According to IT World article, I mentioned above while the use of the GPL, LGPL, and AGPL set of copyleft (the method of making software free) licenses dominate free and open source projects, that use is still on the decline. According to the research made in the last year

The GPL family now accounts for about 57% of all open source software, compared to 61% in June," Aslett wrote. More troubling for copyleft advocates, though, could be the projection Aslett and the 451 Group make based on the data. "…[I]f the current rate of decline continues, we project that the GPL family of licenses will account for only 50% of all open source software by September 2012."

Later in the article author is coming to a very interesting comparison on the main reasons why "copyleft" is in decline as well as growing distance between "free" and "open source" licenses. The growing consolidation around communities opposite to to vendor’s project stated as one of the factors that drive an increase usage of permissive licenses. Almost two years ago, I discussed PLM vs. Free in my blog post. In my view, IT World article partially confirms the trend supported by many vendors to support more flexible and less restricted open sources licenses.

CAD, PLM, Free and Open Source

In CAD and PLM domain, Aras is a strong supporter of so-called Enterprise Open Source model. Aras is not using GPL licenses. Aras is developing community of users to share and development solutions on Aras Innovator platform. You can read Aras license agreement here. There is no other vendors in PLM world that follow open source strategy. At the same time, there are few products in the market distributed for free by CAD/PLM vendors (eg. Dassault System DraftSight and others)

What is my conclusion? I’m following the development of open-source software, communities, free software and future potential steps of vendors with high level of interest. In my view, vendors are more interested in how to innovate in business models rather than follow strict rules of GPL licenses. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

I hope I’ve got your attention with this blog title. So far, GrabCAD was known, until now, as a company that focusing on creation of community of engineers and crowdsourcing in engineering. If you still thinking so, make a refresh – not any more. GrabCAD is focusing now on how to solve the problem of design collaboration. Navigate to Boston Business Journal article today -GrabCAD to launch a new service for engineers and hire exec team to read more about it. According to Hardi Meybaum, GrabCAD co-founder and CEO:

…the company now plans to launch what could become the focal point of its business: a service that aims to change the way engineers and their customers collaborate on designs… The latter will be necessary as GrabCAD looks to roll out its new collaboration service within months, he said. Currently, most collaborating between engineers and their customers is done by emailing designs back and forth and discussing them over the phone, Meybaum said. What GrabCAD has developed is a “more visual way to collaborate,” he said. The service, which began in beta last week, allows engineers to post 3D versions of their designs on a private section of GrabCAD. Customers can then view the design – rotating around it to see all sides – and put a pin in an area of the design where they’d like to leave a comment.

In addition to that GrabCAD is planning to hire three vice-presidents to expand existing executive team:The company also plans to soon hire three vice presidents for its executive team, in engineering, product and marketing, Meybaum said.

This is not a first time I’m posting about GrabCAD. If you want to refresh your memory, navigate to few of my previous posts – The Future of Engineering Communities and GrabCAD, Collaboration and DropBox. The second one (including video) can give you hints of “changing course” of GrabCAD towards solving problems of collaboration. The confirm it is not a mistake or last minute thoughts, navigate to the 2-years-old GrabCAD presentation on slideshare – CAD Future and GrabCAD. You can learn from there that GrabCAD vision already in 2010 was to provide a solution for collaboration.

GrabCAD business model

When you speak about online community, the question of the business model is usually raises many questions. How to monetize thousands of engineers using GrabCAD to upload/download CADmodels? Meybaum answered on this question in the BizJournal article:

GrabCAD has been earning some revenue from corporate design challenges that launched on the site last fall; past examples have included a deck vent for luxury yachts builder Saare Yachts and an interior for a Shelby car. But the new service is expected to become the main revenue source for the company after it launches, Meybaum said.

