Technology « Daily PLM Think Tank Blog

PLM Platforms: Retirement Or noSQL Knock-Out?

March 1, 2010

I found interesting that nobody speaks much about PLM platforms these days. It seems to me PLM vendors and service providers are focused on the more important issues, such as industry orientation, out-of-the-box functionality, SaaS and OnDemand or even by Open Source business models. However, what happens in the PLM-platform-department? Does everything is fine and well adjusted to the weather outside? Do we have enough power to move forward with all data we have these days on PLM platforms? Can we scale up in capacity? Can we support agile system development by customers? These and many other issues came to my head. However, I wanted to focus on two specific trends: Needs to manage data for the long term and noSQL trends in data management.

Long Term Product Data
This is not a very big secret. We produce more and more data on the daily basis. Product development and manufacturing companies are not exclusion from that. Bigger companies like aero-OEMs recognized this problem time ago. Their working procedures require the need to keep data for 50+ years as well as track information about each aircraft according to the serial number. Smaller manufacturers are just coming to this place. Additional weight of the regulations moves them even faster to the point where the amount of data will come to the not controlled level. There are two aspects of long term data retention in PLM – 1/3D and geometrical data; 2/non-geometrical and process-related information. I found the most interesting project in this area is prostep’s LOTAR. So, I’m looking on the progress of this activity. However, the timeline of LOTAR is seven years, which is probably okay, when we talk about 50-year data retention.

noSQL Trends
This is a not top secret. The really big guys are not running SQL these days – Google, Amazon, Facebook… All these companies developed their own data management facilities. However, despite coolness effect, the reason behind these initiatives is simple. The ugly truth is that our good friend uncle-SQL is coming to the middle-age. And even if you cannot hear voices about SQL retirement, the question about how our life can look like “after SQL” is very much acceptable. If you are not familiar with noSQL term, I’d recommend to take a look on this wikipedia article. Also, I found the following article – The noSQL movement, written by Mark Kellog on his blog as a very interesting research in this area.

PLM Platforms Data Foundation
All PDM/PLM platforms that available on the market today are relying on SQL database technology. There is no surprise – SQL is the mainstream technology in the enterprise. I can see two potential problems related to that: change management and data capacity. The first one, change management, seems as a very critical one. Customers are struggling with the level of flexibility PDM/PLM systems can provide. Solutions built on top of SQL data is sensitive to upgrades and data model changes. PLM vendors developed sophisticated systems how to manage it. However, the problem is still in place. The second one is data capacity. This problem is not uncovered in the full scope. I believe, with the future PLM implementations, there is a real chance to discover a scale-related problems.

What is my conclusion today? I think technology matters. Big boys developed alternative non-SQL data storage options. At the time when SQL-based relational database are power our PLM platforms, vendors need to think about what next. Some initial signs to think how to manage all company product lifecycle data for 50+ years are in place. There are visible interesting alternatives. However, they required future investigation by vendors.

Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg

4 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank, Future Trends, Technology | Tagged: Data, NoSQL, PLM | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

Is PLM Customization a Data Management Titanic?

February 26, 2010

PLM implementations are not simple. At the time when PLM vendors are working how to improve their out-of-the-box product offerings, PLM customization plays a very significant role. According to the analysts, customizations and services can be estimated as about 40-50% of total revenues in PDM/PLM domain.

What is behind these numbers and why it happens? In order to understand it, I think, we need to get short round-trip in the history of Product Lifecycle Management. The roots of PLM are in the first implementations made by large aerospace, defense and automotive manufacturers. This is the birth place of PLM and origin of PLM ideas. Since then, PLM started their journey downstream by proliferating ideas, software products and implementations. I can identify the following three trends in Product Lifecycle Management these days:

Maturity of the basic product offering
The PLM core functionality came to the stable form and mostly represented by product data management, lifecycle components and additional modules related to the business process activities – requirements, program, project, services and other processes. Interesting is that PDM and Lifecycle are considered as the most mature components of these portfolios.

Industry specialization
Initially, PLM started in aero/auto domains. However, nowadays it is moving towards all industries. In order to play industry game well, PLM vendors decided to invest into industry orientation. This trend can be characterized by a wide range of options starting from industry marketing and ending by providing packaged PLM solutions for the specific industries (i.e. Apparel, CPG, Food and Beverage, etc.)

Emerging trends
I can identify two main emerging trends – SaaS / OnDemand and Open Sources. Both are focused on how to satisfy needs of customers differently utilizing new software technologies and deployment as well as by investing in the alternative form of business models.

