Will COFES 2012 make Arizona cloudy this week?

April 11, 2012

I’m coming to COFES 2012 this week. COFES (The Congress on the Future of Engineering Software) is a think-tank event and one of my favorites. For the next 3 days, I’m going to put myself under the sun in Scottsdale, AZ. COFES publish the list of key participants – you can see it by navigating the following link. I was looking at COFES 2012 agenda earlier this week. The formal topic of COFES 2012 is the intersection of design and risk. Here is the quote from COFES website.

We all address risk daily, each in our own way. In design, risk is a consideration in each decision we make. But how and when we think of risk needs to change, most notably our risk horizon is much lower than our reward horizon. That is, we’ll often take a larger risk if the consequences are further away from us. Expediency is often the heart of our shortsightedness.

COFES agenda has a formal boundary and contains keynote, technology and vendors suites briefing, analyst briefing and roundtable. However, the most important thing at COFES is an opportunity to talk and have a "networking" with people there. Navigate to this link to see COFES 2012 agenda. The topics of briefings, conversations and meetings is something that you want to review first. I did my review last week and back to this today again. Below I put some of my pre-COFES observations.

Cloud… Cloud… Cloud…

I counted word "cloud" 24 times in the COFES 2012 agenda. I think it means a lot. Cloud is going to be a significant topic on the COFES discussion table. I found few interesting sessions about the cloud. Akoya, Autodesk, Intel and Microsoft are going to talk about cloud during technology briefings. Monica Schnitger is going to talk about cloud during her "The channel and the cloud" analyst brief. Jim Brown is going to present a cloud topic during his cloud and social computing session. I found the following passage from Jim’s intro interesting:

How are the Cloud and Social Computing Changing Business for the Next Generation? The Cloud and Social Computing have already begun to change the way business works and poses many new challenges. It has also opened the door to entirely new business models and opportunities. The first waves of digital natives hit the shores of businesses about 10 years ago and are rising up the corporate ladder. What happens when the next wave—cloud and social computing natives—start impacting business. How is your business likely to evolve?

Finally, the topic of one of roundtables is "Where is my data"? is also related to the cloud:

Where’s My Data? Local, distributed, private-cloud, public cloud: What belongs where? For some, does it really matter? Which aspects of data need to be under my direct control? Why? When does it matter? When it matters, where do I draw the line? Does it matter who controls the data when it’s clear who owns it? For that matter, when do I want my data to expire?

I’ve been writing a lot about the cloud on my blog recently. Navigate here to read more.

PLM and PDM divorce

Another topic that caught my attention was the topic of separation between PDM and PLM. The topic will be presented by Chad Jackson as Decoupling of PDM and Process. The topic came to my attention few time due the recent Autodesk and Aras strategies to integrate PDM and PLM offerings. Navigate to my previous blog to read more about that.

Decoupling PDM and Process. The holy grail of PLM (and BIM, for that matter) has been true integration of product data, engineering process, and downstream process. Now we’re hearing that there’s value in keeping engineering data management separate from processes. What’s going on here? Where does this decoupling of product and process make sense? Are we done with the idea of an all-encompassing homogeneous solution? Is this simply a divergence, an acknowledgement of reality, or an entirely new opportunity?

PLM and The Single Source of Truth

Another interesting topic that drove my attention was analyst briefing by Michele Boucher of Aberdeen related to so-called Single Point of Truth. This topic resonated with one of my previous blog posts – PLM and "The Whole Truth" problem.

Single Source of Truth versus Federated Models. The increasing complexity of today’s products, including the involvement of multiple engineering disciplines such as mechanical, electrical, and software, means there is a tremendous amount of data and data types to manage. What are the best ways to manage it all? Is having it all in a single database (Single Source of Truth – SSoT) the best approach? Where is SSoT a good fit? Where does it fall down and a federated model become more effective?

So, I’m sure COFES will bring more topics to discuss on the blog. I will be actively twitting from COFES. The hashtag is#COFES2012. You’re probably can be interested to following other COFES attendees on twitter. Here you can find COFES Twitter directory. I’m looking forward to keep you busy with my posts, tweets and pictures.