Design Collaboration and PLM

Collaboration is not a new problem. Thinking about buzzwords, to solve a problem of design collaboration is one of the fundamental objectives of any CAD/PLM vendors. Solutions like Dassault 3DLive and others were focused how to get it done in a most efficient way. It was on the list of PDM/PLM for the last 10-15 years. Does it mean GrabCAD is about to compete with mainstream collaborative design solutions coming from Dassault, Siemens PLM, PTC and other vendors? I’m not sure yet… GrabCAD will be trying to monetize a significant amount of engineers (about 187,000 according to the publication) with a new service.

Design Collaboration and Email problem

Many companies these days are run by email. Email is the problem and the solution at the same time. Many of design collaboration, PDM and PLM solutions today on the market are trying to solve a problem of the mess email can create in the company. Just to point to few “newcomers” – Kenesto and Vuuch. According to Kenesto website, the solution provided by Kenesto is “nothing to instal, as easy to use as email, but better”. According to the problem definition on Vuuchwebsite – swamped by email? No matter the deliverable or the people involved, tracking details, staying on schedule and keeping everyone up to date, is an age-old problem that is getting worse due to the proliferation of email and distributed teams. Nuage is introducing something they call – Social Business Collaboration – Generation Y, today’s workforce entrants, are dependent on social media to communicate [I assume social media communication is opposite to email].

GrabCAD is targeting to solve the problem of email communication too. Take a look on the following passage from BizJournal article -Currently, most collaborating between engineers and their customers is done by emailing designs back and forth and discussing them over the phone, Meybaum said.

What is my conclusion? As you know, all roads lead to Rome. Can I say today all roads in engineering lead to PLM? Maybe… It still too early to say what type of collaboration service GrabCAD will provide. Taking into account few known snippets of data such as – 3D Viewer, collaborative design, to avoid an email problem, I can expect GrabCAD to provide cloud applications helping people to “work together”. Take a look on one of my previous posts – How to reinvent PLM collaboration? to grab some ideas about what other companies are doing today. Will GrabCAD grab something different? Time will show. I just want to restate my yesterday note about PLM collaboration – PLM is a fun place to be again. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Normally, I’m trying to avoid the topic of PLM competition. Not very often, readers or attendees at conference are approaching me with the blunt question – what is better? TeamCenter vs. Enovia? Aras or Windchill? My typical answer – there are no “absolute advantages” for a specific PLM system. Enterprise and manufacturing companies are complicated environments. The level of complexity, strategy and current context can create a situation where each specific product will have his own advantages and disadvantages.

However, today, I want to talk about competition from the standpoint of PLM vendor. In other words, what can make PLM vendor competitive strategy more successful? To make this discussion interesting and provoking, I will use some examples of what happened in PLM market for the last 10 years. In the world where PLM buzzwords are getting very similar, I will try to answer on a single simple question – what can make PLM vendor competitive nowadays?

I can see four major strategies that can be used by vendors – discontinuity, marketing and branding, partnership and competitor’s mistakes. These are not specific characteristics for PLM companies and can be used for everybody. However, I will try to fill them with PLM context.

Discontinuity

Enterprise software is a complicated beast. PLM cannot be excluded from that list. It is complex, requires long time planning and implementation cycle. Once implementation it works for a long time,  replacement cost is high too. Add to this last 10 years of acquisition in this field and large vendor platform transformation and you will have a perfect place to play with discontinuity. Formally, nobody is discontinuing PLM/PDM products. Pro/PDM, Eigner, SmarTeam, Metaphase – all these products are supported and maintained by vendors on a certain level. Practically all PLM vendors are building a support network to deal with customers running outdated and retired systems. Therefore, these customers can become a strategic asset for competitors that will be able to propose them an interesting offer. Once the decision made, to change it will be even more complicated because of long processes, politics and corporate ego. Therefore, discontinuity play can be powerful and dangerous.

