PLM, ERP and enterprise cloud race

May 22, 2012

I was reading GIGAOM article Amazon and SAP put All-in-One in the cloud few days ago. According to the article SAP will soon make an appearance on Amazon EC2 cloud. Interesting enough it is connected to the fact almost all software of SAP rival Oracle is already available from the cloud.

Another interesting point is related to the fact Amazon is working to support product customization on the public cloud. It will remove another big barrier for deployment and implementation of enterprise software. Here is a very interesting passage:

The conventional wisdom is that big companies are wary of running ERP and other enterprise applications in a public cloud — because they tend to be quite customized and tied into other applications, which makes them difficult to forklift into the cloud. But Amazon is working to change that perception.

PLM and ERP: cloud race

In the past, CAD / PLM vendors lost the competition of C-level and IT visibility in the organization. PLM was considered as Engineering tools, and it took many years and significant effort to improve this perception (still not accomplish in full, from my standpoint). These days a typical “PLM on the cloud” discussion usually runs in too many questions about cloud PLM viability and security. At the same time, we can see how ERP vendors run their products on Amazon cloud.

PLM and Cloud / IaaS

When Amazon is considered as a definite leader in IaaS race, Aras PLM is thinking differently. During the ACE 2012 conference earlier this month, Aras announced Aras Spectrum – soon to be available on Microsoft Windows Azure platform. You can take a look on my post-ACE conference blog post – Aras PLM, Microsoft Azure and Cloud competition.

Autodesk (new PLM vendor these days) is playing with lots of “cloud toys” in the portfolio. One of the toys is PLM 360 -recently announced “cloud PLM alternative”. It is not clear what IaaS platform is using for their cloud development and deployment, for the moment.

What is my conclusion? Amazon is pushing to the enterprise by supporting major ERP vendors. Autodesk is playing with new cloud offering and probably going to make their IaaS choice later. Microsoft is experimenting with Aras PLM to provide Aras Innovator up and running on Azure Cloud. Dassault, Siemens, PTC… Are you watching?

Best, Oleg

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PLM Competition Toolbox

May 14, 2012

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

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Thoughts before ACE 2012: Why Aras PLM is different?

May 1, 2012

I’m in Detroit today to attend Aras PLM user conference – ACE 2012. I’ve heard in the halls before conference that the theme of the conference – “Aras is different”. Few months before, Aras blogged about the same topic here. You can learn about the conference agenda by navigating to the following link. I wanted to give my top three points why I think Aras is different than the majority of PLM vendors on the market.

#1 Aras Innovator upfront cost is FREE

Yes, it is true. Aras Innovator can be downloaded from Aras Website and you can use it absolutely for free. So did I. Not all modules of Aras PLM are free. Some of them, coming from community need to be purchased (eg. CAD integrations and some others).

#2 Aras is CAD agnostic

Aras is not affiliated with any CAD and CAD vendor. After majority of PDM/PLM vendors were acquired during the decade of 2000s, Aras remains one of not many vendors featuring full PLM portfolio.

#3 Aras is Enterprise Open Source

Nobody else is doing so. Actually, I believe Aras invented this term – Enterprise Open Source. However, it is not a traditional OSS you may think about. Aras combine free license with significant investment in building of Aras community of developers. Under a specific license, Aras can provide you full source code of Aras Innovator.

What is my conclusion? I’m looking forward to learn more about Aras today and tomorrow. Last year, Aras did very bold claims about how Aras Innovator can replace Enovia, TeamCenter and Windchill. The jury is still out. So, I’m going downstairs just in few minutes to listen to Peter Schroer keynote and learn more.

Best, Oleg

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PLM and SharePoint Technical Definition

April 30, 2012

I’m off to Detroit, MI this week for Aras PLM user conference – ACE 2012. Microsoft .NET and MS SQL are two important elements of Aras infrastructure. For many enterprises these days, Microsoft IT based technology is no-brainerdecision. It runs everywhere.

It is near impossible to talk about PLM and Microsoft’s technologies without talking about what potential role Microsoft SharePoint can play in establishment of scalable PLM solutions. Usually, Microsoft SharePoint and PLM are over-hyped by lots of marketing slogans. I decided to take off marketing and get down to SharePoint technical definition that can help PLM and IT managers in organization to decide about how to position PLM and SharePoint in their strategies and implementations.

The following article – Making Sense of SharePoint 2010 by Tim Anderson provides a very good foundation for my post today. Have a read and make your conclusion. The following quote is the best introduction to what is SharePoint in a nutshell:

So what is SharePoint really? Technically, it is an ASP.NET application which runs on Internet Information Services (IIS), Microsoft’s web server, and which stores most of its data in a SQL Server database. Conceptually, it is the outcome of Microsoft’s efforts over many years to create a web storage system, a document repository accessible via a web browser.