Best, Oleg

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Cloud PLM and “Made in Germany” Sticker…

April 3, 2012

Few weeks ago, back to my trip to Munich PLM Innovation Congress, I published post - Will Europe Adopt Cloud PLM? Navigate back to my article to listen to the speech by Neelie Kroes, European Commission Vice-President for the Digital Agenda, announcing a European Cloud Partnership help cloud computing through public procurement. Since that time, I started to follow “European cloud” story more closely. The following article caught my attention - Cloud computing ‘made in Germany’ stirs debate at CeBIT. Take five minutes of your time and read this article. It sounds like German IT and specifically Deutsche Telecom is playing an interesting cloud game. Security is a strong point they want to leverage. Here is an interesting passage:

The head of the German communications giant, Rene Obermann, told visitors to the CeBIT this year that “the ‘German Cloud’ could present a competitive advantage for us.”. Having lived through first a Nazi dictatorship, then a Communist one, Germans are especially sensitive when it comes to data protection and Deutsche Telekom hopes to leverage this to its advantage. “In Germany, the data protection laws are very strict. But several operators do not come from Germany and do not adhere to these standards,” said Obermann. He is aiming at the 3.6 million prosperous German small and medium sized firms who have not yet taken the leap to storing their data using cloud computing. Only 12 percent have done so. “It’s an enormous potential,” said Obermann, vaunting the advantage of his firm’s 30 giant servers or “datacenters” across Germany.

It made me think about future cloud PLM potential of German market. Two major CAD / PLM companies are permanent residents in EU - Dassault Systems and Siemens PLM. Dassault has significant cloud ambitions. Earlier last year, during DSCC 2011 event in Las Vegas, Bernard Charles mentioned that DS spent about $2B to develop the best in-class cloud online PLM platform. At the same time, Siemens PLM so far didn’t show up any cloud development and plans. All this happens in parallel with last development of Autodesk PLM 360 and Autodesk’s ambitions to establish themselves as a “Salesforce.com of PLM”.

What is my conclusion? I think, we are in the early beginning of cloud PLM race. As we’ve seen in consumer web, mobile, search and social networking, competitors will be using various tools to protect their interest and establish a better market position for their cloud products. Will “Made in German” sticker become one of them? Time will show. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

picture credit domdeen / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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My first take on Autodesk PLM 360 system and technology

March 24, 2012

Autodesk PLM 360 is widely announced and promoted “new cloud alternative” from Autodesk to disrupt PLM market. After initial announcement, back few weeks ago, press, media and bloggers gave significant focus to PLM 360 products. If you want to catch up a bit on articles, I’d recommend you few stories – Sharing our PLM 360 experiencesby Jim Brown of Tech-Clarity, Autodesk announced pricing for PLM 360 offerings by Develop 3D, Live from AU. Autodesk and PLM. Strap your boots, it is coming by Al Dean of Develop 3D, The devil must be cold: Autodesk launches PLM product Nexus by Chad Jackson of Lifecycle Insightand Autodesk PLM 360: Insanely Configurable? by Monica Schnitger. I also had a chance to write few articles after PLM 360 release. Navigate to the following link to read my article - Autodesk, Cloud and PLM for $19.95. That was my conclusion few weeks ago just after the announcement:

Autodesk made a significant turnaround from rejecting PLM to claiming Autodesk PLM revolution to come to every manufacturing company. If I think Darwinian, it can be a confirmation of the Autodesk ability to adopt to the reality of today’s world. One of the conclusions I’ve made last week during PLM Innovation conference in Munich – PLM is strategic now. Autodesk is claiming PLM revolution and emphasizing “technology” as one of the enabling factors. It means technologies behind Autodesk PLM 360 is what made Autodesk PLM possible. I’m looking forward to seeing technological whitepaper about Autodesk PLM 360 with some details going beyond marketing buzzwords. Time will show what Autodesk is serving us in PLM cloud box.

Autodesk PLM 360 Hands On

Autodesk provided me an access to Autodesk PLM 360. My PLM 360 tenant runs on Autodesk QA servers. I discover that later. It was good to know and helpful to justify my impression about performance and availability. After doing some work during the past 3 weeks, this article is an attempt to summarize my initial take on what I think about PLM 360, how it is different from other PLM systems on the market and talk as much as I can about PLM 360 architecture and technology.