Partnership

To have good partners in business is like to have good friends in your life. If you have trusted and powerful partners, you can use it as an advantage in your competitive war. In PLM business, I can see two types of strategic partnership – service and sales channel partner (eg. IBM was such for many years in business with Dassault Systems), the parent company (eg. Siemens for Siemens PLM) or another business division (eg. SAP, Oracle, Microsoft). To develop and keep right partnership is very important. To know how to drop partnership is also one of the elements of a competitive game.

Marketing

To build a perfect marketing and branding story is another way to beat competition. Yes, I know… you are smiling and maybe even thinking – who is buying marketing PowerPoint presentations these days. Believe me or not, it happens all the time. If you are powerful and strong brand with billions of dollars in revenue, your marketing story can be very compelling. It will take time, resources and effort to sort it out. Yes, you are in danger to buy a dream. But it can be a very nice and well packed marketing. So, take it seriously. It can be 3D Experience, High Definition PLM, Instant On – dreams is an important weapon too.

Competitor’s mistakes

Last, but not least- the mistakes (or in this context – presents) made by your competitors. You need constantly and permanently watch your competitors. Low quality of a release, compatibility failure, channel problem – all these mistakes are weapon in your arsenal to build your marketing expansion.

What is my conclusion? The PLM competitive landscape becomes more dynamic than before. I can see some movements done by large companies (eg. Autodesk), smaller established companies with very innovative strategies (eg. Aras) and startup companies. As I said in one of my previous posts – PLM is a fun place again. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Social creates a lot of buzzes nowadays. Believe it or not, butmore than 72% of people in U.S. are now on Facebook. It is impossible to ignore, and I can see companies that trying to apply the idea of social networking to other places. PLM is one of them. Vuuch was one of the companies that pioneered the ideas of “social @ work”. Nuage is another one that came just recently by introducing Nuage Cafe social app as a first step towards fully blown PLM.

I’m not sure if “social” magic will make PLM idea more prominent. I think the devil in details. Working for enterprise and corporate clients is a different story. It is much different than Facebook. One of the companies that doing a great job by selling “social story” to enterprises is Yammer. I was reading BrainYard blog earlier this week called -Yammer Updates Emphasizes Enterprise, Cloud Search. What was interesting in this story is a connection made between Yammer social functionality and other on premise and cloud applications in the company. Yammer propose something they call “universal search”.

…Yammer’s concept is different. To Yammer, universal search makes it possible to search across connections to both enterprise and cloud-based systems integrated with a Yammer network. For example, a search by customer name might turn up automated updates from Salesforce.com, SAP, and a Microsoft SharePoint site, as well as posts by users about that company.

The idea of search crossing cloud / premise boundaries is another interesting point.

All the data that gets pulled out of systems to populate the ticker or activity feed also gets indexed for universal search,” CEO David Sacks said in an interview. “It really addresses the problem of how to get universal search across cloud applications. Traditionally, enterprise search appliances just crawl all the data behind the firewall.”

I think, Yammer take is interesting because it confirms that manufacturing (and other enterprise organizations) cannot live in “social vacuum”. You can bring Facebook to the organization, but without connecting social network to the right data sources, you will be struggling with your ability to deliver real value. Search is a fundamental mechanism to bring disconnected pieces of data together. PLM companies are thinking a lot about how to make it work. Almost all PLM companies in the past made OEM agreement with enterprise search solution (Authonomy, Endeca, etc.). Dassault Systemes moved forward and acquired Exalead to make search work across DS products. Siemens PLM just released TeamCenter Active Workspaces – innovative applications that use a search as one of the paradigms to access data. Startup companies like Inforbix(*) are experimenting with different ways to aggregate content across disparate applications to make it easy available.

What is my conclusion? Social is not a magic that converts enterprise software and PLM to “gold” overnight. You need to think how to “embed” social into your company infrastructure, connect it to other solutions. This is the only way to make it work. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

*Disclosure – I’m co-founder of Inforbix.