SharePoint is extremely good if you are working with Office documents. It provides a very tight integration with Microsoft Products. The majority of companies today are running Office. I was able to see some companies taking off to Open Office or Google lately, but not doubt – Office is mainstream even after of public web 2.0 disruption. The following passage explains clearly your advantages of working with Office in SharePoint – seamless integration.

SharePoint is designed to integrate with the Microsoft Office client applications such as Word and Excel . If you do not use Office, SharePoint is unlikely to be worth running. When used with Office, a key feature is that users can open a document from a SharePoint site, edit it, and save it, without being presented with a Save As dialog. This is one reason SharePoint works better than simply storing documents on a web site with download and upload features.

I want to add few words about multiple versions of SharePoint. There are three versions – Foundation, SharePoint Server 2010 and SharePoint Enterprise 2010. Here is the summary:

Foundation includes document management, discussion forums, wikis, and support for applications including workflows. SharePoint Server 2010 extends this with search, compliance features including document retention policies, server-side Microsoft Word automation, social media features including status updates, ratings and tagging, individual profiles and content sites, video and audio media support, templates for workflows, improved scalability, and more. SharePoint Enterprise 2010 adds server-side support for Access databases and Excel automation services, business intelligence integration, support for forms applications using InfoPath (part of Microsoft Office), more scalable search and more.

PLM and SharePoint

I think, the overall hype of SharePoint replacing PLM solutions is over these days. Nevertheless, SharePoint became practically ubiquitous these days if you think about enterprises. The infrastructure provided by SharePoint is well-known by IT and service organizations. As soon as it approved to be used in organization can provide a backbone for collaborative applications. You need to take into the account the cost of SharePoint.

The base Foundation product is surprisingly rich, considering that it is a free add-on. SharePoint involves licensing for three products, each with separate CALs (Client Access Licenses). These are Windows Server, which is always required; SQL Server, which is required unless you use the free SQL Server Express, and SharePoint itself, which is required for editions other than Foundation. Since SQL Server Express is limited to single-server installs and 10GB per database, some organisations which can get by with Foundation will still need SQL Server and its CALs.

You can consider SharePoint as a platform for customization.

SharePoint is an application, but it is also a platform. Since it is built on ASP.NET, code that runs on ASP.NET will generally run in SharePoint too. Office services for Word and Excel enable applications that parse, manipulate and create documents.

What is my conclusion? SharePoint is stable Microsoft based infrastructure. If your company is running on Microsoft products you can consider it as an option to develop additional applications. Check your PLM provider on how flexible PLM platform and applications can be integrated with SharePoint – you can save a lot of service money and people resources in the future by doing so. Reading from Aras website:

Our application framework is implemented on the Microsoft .NET and Microsoft SQL Server platform. And Aras technology has built in security from the ground up and a world-class professional services and support team to meet your unique design, development and infrastructure needs.

I’ll pay a close attention understanding how Aras keep following integration with SharePoint and Microsoft technological foundation. Follow my blog and twitter later. this week.

Best, Oleg

Disclosure: Aras paid my registration and traveling expenses to ACE 2012. Microsoft wasn’t involved. Both Aras and Microsoft are in no way influenced the content of this post.

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Will Search Make PLM Cool?

April 26, 2012

search-cool-PLM.pngDisclosure: As a co-founder of Inforbix, I understand that my opinion about Search can be unintentionally biased. Nevertheless, I believe the topic itself is very important, so I decided to share my thoughts anyway.

Cool is clearly trending. First time I posted about my “FREE and COOL” theory in CAD/PLM about two years ago here. I can see many changes happened since that time. Cool stuff is not a joke any more. It went much beyond the level of geeks drinking coffee in Palo Alto downtown Starbucks. If you want to quantify the power of cool, the following numbers aboutApple 3Q financial results can be quite refreshing. Navigatehere to see that iPhone business is bigger than whole Microsoft.

In my view, the understanding of the cool trend is coming to engineering and manufacturing space as well. Accessing information in a meaningful way can be a very cool way to help engineers in their work. CAD and PLM companies are flirting with enterprise search vendors and search technologies already quite long time. You can read one of my write ups about that here – PLM Lifelike Search Injection.

I was reading a blog post by Aras Corp – Get Global Intranet Search From A9 For Aras Innovator. The sticker COOL STUFF caught my attention. Read the article, but more importantly, watch the video. A9 from Alcove9 using open source Apache Solr Search to power their capability to index Aras Innovator content.