General Concept and Strategy

Let me talk how I understood Autodesk concepts and strategy with regards to PLM 360. Autodesk step in PLM game after long time ignorance of PLM. The key point made by Carl Bass during AU was – now we have right technology to solve problems of manufacturers. The bold hint was that technologies and PLM products available from competitors cannot do so. Autodesk conceptual differentiation is the cloud. At the same time, Autodesk has their own PDM product – Autodesk Vault PDM. So, Autodesk is creating a strategy of how to use PDM on premises and PLM on the cloud. In my view, this strategy is interesting and can hold real implementations beyond presentation slides. However, the weak point of this strategy will be the ability of Autodesk PLM to provide an effective integration solution and technology. Autodesk will have to balance between existing PDM product and development of PLM on the cloud which will obviously bring overlaps and lots of questions. One of the examples is about Bill of Materials. My initial take on this problem is here – Cloud PLM and Bill of Material Question. Here is my short graphical explanation of what is the concept of Autodesk PLM:

Data Architecture

Data model is one of the key elements of any PLM system. With the absence of technical information from Autodesk, here is my take on PLM 360 data architecture. PLM 360 is not much different from all other PLM systems. It most probably using SQL-compliant database as a foundation of data architecture. On top of that, there is an object abstraction layer you can use. If you’re familiar with few other PLM/PDM systems, it won’t take you much time to get to PLM 360 model. The core data modeling abstraction concept is “workspace”.

Workspace is defined as a set of attributes with related information and specific behavior. In that sense, it is not different from Object / Class / Business object abstractions used by other PLM developed back in 1990-2000s. I discovered rigidity in some definitions like not ability to extend the amount of tabs in the workspace and some others issues. This leads me to some assumptions related to RDBMS modeling behind, but I don’t see it as something critical.

User Experience

The overal user experience of PLM 360 is nice. The web application has nicely designed elements of UI. It looks a little outdated if you think about modern UI experience circal 2010. You can take a look on the following two screenshots that basically show you the majority of UI experiences.

In addition to that, I found few elements of user interface with original and interesting decisions. One of them, I want to mention is the interface defining attributes of the workspace.

Administration

Overal PLM 360 can be configured and administered via web user interface. No local utilities needed. Please see screenshots above, I used to explain the idea of workspace. In addition to that, you have quite extensive set of administration for scripting and additional configurations.

The only exception from this rule is a workflow designer – a rich application and requires Java to run. I’d say, this kind of reduces the flexibility of process management that can be done by PLM 360.

Architecture and Technology

Autodesk is quite secretive with everything that related to sharing of technological and architecture information about how the system is built. They are taking full responsibility on hosted cloud servers. I don’t have a confirmed information what company is hosting PLM 360 for Autodesk. According to Graphic Speak publication, PLM 360 is hosted on dedicated servers. You can try to make some conclusion about multitenancy. On the picture below, I created PLM 360 pseudo architectural diagram. The picture I draw based on my “educational guess” and “detective actions” :) . PLM 360 has near to traditional enterprise architecture contains SQL-compliant database, server code and web frontend.

What is my conclusion? I have a positive impression about PLM 360. It is stable, and I could perform my research experiments as well as some customization and development work. The overall maturity of the system even higher than I would expect from the system developed from scratch (as it was mentioned by Randal Newton in his article) – Autodesk PLM 360 is the first PLM product written from scratch for contemporary cloud technology. Autodesk is betting it will be a hit with companies of all sizes. At the same time, I didn’t find special novelty in the data-management paradigm. Also, I didn’t find any confirmation about flexibility and scalability of the system going beyond traditional PLM solutions (in the case systems like Enovia, Aras, etc. will be hosted on the cloud). The concepts of integration of PLM 360 are not clear and provide a concern with regards how PLM 360 can be embedded into overall company IT strategy. With all that, I found my user experience quite enjoyable, and I liked how PLM 360 performed tasks. These are just my thoughts… I’ll continue my experience with PLM 360 and hope to come with more articles.