Big. Bold. Boom! The one and the only SolidSmack is writing about PLM. Do you remember first SolidSmack mission statement? Unfortunately, I didn’t make a snapshot of that page. It was something like “to supply a daily portion of coolness to engineers and everybody around”. Here is what happens. SolidSmack is taking himself into wishy-washy conversation about PLM… Well, I actually do like it and add to my PLM definition stories.

Two blog posts caught my attention: PLM Software: The War Rages On and Survey: Is PLM Software Worth It? Both stories were written by Adam O’Hern. Two blogs are worth reading. Take it together with comments- I’m sure you will enjoy. Here are my favorite passages.

The case for PLM:

PLM is not any one piece of software, but rather a way of connecting various parts of an organization into a single cohesive system. It allows designers to more easily take manufacturing issues into consideration, and allows manufacturers to synchronize operations with marketing and distribution. It’s a way of linking design and engineering to marketing to manufacturing to retail and logistics; it’s a way of making big, complex problems more manageable.

Another quote is the elaboration on how much complexity (or structure) is enough?

The question is not whether Product Lifecycle Management is a good thing; clearly, it’s important that business processes be properly managed. But the structures we create for the management of our projects range in complexity from simple doodles on graph paper to massive corporate data structures, and everything in-between. Small businesses often struggle for lack of structure, while big corporations strangle themselves with excessive red tape. How do we find solutions that equip us for growth without inhibiting it?

What is my conclusion? Actually, I didn’t find any link on the survey. So, maybe it was a joke . I think PLM gets better these days. With the introduction of cloud, Autodesk PLM 360 and significant focus on improvement of user experience, we have a chance to see something better tomorrow. So, do you think PLM will punch your face with some fresh portion of ECO business process ? Hmm… I’m not sure it will happen soon. I even don’t know if it is needed. However, I’m sure PLM is looking for simple tools to get the job done. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Pictures courtesy of SolidSmack.com

NorthBridge seems to be shifts their focus to cloud computing. Navigate your browser to the following link to explore the Future of Cloud Computing. Don’t miss their twitter account - @futureofcloud. The article I was mentioned earlier speaks about of the survey NB made related to the cloud computing in 2011. Here are the most interesting passages I found there.

We found 40% of respondents are only experimenting with cloud computing at this point. Another 26% of survey respondents reported they are waiting for more maturity in the market before adopting a cloud strategy. In terms of current cloud use, 13% indicated complete confidence for mission critical applications, while 11 percent of respondents cited usage spikes. This shows that while cloud computing is indeed just getting started for a majority of the market, there is current production use of cloud computing that is significant…. The significance of saving money with cloud computing was reinforced by the fact that 55% of respondents believe the cloud has a lower total cost ownership (TCO) and only 13% indicating a higher TCO in the cloud.

What is my conclusion? Engineering, manufacturing and enterprises is a complex space characterized by slow speed of changes and sophisticated dependencies and eco-system. It is interesting to see how VC long time invested in companies in the enterprise domain shifts their interest to cloud computing. Actually, I can see it as a promising fact that can create an alternative to the kingdom of four big companies in this space. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Freebie. NorthBridge didn’t pay me to write about their cloud initiative.

Let’s talk nuts and bolts today. APIs.. If you think about any PDM / PLM implementation, the question about API is one of the most important. Why so? Because you know – it is near to impossible to get all done out of the box and via configuration. Even if marketing advertised and sales promised, you will have to have something to be done behind the scene using this magic word API.

PLM Openness

The topic of openness comes very often these days. I’ve been posting about openness about a year ago -PLM and New Openness. Notable news around PLM Openness is coming these days around so-called “Codex of PLM Openness” introduced by ProSTEP iViP. Navigate to the following link and you discover that majority of PLM vendors, including big-three-PLM (Dassault, PTC andSiemens PLM) are committed. Yesterday, during the opening session of annual Siemens PLM user conference – PLM World 2012 in Las Vegas, the topic of PLM Openness came into many conversations and even was captured by Siemens PLM blog.