Another video presenting Inforbix Search Tips can give you an idea how search of PLM and CAD content can come from Infobrix. Navigate to Inforbix Search Tip Video to read more. Inforbix is using semantic technologies combined with noSQL data-management approach to provide search and navigation capabilities.

What is my conclusion? Search is an interesting function. Since “Google” officially became a verb, many people consider a practical and intuitive search as absolutely important element of any system. At the same time, PLM and other engineering content are semantically rich and can provide difficulties to a traditional Google-search approaches. As we can see from both examples below, the special treatment needed to make it cool. The most important function of search is to solve noise vs. signal. Google approach works well for “lady Gaga” type of searches. PLM, Engineering and Manufacturing require some alternative approaches. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

PS. Next week, I’m attending ACE 2012 conference in Detroit, MI and hope to learn more about cool stuff from Aras.

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Why PLM technology can be addictive?

April 10, 2012

You may think everything is going faster these days. Instagram acquisition earlier today proved how disruptive and fast can be an influence of the internet on service providing. On the picture below, you can see a comparison of the technology adoption pace. At the same time, the speed of change in manufacturing companies is different from other businesses. Thinking about PLM implementations the question many CAD / PLM vendors are asking is how to make people to get addicted to their software.

I’ve been reading an article in Aras Corp. blog – Once you get started with Aras, you just cannot stop. The article is taking another fast review of Aras’ key capabilities and characteristics – flexibility, usability, openness, dynamic modeling and few others. Don’t take me wrong Aras folks – it is all good marketing stuff. However, one of the characteristics caught my special attention – Aras is addictive. Here is the quote:

After using Innovator for a while, building solutions with it becomes second nature. And addictive. The possibilities are so endless that sometimes deciding what not to do is harder than deciding what to do. Get a few small solutions under your belt, and you’ll find yourself looking for new challenges to take on. Don’t believe me?

It made me think about how PLM technology and product can be addictive. Unfortunately, Aras blog didn’t provide an explanation why it happens. So, we can only guess why it may happen. I can say that I’ve seen the symptoms of addiction among many engineers. The root cause of this addiction is a very slow pace of change. When you use something for a long time it becomes your second nature. Talk to people using a particular CAD system or any other software (PLM included). My second guess is about cost / result rate. As you know, Aras solution is free. When you get something for free, your level expectation is completely different. So, you got excited fast and, as a result, you want to use it more. And, finally, my third guess is related to the ease of adoption. Unfortunately, I cannot prove the last one. My own experiments with Aras cannot be considered as a qualified test case. So, I need to ask Aras customer. Actually, I’m going to ACE 2012 conference just in few weeks from now, and I hope to have a chance to speak to many Aras customers there.

What is my conclusion? Instagram was addictive. From zero to almost 30M users in less than two years. PLM companies are far from this level of addiction in my view. Aras and their enterprise open source model pretends to be addictive. I wasn’t able to find a public number of Aras PLM downloads. So, I hope to learn about it during coming ACE 2012 conference in Detroit.

Best, Oleg

picture credit urbanomic and picture jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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PLM Competition 2010s and Anti-cloud PLM rap?

March 6, 2012

For a very long time, the PDM /PLM market was boring. Not so many events were happened during the decade of 2000s. It was mostly about “acquisitions” of smaller companies by bigger companies. Obvious, large acquisition made historical records – Agile Software, MatrixOne and some others. For me, the interesting PLM innovation of the past decade was Aras Corp. and the idea of Enterprise Open Source back in 2007.

However, it looks like things are going to change now. Something big is really going to happen. The major catalyst is Autodesk. In my view, Autodesk announcement about cloud PLM – Autodesk PLM 360 was a critical mass that changed direction of the market. I recommend you to read Jim Brown’s post – A time and a reason to talk Cloud PLM (thanks, Jim for your kind words about my cloud PLM writing). Here is a short passage that summarized Jim’s position:

The time has come to take a look, at a minimum. Now there is more to look at than vapor, there are some real options to consider. Will they meet your needs? Given the number of options available my guess is that you will find something that can help you improve your business.

Cloud PLM and back to PLM competition

I’m sure everybody knows famous Carl Bass anti-PLM rap? You can see it here. With the new cloud PLM initiatives, we can see how competition is taking defensive statements. The first signal I’ve heard was during PLM Innovation Congresslast month in Munich during my panel discussion about PLM future business models. The conversation between Autodesk and PTC representatives was about PLM and “apples to apples” comparison. I captured it as following:

During the last AU, Autodesk made a very bold statement that Autodesk cloud PLM will be x10 time cheaper compared to traditional PLM offering. On contrary, the position of PTC is that we are not comparing “apples to apples” and there is no single definition of PLM. The hint was that Autodesk probably delivers “a different PLM”.