Best, Oleg

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The Future of PLM consultancy

March 20, 2012

The internet changed our life for the last decade. I don’t think somebody will argue about that. Cloud is trending. Thinking about different aspects of how cloud is going to influence our future business, the topic of consultancy and service providing shouldn’t be missed. Some time ago, I posted – PLM, Cloud and Service Channel. Back three months ago my conclusion was as following

I have no doubt, introduction of new cloud solutions won’t reduce the amount of services and implementations. So, first, it is a good news for VARs and service providers. At the same time, cloud solutions will set a different “price” demand in front of vendors and partners. To re-organize to a new pricing structure will be another challenge.

The following announcement few days ago resonated to my thoughts about PLM cloud and service partners – General Atlantic And Sequoia Put 60M In Enterprise Cloud Consultancy Appirio. Here is the news, in a nutshell:

Cloud solution provider and consultancy Appirio is announcing $60 million in new funding led by private equity firm General Atlantic, with participation from existing investors Sequoia Capital and GGV Capital. This brings Appirio’s total investment to over $70 million. Previous investors include Salesforce.

Appirio shows some impressive growth.

In 2011, Appirio grew revenue by over 80 percent, expanded into Europe with the acquisition of Saaspoint and developed the Cloud Enablement Suite, an integrated set of applications that supports enterprise cloud development. Additionally, the company introduced CloudSpokes, a crowdsourcing community for cloud development.

So, what is my conclusion? All PLM service providers that afraid about how cloud will destroy their business need to calm down. There are plenty of work to deploy cloud solutions and money is here. You will probably need to justify you skills and think about how to adopt your practices and experience to the speed of the cloud. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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Cloud PLM: what do you need to know about multitenancy

March 18, 2012

Multitenancy. You may ask me why I want to spend this Sunday morning talking about multitenancy. Well… two words – important and confusing. Now, with the announcement of Autodesk PLM 360, I expect conversations about multitenancy to happen more often and even create some turbulence during pre-sales cycles. So, let me step back and try Wikipedia link. Here is the definition:

Multitenancy refers to a principle in software architecture where a single instance of the software runs on a server, serving multiple client organizations (tenants). Multitenancy is contrasted with a multi-instance architecture where separate software instances (or hardware systems) are set up for different client organizations. With a multitenant architecture, a software application is designed to virtually partition its data and configuration, and each client organization works with a customized virtual application instance. Multitenancy is also regarded as one of the essential attributes of Cloud Computing.[1]

History

The history of multitenancy goes to few computing paradigms we had in the past – time sharing and ASP (application service provider). Time sharing was very popular on mainframe (this is why many people consider mainframes as one of the technological roots of cloud computing). ASP concept when another company “hosted” product for customers is another early example service that influenced the current state of multitenancy.

Economic and Multitenancy

I’d like to start from the economic of multitenancy. Thinking about cloud software, multitenancy creates fundamentals for resource sharing. As a result, you can make the operational cost lower. It increases the ability to compete and provide more attractive price point for services. Hosting without multitenancy won’t provide such an advantage, since you will have to host server per customer. It obviously can bring an advantage of scale economy, but even so won’t be on the same level as multitenancy.

Technology, Complexity and Examples

The majority of enterprise applications developed during the last two decades were a single tenant. The target was “client-server” environment and data center. Even applications developed with “web architecture in mind” assumed database and application server dedicated to a customer. Multitenancy requires significant changes in architecture. Some of the enterprise software providers started to move their platform towards multitenancy. The majority of knowledge about development of multitenancy came from public web sites and SaaS application providers. The most famous example is salesforce.com. The architecture of salesforce.com assumes full multitenancy also on application and data level. If you want to deep your knowledge about how Salesforce platform designed, navigate to few available youtuble videos. Few slides below can give you high level view of Salesforce vision of multitenancy.

Salesforce view on waste of multi-tenancy

Salesforce.com -multitenancy advantages

Salesforce high-level multitenant architecture

I can recommend you another interesting article about multitenancy from Microsoft. Navigate to the following link -Multi-Tenant Data Architecture. The document is relatively old 2006), but provides some interesting illustration about how multitenancy and data architecture can be designed. Take a look on the following picture illustrates Three Approaches to Managing Multi-Tenant Data:

Multitenancy and data architecture (source: MSDN)

There are obvious pros and cons in different solutions. Multitenancy has obvious advantages mentioned above. However, complexity and cost of development of a multitenant solution are higher than a single tenant alternative.