Enterprise Systems and APIs

Enterprise systems have long history of API development. If you spent enough time in your life with databases and enterprise business you probably remember horrible stories of proprietary databases, move to SQL, hope of XML, believe in SOA / Web Services latest dreams about REST APIs. Last week, I came to a very interesting blog trilogy from CloudAve blog about enterprise architecture, APIs and more called – Simple Service Enterprise part 1, part 2, part 3. It is a bit long, but I recommend you to have a read. The following picture was resonating to my thoughts related to PLM implementations and APIs:

Here is my favorite passage that I’d apply to product lifecycle management and many other enterprise implementations:

…the fundamentals of information interchange: exposing business functionality, currently encapsulated in the back-end, to the outside world via services. These services are a one-to-one translation to back-end functions, which are one-to-one translations to business process steps themselves: the smallest level of business transaction.

Implementations, API and Open Data

Here is the idea how I see the future of open APIs. PLM system(s) is holding hostage of data and responsible for a set of process and transactions. Since PLM system cannot live in a vacuum, the interaction of PLM system with other systems in the enterprise (including various B2C and B2C services) is driven by processes. In order to have a productive API, you need to expose these processes using an appropriate level of granularity, including semantics of data (in this context, thinking about resources seems to me as an appropriate way). Having such a level semantically-resource-oriented-APIs can provide an easy and open way to interact with PLM system to build the most effective services.

What is my conclusion? To build a good API is a very complicated task. To make Open API is even harder. I can see a potential in exposing both semantics of data and related system functions in a way allowing me to use it and accomplish processes automatically. I think, web and REST give us a bit promise. The responsibility of vendors is to develop an appropriate level of granularity to make it usable. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Picture is courtesy of CloudAve.

Aras Spectrum

Last week, during ACE 2012, Aras presented a new cloud PLM strategy and new product – Aras Spectrum. So, what is behind this name? In a nutshell, Aras is partnering with Microsoft Azure team to deliver Aras Cloud PLM solution to mega-customers with high level of scalability and unique Aras cloud strategy. The main point Aras made is related to the reality of the PLM deployment requiring on-site integration between “multiple-clouds”. You can see this point presented on the following slide:

Aras introduces the three-way strategy to deploy Aras PLM on cloud with some mirroring functions on-premises. They called it 1/cloud mirror; 2/failsafe mirror; 3/dual deployment. You can see slides bellow. However, it is still hard to me to understand the difference between these options. What I understood from short conversation with Aras people, these options represent a different mirroring strategy.

Aras strategy is to leverage massive scale of Microsoft Azure platform to reach significant performance and scalability achievements. It includes the ability of Aras PLM to run across the world – wide network on Microsoft Azure data centers, 50,000+ users load test and more…

Which Cloud Better?

Aras is the first PLM vendors that introduce the question of “which cloud better?” to us. Until now, the main message we’ve heard from cloud providers was about how to eliminate the complexity of deployment and IT by using cloud PLM. That was the main message provided by Autodesk PLM 360 – instant on. The difference introduced by Aras is taking us to the reality of on-site customization, which unavoidable as was stated during Aras cloud presentation.

Another point of potential differentiation is cloud infrastructure. Aras is strategically positioned with Microsoft Azure. Autodesk didn’t provide any information so far about data centers and cloud infrastructure they provided. From a very brief public message provided by Autodesk publicly, PLM 360 is a true cloud application:

Autodesk PLM 360 is a true multi-tenant cloud application. Users and managers will never again have to worry about upgrades and broken customization; the application is always up-to-date and compatible with any customer-specific configuration.

Opposite to that, Aras Spectrum is by definition cloud/on-premises solution with some elements of mirroring. Aras is using additional services provided by 3rd party vendors to support so called “Aras Connected Cloud strategy:

What is my conclusion? Autodesk was a first major PLM broadly available on the cloud. However, cloud cannot be ignored these days. Aras Spectrum just confirmed that. Aras Spectrum is not released yet. I’ve heard Aras is talking about July-August 2012 timeframe (still need to be confirmed). However, it is interesting to see different views on how PLM cloud strategy can be implemented. I think, there are enough space to innovate with the cloud solutions, and I’m looking for more news.