Another interesting competitive statement was made by Peter Schroer of Aras Corp. Navigate your browser to the following blog – The Cloud Won’t Cure What Ails You. Peter is talking about “cloud” as a technology, that won’t change much and even so, Aras can run their software on the cloud “when a customer is ready“. Here is my favorite Peter’s passage:

At Aras, we’re cloud-ready if and when you are. If you want to deploy your PLM solution in the cloud, that’s no problem. If you want us to host it, we can do that too. If you want it right down the hall, that’s fine with us. We can even do a little of each, if that’s what you’d like. The point is, it’s not about where you’re running, it’s about what you’re running. And companies that don’t get that are destined to wind up with their data locked down in some proprietary cloud configuration with less access and bigger problems than they had before.

In my view, Peter’s passage can be compared with Carl Bass’ anti-PLM rap back in 2007. The question about “some proprietary cloud configuration” is clearly an open call and needs to be answered by cloud vendors.

Enterprise IT and Cloud PLM

In my view, everything that happens now around cloud PLM will finally put Enterprise IT on fire. There is no “business as usual” anymore. Companies will be curious about how they can take advantages of cloud PLM and IT will have to provide an answer. This is will be a moment of truth. The question how Enterprise IT will compete with Cloud architecture and what is not less important – cloud cost. Cost makes a difference these days. Getting back to Peter’s note, it is not about “where do you want to set up your server” question. It is about how to provide a IT infrastructure that can solve two problems at the same time – reliable data access everywhere and low cost.

What is my conclusion? It is an interesting time now. As Jim Brown stated, there are some real options to consider. Data access, mobile and IT cost will become real competitive advantage cloud companies will provide. How fast PLM cloud story will be growing? It is an interesting question. Everything is going faster online. Remember where FB was 5-6 years ago? I’m sure we learn later this year. It is going to be a lot of fun, I’m sure. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Note: Stay tuned, Autodesk granted me access to PLM 360, and I’m looking forward to sharing my impression very soon.

picture credit digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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PLM Innovation Panel: The Future of PLM Business Models

February 24, 2012

PLM Innovation 2012 in Munich is over. It was a great event, gathered about 250 people and 20+ companies on the exhibition floor. On the 2nd day, I was delighted to moderate a panel discussing future PLM business models. The idea of the panel was to have an opportunity to discuss modern PLM business trends. I had a privilege to work with four amazing panelists - David Sherburne of Carestream Health, Leon Lauritsen of Minerva, Richard Murawka of PTC and Grant Rochelle of Autodesk. Please find slideshare presentation with my questions. Below, some of my notes that I took after the session.

PLM Platforms

The tone was placed by David Sherburne. David stated that vendors needed to share data and enable re-use of components. His opinion that most of the companies implementing “multiple donuts,” and it is very hard to co-exist. Amazingly enough, vendors confirmed that this is the most reasonable way. In my view, vendors sound less peaceful when customers are asking them in the “sales” mode (compared to discussion panel mode).

Do It Yourself (DIY) PLM and CoIT

The conversation about DIY was mostly about two trends “cloud” and “mobile”. Autodesk has an opportunity to say again that new Autodesk PLM on the cloud will soon revolutionize the PLM market, and services will be available to co-exist with the software products and modules on premises. In addition to that to topic of “complexity” was raised by PTC in a context of choosing “right tools for a job”. The last one make sense. However, in my view, it is not answering the question of how to address to the problem of smaller manufacturing companies.

Communities, Crowdsource and Open Source

Crowdsource is still a topic that needs to be better understood. I don’t feel comfortable talking a lot about it. There are multiple trends and options around the crowdsourcing. In my view, most of the vendors are in “learning mode”. Community and open source merged into a signle discussion. PTC mentioned open-source as a way for them to decrease the cost of solution by embedding new software. At the same time, Aras Cor. promoted their vision of Enterprise Open Souce and discussed how it affects development by introducing “product roadmap crowdsourcing” with the customer’s ability to vote for specific features in the roadmap.

Cloud and Autodesk PLM

I clearly didn’t want to miss the topic of the cloud and Autodesk. During the last AU, Autodesk made a very bold statement that Autodesk cloud PLM will be x10 time cheaper compared to traditional PLM offering. On contrary, the position of PTC is that we are not comparing “apples to apples” and there is no single definition of PLM. The hint was that Autodesk probably delivers “a different PLM”. In my view, cloud is a clear disruption. However, it will be interesting to see how Autodesk will face all cloud PLM challenges. However, the operational cost to deliver cloud PLM solution will be a fraction of today cost of traditional business. So x10 multiplier can become real.