What is my conclusion? In my view, we are going to hear more about multitenancy. Cloud is disruptive. At the time, vendors are going to own servers and provide services, multitenancy will become one of the factors to improve profitability and decrease operational cost. At the same time, marketing will continue to use “buzzwords” to win a social marketing and pre-sale game. If you are a customer shopping for your first cloud solution, you better get yourself a bit educated about the topic of multitenancy. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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Dassault: 3D Experience, V6 and Cloud

March 11, 2012

Few weeks ago, during SolidWorks World 2012, Bernard Charles, President and CEO of Dassault System announced 3D Experience. I posted about it on my blog before. You can navigate to the following link to read more about it – V6, 3D Experience and "after PLM" party. If you are following me on twitter, you noticed I’ve been visited Dassault System office in Waltham, MA yesterday. There is an advantage to be located close to PLM highway in Boston. So, when visiting DS office for some business meetings, I used this opportunity to ask people about 3D Experience, V6 and cloud. Here are few thoughts based on my discovery, conversations with DS people and customers about 3D Experience and "after PLM".

3D Experience and Consumer Behavior

Bernard Charles is clearly the best person to listen about 3D Experience. Josh Mings of SolidSmack interviewed Bernard Charles just few weeks ago during SolidWorks World 2012. I recommend you to watch it over the weekend on HD screen in a "couch mode". I’m sure you will learn a lot and also will have fun.

Think about software, I can how world is moving towards "experience" from the old paradigm of "function". One of the key elements, in my view is so called "consumer behavior". Take a look on the slide from my presentation during PLM Innovation conference 2 weeks ago in Munich.

Consumer behavior is what going to drive next wave of customer adoption. PLM was (and still is) long time "function-oriented" software. The shift towards "processes" PLM companies tried to accomplish brought some success, but mostly in large companies. The future PLM adoption is dependent on a new Gen-Y type of people and new software. The focus is how to get a job done, similar to how iPhone app can give you direction or order a table in the restaurant.

V6 platform

To create V6 platform was a big deal for DS. Similar to what happened at Siemens PLM with TeamCenter Unified and some other PLM companies. It was about a single platform that was required to unify everything at DS. Thinking about some similarities of ERP world, it was like SAP R/2/3 platform or Oracle Fusion (still debatable how efficient Oracle Fusion is). So, DS made a compromises learning things from various versions of Enovia, MatrixOne and SmarTeam to create a new platform called V6.

The idea of CATIA / V6 connection was about how to create brand new immesrive behavior and solve some old problems in Enovia / Catia integration. Customers and industry watchers took a "bundle" behavior as something dominant. In general, my feeling that DS failed to deliver a positive message with CATIA V6 empowered by Enovia V6, even if this software have a lot of powerful characteristics and functions.

Cloud and V6

Back in November 2011, during DSCC 2011, Bernard Charles announced that DS spent 2B to create the best cloud online (PLM?) platform in the world. I don’t remember if Bernard mentioned "PLM" in that context, but my assumption is that DS V6 platform is indeed PLM platform. So, it is a cloud. Thinking about "anti-cloud PLM rap" I posted few days ago, I want to understand better what makes V6 cloud. If DS assumption about how run Enovia v6 on hosted servers is about cloud, we still have some lessons to learn. Watch my blog next week for more discussions about cloud and multi-tenancy, which is one of the important characteristics that can take PLM cost down.

What is my conclusion? If you had a chance to read about Stanislavski – a Russian actor and theatre director, you’re probably familiar with his famous statement "theater begins at the coat-check-stand". Take a look on the pictures I captured during my visit to DS office, and you will see parallels.

3D Experience starts at a front door to DS Office. Some people can say it meaningless, but I would disagree. This is a place where change begins. The biggest problem is how to make it happen. Few months ago, I presented the slide above during AU 2011 in Las Vegas.