Best, Oleg

I’ve been reading an article in aecbytes – Getting a BIM Rap: Why Implementations Fail, and What You Can Do About It. The article is talking about two main non-technological aspects related to implementation and adoption of BIM practices and products – people factor and change factor. Here is my favorite passage:

BIM implementation is not really about software. It’s about organizational change—and wrenching, disruptive change at that. Our experiences—and the experiences of our clients—have demonstrated that people and processes are far more important than technology.

Of course, BIM is an absolutely wonderful tool, and it has great potential to streamline costs and processes, to help different disciplines communicate effectively and to ensure little confusion on a job site. But to get to that promised land of benefits, you have to pass through the wilderness of adoption, which always seems to hinge on organizational change, not technology. This is the inconvenient truth.

It made me think about additional aspects of commonality between PLM and BIM – they fail in the same way. Which led me to some thoughts related to adoption of both PLM and BIM software.

People

Do you remember the following post I made a year ago – PLM: How to Fix Technologies and Stop Fixing People? I wrote it after listening to John Gage keynote at COFES 2011. One of the phrases resonated – “Technology is easy. People are hard“. The influence of people is a significant factor in software product implementation that requires from people to re-think the way they are doing their business. Both PLM and BIM software can eliminate some roles in organizations and change business processes between organizations. It makes the process of software adoption long and complicated. This is a place where failure comes very often.

Changes

Changes is another aspect, which very often comes together with data and process oriented software like PLM and BIM. The specific character of almost every enterprise-level data and process management software is to focus on how to change organization – improve processes, re-organize business relationships, change tools, etc. It is extremely hard to people, since change is hard. So, it leads to failures.

What is my conclusion? To work with people is hard. To make a software for people is double-hard. The time when software adoption was a problem of people is in the past. "Consumer behavior" is coming to enterprise software. Vendors in both PLM and BIM domains need to take a note and re-think the way software works. Painless adoption, user experience, adaptive behavior related to potential change – these elements need to become a priority for the next wave of PLM and BIM software. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

I want to talk about CAD and the cloud or even more specific – CAD files and the cloud. Two leading companies in CAD space – Autodesk and Dassault Systems are presenting solutions allowing to store (or even synchronize) CAD files to the cloud. Dassault was probably pioneering this solution with SolidWorks n!Fuze. However, Autodesk clearly outperformed Dassault System by introducingAutodesk 360 providing 3GB of free storage for every AutoCAD user as well as other features – viewing, collaboration and sharing capabilities. Another Autodesk product – AutoCAD WS can store drawings directly to the cloud (I think both AutoCAD WS and Autodesk 360 paths need to converge somehow in the future).

The ability to store and sync CAD files using cloud services and storage is a powerful option. At the same time, the "Save As To Cloud" option is not much different from "Save As File". Everybody knows how messy file vaults look like in every company. Dou know how many CAD files are stored on local hard drives, USB discs, network storages in your company. The amount of un-managed files and data is growing. For the last 15-20 years, we didn’t succeed to create a reliable data-management option for all these files. There is a potential danger that all this "file mess" will be flowing to the cloud gates and will turn into CAD cloud mess. In my view, it creates an interesting opportunity to manage cloud-gates in more reliable ways to get data organized and prevent messy file uploads. It is a complicated problem, and it will require dedicated work of vendors to make it right. Do you remember Apple mobile.me failure? I can imagine similar situation happens with any CAD cloud synchronization features.

What is my conclusion? Cloud is a powerful technology. Engineers, architects and other CAD users are sensitive to information. The ability of cloud services to create a mess can put a potential of cloud services at risk. CAD vendors need to bring a solution that will allow to cloud CAD file storage to become manageable and reliable. Otherwise, we are at risk to say – "It is not a technology stupid". Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg