioning the definition of PLM, I saw a tweet along the following lines: the definition of PLM is simple, it’s what manages the lifecycle of the product! And I have to say, I completely disagree. From my perspective, PLM systems don’t begin to address the entire lifecycle of the product.

PLM systems don’t really manage the product’s entire lifecycle. It is a front-end oriented system more related to concepts and detailed design.

Two Engineers – Three Opinions

Engineering and Manufacturing. Different opinions. If you had a chance to attend meetings in manufacturing companies, you can see how complicated to come to a single conclusion. You can do things this way, but you can also approach some alternatives. This is not about money – this is about engineering. When software engineering (vendors) crosses paths with manufacturing (customers), the results are unpredictable. This is what happened to the most of CAD/PLM vendors when they started to develop complex systems for large OEMs in automotive and aerospace industries. Most of today PLM systems are having roots in this development.

If I had more time, I’d write a shorter story…

This is one of my best quotes by Mark Twain. If I’d apply it to development of software I’d say – it is easy to develop something complicated. It is damn hard to develop something simple. I think, an attempt to provide a complicated and exhaustive definition of PLM (as well as complex product suites) is a core of the problem. The diverse set of functionality required by manufacturing companies pushed vendor to add more and more modules (and functions) to their products. So, they became big, complicated and expensive. The idea of business apps presented by Dion Hinchliffe is interesting in my view. Take a look on the following conceptual diagram of Business Apps.

What is my conclusion? PLM is complicated because it touches one of the most sensitive elements of a manufacturing company – the way this specific company runs their development and manufacturing. Every company developed their own processes. PLM companies passed the way from development of a toolkit to gigantic systems with lots of functions and features. Industry had enough time to think. In my view, now it is a time find how to create a "short story" about how to realize PLM ideas in a scalable, but not complicated way.

Just my thoughts…

Oleg

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Top 3 “PLM Cloud” Killers

May 11, 2011

After talking very positively about PLM and Cloud, it is a time to think about negative sides of the cloud story. Matt Lobard of Dezignstuff came with a following comment on my post yesterday: Cloud may be coming, but it is coming for only a few, and only where it makes the most sense. I still believe customers will dictate the success or failure of the cloud, not vendors. I couldn’t agree more. However, I can see some factors that actually can influence customer’s decision with regards to the future cloud PDM and PLM deployment. So, what are those top 3 PLM Cloud Killers?

#1 Overinflated Expectations

It can be a very dangerous turn, to assume "the cloud" will solve all previous problems. Cloud will never be able to become a "next universal PLM hummer". Product Lifecycle Management is a set of diverse business strategies processes and applications. To find right projects, processes and problems that can be solved by introducing "cloud solutions" is the right way to go. Don’t try to solve all problems using "cloud buzzword".

#2 Too little and too late

PDM and PLM weren’t born yesterday. Many solutions were developed over the past 15-20 years. Applying them to the cloud sometime can create an effect of surrealism. The most painful can be to present existing technologies with very slight modifications as a "next big thing" that supposed to change everything. It won’t happen. Customers are able to smell it and discover all these "same eggs, side view" products.

#3 Confusion over the private clouds and data centers

Another problem is when IT presents their cloud centers or private co-located data centers as a cloud. In this case, the potential value of the cloud will be diminished to the very narrow list of advantages. Most of them will be around "cost" structure of the cloud solution. Also, this strategy won’t allow to use the real value of scaling up with the cloud.

What is my conclusion? Cloud has a potential. However, as every new technology (and not only technology) it can be over-hyped and diminished by wrong implementations. It is important for companies experimenting with the cloud technologies not to be trapped into using "the cloud" as a marketing term as well as to apply "old software projects" under a new sauce. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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PLM, Google and Cloud Babysitting…

May 9, 2011

I’m continuing to think about Amazon cloud failure. As you may have noticed, the “cloud” is a frequent topic on my blog. I’ve been talking about the cloud with many people and organizations during the last couple of years and learning what are best practices in delivery of stable cloud solutions with a high level of availability. To avoid failure, the tick is redundancy. When one of your cloud servers fail, you need to make a switch. You would prefer this switch happens automatically. However, in most cases, it is somebody who babysit this service and responding on the alerts of server’s health monitoring.