What is my conclusion? It was great discussion. I hope to see video recording soon. I can see a significant amount of disruption in the market of PLM. Combined with many opportunities, it is an interesting time to watch. Stay tuned and speak your mind…

Best, Oleg

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Crowd-sourcing in CAD / PLM software development

December 11, 2011

The topic of crowd-sourcing is fascinating these days. Community based development is interesting topic, and I’m continuing to follow different aspects of crowd-sourcing and finding new examples. I had a chance to write about Local Motors few weeks ago – it was a perfect example of crowd-sourcing and community-based development. Earlier today, I had a chance to read about interesting examples of how Autodesk is using crowd-sourcing to improve localization of their products. Localization is a complicated topic. Even if you’re hiring the best bi-lingual people, your software won’t be perfect.

Autodesk is proposing for users of Inventor 2012 to participate in the project to improve Autodesk Inventor translation. Navigate to the following link (in Russian) and you can see how you can propose a new translation for a specific term and / or command.

I found another interesting example in crowd-sourcing in PLM software – Aras Community roadmap. Navigate to following link and see how you can actually "vote" for specific features and functionality.

This story is specifically ineresting in my view. The ability of software vendor to manage in a very precisely way what features and functionality need to be implemented is a complicated product management objective. To use crowd-sourcing principles in this project is a very interesting and innovative approach, in my view.

What is my conclusion? Crowd-sourcing is fascinating and inspiring. I think it opens additional opportunities in the way nobody thoughts before. It is promising, and I’m expecting more in the future.

Best, Oleg

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PLM Think Tank October Top 5

November 2, 2011

The last week snow in Boston was kind of an event. I think, many of New England residents are still sitting without power and the internet. Which made me think about how dependent we are on the internet supply and how few choices we actually have when it comes to the service interruption. Talking about it, I really want to come to the topic which caused lots of discussion among readers of my blog and also CAD/PLM blogosphere – cloud. Navigate to the following link and read about my discussion with Ralf Grabowski about the future of Cloud. Now, let’s move to my traditional top 5 for October.

1 – PLM Definition and ERP Implementation Patterns

Manufacturing clearly wants to optimize product development processes across the enterprise. The single point of truth is leveraging the simplicity of SQL-database experience for the last 20 years. At the same time, centralization and replication of data are complicated and expensive processes. Managing phased implementation creates a set of new problems related to the ability to maintain the data transformation and synchronization within the time.

2 – Aras, SolidWorks and Disruptive PLM Strategies

Aras is clearly playing a role of a disrupter on PLM market. Back in 2007, Aras disrupted PLM first time by introducing Open Source PLM. It looks like Aras is on the way to make a second disruption among large companies using SolidWorks and taking a role of Enovia V6 in a bundle EPDM / EPLM. Enovia clearly has a technological advantage of having unified development forces in their new Dassault facilities in Waltham, MA to develop “best in class” Enovia V6 / SolidWorks EPDM integration. The speed of customer adoption will be a key factor for Aras.

3 – Cloud and Next Generation of BOM

I think, cloud and other web-based solution can introduce many advantages. One of them is to streamline BOM access by members of the team. Think about BOM as a Google spreadsheet and you probably can get excited by how it may change the way you work. However, cloud technologies introduce new challenges (especially in the field of integration) that need to be solved.

4 – CAD, PLM and Visual Reporting

I think, slowly, but surely, CAD and PLM vendors are starting to understand the value of the ability to present data reports and visualize them nicely. It recognized by many vendors (and just brought examples of Siemens PLM, Dassault Systems and Autodesk). In my view, we are going to see more examples of how reporting capabilities can increase the value of products and make it more usable.

5- PDM Cartoons, Marketing and Unsolved Problems

Few weeks ago, I’ve been interviewed during Autodesk Forum in Moscow. The conversation was about social networks and the question I’ve been asked was – What is next after “Like”? For the sake of the story, my answer was “+”. However, let me shift gears a bit. Thinking about PDM Cartoons I came to the question – “What is next after PLM?”. I found many things marketed as “PLM” functionality presented in these PDM cartoons. Does it mean “PDM” will be the next step after “PLM”. Who knows… The only thing is clear to me – lots of problems in manufacturing organizations cannot be solved by application of yet another “power point deck”. It is time to think what software can do so. The complexity is not in favor these days. Companies are trying to find a different way to solve existing problems.

Best, Oleg

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