When PLM industry focused mostly on providing out-of-the-box functionality, I didn’t find any technological trends focused on core data management capabilities of existing and future PLM systems. This is a very bad sign, in my view. Looking backwards, I can see significant improvements that were made in PLM software by the introduction of flexible data modeling. It allowed to decrease cost of PLM implementations, but created the huge amount of today’s customizations and implementations based on existing PDM/PLM platforms. And this is a growing conflict between customized PLM software and upgrades to the coming releases of PLM portfolios.

I found the following Develop3D’s article as a very interesting. Al Dean is writing about replacement of highly customizable instance of MatrixOne by Open Source PLM Aras. There is more information about this event on Aras website. Read it. It looks like customer made the decision in favor of Open Source because of absence of alternatives to move to the next version of out-of-the-box MatrixOne version. I want to point out on the discussion about PLM software upgrades – PLM, Cloud, SaaS and Software Upgrades. My conclusion was simple – technology and architecture matter. If PLM data management capabilities could manage the upgrade event from highly customizable solution, I doubt the customer’s decision was to dump out existing vendors. Does it mean Aras has such technology? I don’t know. However, coupled with Open Source business model it crushed existing PLM implementation.

So, what is my conclusion? My hunch is that PLM vendors forgot to invest into data management technologies. PLM data management technologies were created 10-15 years ago. Since then, industry developed huge amounts of customized implementations. I see these implementations as Titanic pushing forward… Do you think they will be able to achieve port of destination or will die in front of icebergs of upgrades? I see it as a real and dangerous problem.

Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg

20 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank, PLM Implementation, Technology | Tagged: Customization, Data Management, PLM | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

PLM and BIM Interplay in Enterprise Data

February 17, 2010

Interesting news drove my attention yesterday. Bentley System made an acquisition of the company called Enterprise Informatics. When I was reading press release, my guess was that Bentley decided to expand their capabilities in data management. Especially, this expansion can be very interesting when working in construction and power process industry for asset management. So, that was the exact target for acquisition.

Bentley Systems, Incorporated, the leading company dedicated to providing comprehensive software solutions for the infrastructure that sustains our world, today announced that it has acquired Enterprise Informatics, Incorporated (www.enterpriseinformatics.com) and Exor Corporation (www.exorcorp.com). The Enterprise Informatics eB Insight software provides configuration and change management capabilities for mission-critical infrastructure asset operations for the energy, nuclear, rail, and government sectors.

I think, this is an interesting move.We are starting to see potential convergence of two initially separate segments – PLM and BIM. Each of them has different origins. PLM started in the large aerospace and defense companies. BIM came from need to manage complex construction processes. However, my hunch was that both need to use very similar underlined data management technologies. First, I wrote about that last year in my post – PLM and BIM: Common Roots or Common Future.

Looking on eB product from Enterprise Informatics, I figured out a significant similarity with core concepts between what was called Information Models for Enterprise and Product Lifecycle Business Processes. The marketing slogans are different. However, data management, change management, process orchestration are very similar. I put few slides from eB presentation (you can watch 5-minutes video on this link).

So, what is my conclusion? This is a very interesting potential interplay between construction industry and traditional PLM implementations. Technologies used on both sides are very similar. My assumption back that time was that PLM and BIM will come to the certain point of commonality in their ability to manage complex data models, changes and processes. And this is what happens now. I’d expect potential movement from both PLM and BIM towards interesting projects in industries where they have no sole proprietary ownership as leading solution providers.

Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg

4 Comments | BIM, Daily PLM Think Tank, Future Trends, Technology | Tagged: BIM, Data Management, Enterprise, PLM | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

PLM: Hug Your Data or Federate?

January 13, 2010

Last year I had chance to blog about why PLM Is Too Complex To Mashup? Thinking about Enterprise PLM implementations, I’m always coming to the following conclusion about the way PLM is managing data – PLM system strategically trying to define, own and manage the complete product data cycle and every aspect related to this data inside and outside of the enterprise. Now, in my view, by doing so, PLM put their effort as a very confronted to the other enterprise systems. This behavior is not typical for PLM- other “enterprise animals” are also trying to keep data closely to their core databases and vaults.

Data Hugging

So, I can call this behavior “data hugging”. Is it good and beneficial? From the certain perspective, you can think about this as a good option to centralize data management and control the situation in your organization related to Product Data or any other topic managed in the context of Product Data. However, the reality is different. Such data hugging can create a situation where get full information is quite complicated.

Federation

What are the alternatives? Data Federation is another alternative. Connect data in your system to the data in another system using so called Proxy objects. The idea of the federation has a potential, since it doesn’t require movement of data around between applications on logical and sometime even on the physical level. However, data federation can be quite complicated for implementation and requires explicit connections between systems.