Photo Courtesy: MichaelMarlatt at Flickr (License)

Google Apps and Enterprises

I read the following article in InformationWeek – Google Urges Enterprises To Go Web 100%. Read the article and make your opinion. If you are in manufacturing business and your company is not Ford, Toyota, Airbus and similar, you can find lots of parallels between the conversation Google’s Enterprise Mid Market Sales Chief has with the audience. You probably tired with running all your business processes using Excel and Email. At the same time, you cannot consider a significant investment into PDM/PLM programs just because your resources are not on the same level as most of PLM vendors demand it should be. Here is my favorite passage from InfoWeek article:

The IT groups at midsize enterprises are often so wrapped up with dealing with the basics of PC and server support and upgrades that they have little attention left over to focus on issues like improved collaboration, Remley said. But business managers at those same organizations see the inefficiency in trying to run too many projects by email, where a dozen people will make edits to the same document and a project manager is forced to reconcile all those versions. With Google Docs, they could instead have all been working with the same document online, he said.

PLM in the cloud?

PLM companies are having mixed experience with the cloud. In my view, all of them (vendors) are having love&hate relationships with the cloud. In my view, all of them are watching what is going, but not committed 100% to the cloud. The exception is maybe only Arena Solution (former bom.com), which was pioneering “on-demand PLM” since early 2000s.

Almost more than a year ago, SolidWorks, during SWW 2010 made some very preliminary announcements with regards to the availability of SolidWorks product on cloud. You can read – Jeff Ray on V6, the Cloud and Killing SolidWorks by SolidSmack. This year SolidWorks presented the promised “Connect” product (new name n!Fuze) – SolidWorks n!Fuze -The Cloud Remake of PLM Collaboration?. For a long period of time, I thought Siemens PLM is very neutral to the “cloud appearance”. Reading Dezignstuff blog during the weekend, I noted Matt’s post – Tony Affuso’s Keynote from Siemens PLM conference that happened last week in Las Vegas. Here is a very interesting passage related to what probably Siemens PLM is thinking with regards to the cloud:

…Affuso said “we like the cloud”. Here’s the thing. After seeing some presentations on what the NX customer does, they are mostly from international organizations with distributed engineering and other product development efforts sharing work from large geographical separation. Cloud makes sense for huge conglomerates sharing data from many sources. In fact, a whole lot of things make sense when seen from a full-on PLM point of view that people like me who develop products in a closet tend to not understand. So if nothing else, I’m getting some perspective from this conference.

What is my conclusion? Cloud is coming. I’d say differently. It is coming with the internet. Web constantly opens new levels of capabilities, cost reduction and optimization. On the other side, it is not a “silver bullet” that will solve all your problems in a single shot. Remember, few very successful companies were born in the end of 1990s / beginning of 2000s when everything related to the .com/internet was considered as absolutely ruined. I think, smart companies will babysit cloud services to provide the functions, delivery model and cost combination that will be winning for manufacturing companies for a long run.

Just my thoughts… I’d be interested to know where are you staying with regards to the cloud planning? Please comment and speak your mind.

Best, Oleg

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Aras PLM lines up against Windchill, Enovia, and TeamCenter

May 7, 2011

A week ago, I came back from ACE 2011 (Aras Community Event 2011), which took place in Detroit, MI. Let me propose a very provoking statement: Aras Innovator is on move to replace full fledged PLM products such as TeamCenter, Enovia / MatrixOne and Windchill. Over the 3 days, Aras presented technology, vision and community of people working with Aras Innovator. You can get the highlights and download presentations by navigating to the following link.

Aras: Business Changes and Customization

In the keynote session, Aras’ President and CEO, Peter Schroer, presented the vision of open PLM platform with the ability to maintain a consistent pace of changes during the implementation cycle. Changes are inevitable. For the last years PLM vendors developed strategies to provide out-of-the-box PLM implementations. Aras put focus on “supporting organizational change”.

In addition to that, Aras put a significant focus on their support of Software Customization. Customization of PLM software (and not only PLM), is an important factor impacting PLM implementation TCO. Aras is focusing on how to support customization, and it relates to the Aras Innovator platform capabilities.

Aras and Integration Stories

Integration is an important element of every PLM strategy and implementation. There are multiple aspects of integrations – desktops, CADs, PLM systems and ERP systems. Aras presented a very broad scope of integrations and integration technologies. (note: I was a bit surprised to see existing PLM systems defined as “legacy”).

Aras Innovator introduces multiple APIs and technologies to support integration with different products.

Aras Platform Vision

Started as Windows and Microsoft only, Aras is introducing a broader support of the databases, browsers and other platform-related elements. It was presented as a mix of reality and vision, which not allows you to see what is really happening today. It is clear, Aras is moving towards Linux and broader support of browsers and mobile devices.

Aras Platform and Community

Community and collaborative development are a very interesting aspect of Aras growth strategy. Few slides below shows Aras platform strategy, vision and way to grow solutions by involvement of “community” of partners. As you remember Aras Enterprise Open Source allows to everybody to develop and deploy solutions on top of Aras Innovator. License hassle is minimal.

What is my take on ACE 2011 and Aras Innovator?

Aras is definitely moving towards crossing paths with PLM like Windchill, Enovia, TeamCenter. Is it possible to displace large PLM system with Aras today? My answer – it depends. The PLM implementation scope is varied, and every implementation can be different. Therefore, I specially liked the community oriented approach of development. This is something that can make a difference. On the side of platforms and integrations – time will show if Aras will find a balance between throwing resources and effective delivery. This is a big challenge. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Disclosure: Aras paid for my trip to ACE 2011.

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PLM, SharePoint and ProductPoint Lessons

May 5, 2011

I’m following SharePoint and PLM. One of point of my interest was to analyze how Microsoft SharePoint can be used in PDM/PLM as a technological platform and business driver. Going back in 2009, I posted SharePoint PLM Paradox?. The potential of SharePoint was promising. The potential realization of this business opportunity for PLM companies was interesting.

SharePoint: Shifting Gears

I was watching SharePoint development for the last few years. I’ve seen the highest level of excitement related to SharePoint 2007. Technology was okay. SharePoint huge success came from free distribution of WSS (Windows SharePoint Services). I’ve seen many companies jumping onto SharePoint opportunity to solve their problems in collaboration, files sharing and portal solution. Coming to 2010-2011, I heard a different perception with regards to SharePoint. I posted – PLM SharePoint: Silver Bullet of Fierce Criticism? The most visible piece of the conclusion was related to heavy dependencies of SharePoint development projects on consulting and services during the deployment and operation.

What is the point of Windchill Product Point?

Few days I discovered the following note in Pro-Engineer forum related to PTC and ProductPoint. Navigate your browser to this link. It was available at the time I wrote this post. According to the information on this forum and PTC ProductPoint Retirement FAQ – PTC is retiring Windchill ProductPoint and providing current customers with the opportunity to upgrade their Windchill ProductPoint licenses to Windchill PDMLink for no additional charge through December 31, 2012. This information made me think about potential lessons PLM industry can learn from trying to combine PLM and SharePoint in a single product.

These are my initial 5 points:

1. SharePoint is a technological platform that requires implementation and services. To use it for small manufacturing companies can be dangerous and depends on deployment configuration can be problematic.

2. Microsoft business interest is to deploy SharePoint to bigger companies, and it can be asymmetric with the interest of PLM companies to solve PLM SMB problem using SharePoint.

3. There are alternative ways to solve PLM usability problems rather than re-use SharePoint UI patterns. PTC just released new version of Windchill (10.0), which probably delivers better user experience.

4. Maintenance of multiple PLM products is probably way too complicated.

5. PLM for SMB is probably not only about better user experience and subset of functionality.

Just my thoughts… I’m looking forward to discussing these lessons learned with you and to know what is your take? Based on the conversation I hope to have a better understanding of what can be a potential future of SharePoint and PLM development.

Best, Oleg

Customer_FAQ_-_Windchill_ProductPoint_Retirement_4.27.11.pdf

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Microsoft Office, Google Cloud and noPLM option

May 4, 2011

Microsoft Office plays a significant role in your engineering environment. Just think about the number of Excels you have to manage your bill of materials, work schedules, task lists, etc. Replacing all these files with the PDM (or event PLM) system can be a good idea. However, it doesn’t happen in many organizations. Why so? There are multiple reasons why… Cost, complexity, implementation hassle. Is there an option to help engineers to collaborate without going to heavy implementation cycles? Some time ago, I posted – DropBox and PLM Made Simple.

Few days ago I learned about Google’s option to allow to synchronize Microsoft Office files (i.e. Word, Excel, PowerPoint) via Google Cloud Connect. Read the article – Microsoft Office files can be share with Google Cloud Connectand take a look on the following short video:

I found the usage of Google Cloud Connect easy and powerful. If you need to sync your Excel BOM files or other Office file, the Google Cloud Connect environment can transparently do the work. I learned Google Cloud Connect was based off technology developed by DocVerse, a company Google acquired in 2009. It costs $50 a year per user to use Connect and it is also part of the Appsperience from Google.

What is my conclusion? Connection data via cloud becomes a trend. I can see more companies are using this capabilities. Earlier this year I learn about SolidWorks n!Fuze cloud remake. Supply chain and some other collaborative scenarios can be a sweet spot for such technologies. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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