Other options

If you understand the problem of “data hugging” and don’t think a federation can work out with your environment. DW (Data Warehousing) and MDM (Master Data Management) are two related directions and technologies, that can give you a different perspective in federating data across your company.

What is my conclusion today? Companies are struggling between two possible options – to give extreme power to business and enterprise application to hug data inside or to allow data federation inside organization. The first option is promising for the first look. The hidden portion of the “single system” message is the need to move data from everyplace in your organization to this system. This is not a simple decision in my view. Different flavors of the federation can be perceived as a more complex option upfront, however, can provide a more balanced data management solution for the long term. New disruptive solutions coming from outside of enterprise (mashups are one of them) can provide an interesting alternative for tomorrow’s enterprise data management. What the route PLM systems and implementation should take? What is your opinion?

Best, Oleg

18 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank, Enterprise 2.0, Technology | Tagged: Data Federation, Mashup, PLM | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

How Many Enterprise Backbones Organization Needs?

November 13, 2009

Interesting post drove my attention yesterday. Reading about the role of PLM as enterprise backbone, I wanted to raise a question – how many of such “e-bones” do we need? My experience shows that in every enterprise implementation, discussion magically came to the point of “what will serve as a company/organization/product/enterprise or whatever else backbone. And I have to say, that I always got mixed feeling about that. I will try to put my pros and cons in the way enterprise systems can be organized to serve product lifecycle and enterprise resource planning needs.

1. One vs. Many
Thinking about a dream situation when all systems in enterprise will be magically synchronized around a single system (or bone), I came to the conclusion that we need to keep it as a dream. However, practical approach, in my view shows that enterprise organization will continue to have multiple systems serving their needs.

2. Enterprise Platforms
The interoperability between enterprise systems is killing enterprise organizations. Company’s IT is normally trying to develop their strategies around various platforms, but even so, they can rarely reduce the amount of systems and functional needs drive to additional system deployment.

3. Master Data Record
This is another place where “discussion” between enterprise systems becomes critical. Who is controling data and serve as a master? The data synchronization is an expensive. However, decision about master data control comes again and again with each next step of enterprise system development on the functional level.

4. Role of SaaS
In my view, cloud services (or SaaS, if you will) is playing disruptive, but positive role in discussion related to enterprise architecture and various “enterprise bones”. The disruptive role of SaaS is to show to the organization, the reality of no-single system controlling all data and processes in enterprise.

I’m interested to discuss and listen about your experience? What is your opinion on that?
Best, Oleg

12 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank, Disruptive, Interoperability, PLM and organization, Technology | Tagged: Architecture, Enteprise, Platform, PLM | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

3D Perspectives: How To Create Products for Our Digital Future

November 12, 2009

My new post on 3D PERSPECTIVES.

Best, Oleg

Leave a Comment » | 3DPerspectives, Market and Technology, Technology, User Experience | Tagged: 3D, 3D Perspectives, Blog, Digital Products, PLM | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

PLM and Collaboration Platforms: Partnership or Buzzworks?

November 3, 2009

Collaboration is very important for product development including different phases – design, engineering, manufacturing etc. “Collaborative factor” is playing a very important role in development of CAD, PDM, PLM etc. I have to admit that engineering activities are very much different from areas like accounting and some others. For many years, development of capabilities to collaborate, was a very interesting and innovative factor related to development of CAD and PLM system.

However, time is moving forward together with technologies and collaboration is coming to our everyday life together with internet, mobile devices, office automation and other innovative technologies. So, everything becomes very “collaborative”. Question I want to ask today in simple way – should CAD/PLM related product think about wider adoption of collaborative capabilities coming from non-specific engineering and manufacturing world.

I was looking on the latest report in this area made by Forrester “Forrester Wave(TM): Collaboration Platform Q3 2009“.

According to the Forrester, the following functional areas considered as primary criteria to include vendors into their research:
-Collaborative workspace capabilities. This includes the ability to store and manage multiple
artifacts with the space, not just the ability to share content over a network.
-Basic content management capabilities. These capabilities allow users to access a single copy of
an artifact through the network.
-The ability to customize the space for specific business purposes. Personalized dashboards,
workspace templates, and workflow capability are examples of customizability.
-Enterprise capabilities for security and authentication. Access-control lists (ACLs), single-
sign on through Active Directory or LDAP support, and enterprise rights management
capabilities (ERM) are some of the key components for enterprise security and authentication
offered by these vendors.
-A development environment for building custom collaboration applications. The evaluated
vendors provide development options for firms with very specific internal needs or for power
users who want to self-provision custom applications.

From the standpoint of Product Lifecycle Management and Collaborative Product Development, I can see a lot of things are missing in this list to allow designers and engineers to collaborate. However, mentioned above capabilities fit very well tool. Special interest, in my view, also need to be done on the latest focus of collaborative platforms on the intersection between a content creation, traditional collaboration and social elements.

So, what is my intermediate conclusion? Collaborative platform’s evolution brings them more and more in the space of traditional product design and development collaboration. Is it relevant and make sense to marry them, or we are just talking about “yet another collaborative buzzworks”? Is there overlap in platforms and functionality provided by PLM vendors? Do you think a notion of collaboration is so different in product design and development that make appropriate to develop specific platforms?

Just my thoughts.
Best, Oleg

5 Comments | CAD, Collaboration, Daily PLM Think Tank, Technology | Tagged: Collaboration, Platform, PLM | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

SharePoint 2010 for Collaborative Product Development Applications

October 23, 2009

I’d like to share some of my initial thoughts about SharePoint 2010 technologies presented by Microsoft during this week. This is my first and not systematic impression. I’ll, also, try to eliminate all marketing messages and product re-branding that Microsoft made. I’d like to focus on SharePoint from the technological standpoint and analyze what potential, I see to use this technological platform to develop Collaborative Product Development Applications (also known as PLM).

What is the box? Coming from MOSS 2007 to SharePoint 2010 Microsoft added FAST Enterprise Search product as part of SharePoint. This is probably the most significant product enhancement. Rest of the package is significantly improved, but keep the same functional scope. Of course, it includes all technological components – .NET framework, Office 2010 and many others.

So, what is the basket of technological components that can make it attractive to develop Collaborative Product Business Applications? Here is my short list – Content Type, List and External List, Business Connectivity Services, Web Parts, LINQ, Workflow Services.

Content Type. This is the basic data modeling element in SharePoint. Defintion of content type well integrated and accomplished with rich set of tools. On one side, this is of course, not a replacement for RDBMS and have many limitations. Don’t take me wrong. Content Type cannot be use for product modeling, Bill of Materials etc .. However, on the other side, accomplished by events, notifications, workflow and additional embedded features can be used to define a model of collaboration.

Lists. This is very powerful, in my view, element of collaborative structure. You can “share a list” in many ways and this is very flexible. Simplicity of the list-based collaboration made a success of SharePoint. This is my opinion. Expanded with something called “External Data Lists” in SharePoint 2010, can be used widely to share information between people. The purpose of External List is to share data located in external applications and data sources.

BCS. I already touched BCS as part of my post about SharePoint 2010 Composites. BCS is fundamentals of SharePoint connectivity to external data sets. SharePoint definitely focuses on how to collaborate and access data in enterprise systems, which make it quite powerful tools. BCS (formerly known as BDC) was expanded to become CRUD (Create Read Update Delete). In MOSS 2007, BDC was available only to access read-only data from external systems.

Web Parts . As a technology, Web Parts are not unique in SharePoint. However, SharePoint contains rich set of Web Parts that can be used together with different content types and lists. Therefore, I see it as sufficient set of building blocks for collaborative applications.

Workflow. The same as WebParts, Workflow is a not unique, but quite efficient bundle of the process-oriented technologies. SharePoint contains very basic stuff out of the box, but additional tools allows to develop new processes. Some of the tools look very impressive and allow to develop processes in the traditional, diagram-based view, but also in the view of english-typing conditional text.

You can tell me, some of these technologies are available also without SharePoint. You are right! The question is not if you can use LINQ or Workflow services independently. My point is if SharePoint as a package will become attractive enough for software and service developers in the area of Collaborative Product Data Management. And, if yes, how all these components can be used together to develop cost-effective and powerful applications.

I’m sure IT, Service Companies and PLM vendors will be making their own tests and assesments about what are pros and cons of SharePoint 2010. Product BETA will be released later this month and released in the beginning of 2010. What is clear, SharePoint 2010 is a significant commitment from Microsoft to provide the platform for enterprise organization, and it can be considered as a valid option for organizations these days.

I will continue to share my future thoughts, ideas and analyzes about SharePoint and will be interested to hear your voices too.
Best, Oleg

8 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank, Future Trends, Technology | Tagged: Microsoft, PLM, SharePoint, SPC2009 | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

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Daily PLM Think Tank Blog

PLM Platforms: Retirement Or noSQL Knock-Out?

Is PLM Customization a Data Management Titanic?

PLM and BIM Interplay in Enterprise Data

PLM: Hug Your Data or Federate?

How Many Enterprise Backbones Organization Needs?

3D Perspectives: How To Create Products for Our Digital Future

PLM and Collaboration Platforms: Partnership or Buzzworks?

SharePoint 2010 for Collaborative Product Development Applications

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