Will future PLM experience will be 3D Experience? Time will show. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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Cloud PLM and Bill of Material Question

March 9, 2012

Cloud is hyping these days. However, it also becomes real and moving from the state of "think" to "make" something. Navigate to the Jim Brown’s post. One of my favorite passages out of that post is following:

Now there is more to do than talk, something can be done about it. There are real, viable options to consider. In the last month: Nuage launched themselves as a new player in the PLM arena; starting with a cloud-based social business collaboration platform and unveiling a strategy to build in PLM-oriented controls. This week, Autodesk launched PLM 360, a cloud based PLM solution. During an analyst call this week, Dassault Systemes announced that V6 adoption is now over 1,000.

There are lots of presence and visibility of Autodesk PLM online these days. Marketing money Autodesk is spending on Google works just perfect. I was reading the TCT online magazine about software technology for product development and manufacturing. Navigate to the following link to read "Autodesk don’t do PLM – they do cloud PLM" article. I found this passage interesting:

Autodesk also claims that it is the first cloud-based PLM solution focused on business applications beyond engineering and bill of material management. As a result, employees in a range of roles – from planning and product development to quality and compliance to service and more – can better access product and project-related information that helps them continuously improve the products they design and manufacture.

Well, "beyond engineering" statement is clear – Autodesk is promoting their strategy to split Autodesk Vault and Autodesk PLM 360. So, Vault by definition is responsible for "engineering work". You can read on Autodesk website: Vault is CAD Data Management Software. However, the statement "beyond bill of materials" is actually something that made me think beyond cloud hype. Bill of Material is the essential piece of business for every manufacturing company. At the end of the day, nobody care about 3D models, but you need to have BOM and Drawings to make things work. Without BOM loaded into manufacturing system you production will be stuck.

So, practical question I want to ask today with regards to any cloud PLM system – Where is my Bill of Material? By trying to answer on this question I want to analyze few systems available in the PLM market.

Arena Solution is primarily focused on Bill of Materials. They see a lot of value to bring BOM on the cloud. According to Arena, it resulted in the ability of all people involved in product development, manufacturing and supply chain processes to be "on the same page" about what is the last updated BOM. So, the answer is – BOM in the cloud.

DS Enovia is a backbone for all systems and processes. Dassault made a step future. Enovia Backbone is managing all information starting for 3D CATIA data ending up with Bill of Materials, suppliers and support processes. So, assume DS Enovia runs in the cloud as claimed by DS, the answer is – BOM in the cloud.

Nuage is a new company. Frankly, not much information is available about Nuage these days. In my conversation with Nuage people, they claimed fully-fledged PLM functionality in the cloud. So, my assumption that the answer on my question "where is BOM?" is following – BOM in the cloud.

Now, let me back to Autodesk’s "beyond bill of material management" passage. From my experiment with PLM 360 earlier this week I learned that PLM 360 knows how to manage Bill of Materials. So, I can assume BOM is in the cloud. On the other side, in many situations Bill of Materials is managed by PDM system like Autodesk Vault In one of my previousposts almost a year ago (Autodesk Vault: Enterprise PDM or PLM?) Vault aims to handle CAD data, mostly.

What is my conclusion? I think, time comes to start asking simple questions about "where is my stuff"? Where is my CAD drawing? Where is my BOM? Where is my ECO? How all these elements can play together, since I need’em to feed my manufacturing/ ERP system and go to production. I believe we need to get better understanding about how Autodesk Vault interplay with PLM 360. I hope Autodesk will demo it soon. The same question goes to all cloud PLM providers. How to integrate data between existing and news systems will become a key question to make cloud PLM successful. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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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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Arena Partlist and your BOM in the cloud

March 2, 2012

I think, 2012 will become a year of cloud. Arena Solutions is not a new kid in the block. The company was pioneering On-Demand, SaaS and recently cloud technologies for the last decade. My attention was caught my Arena’s press release yesterday – Arena Launches New Products to Help Engineers Go From Prototype to Production. In a nutshell, Arena is releasing a new tool (calledPartLists). Here is how it explained in the press release:

PartsList is a lightweight BOM management app, and PDXViewer is an easy-to-use build package viewer. Using PartsList and PDXViewer together, engineers can import designs from ECAD, automatically complete documentation, then share completed BOMs or PDX build packages with anyone.

A couple of months ago, I had a conversation with Arena product and marketing people about this tool. Back that time, the product name was PDXViewer. It took some time to Arena to bring this tool to the market. Name was changed as well as some additional features were added

PLM and Simplification

What is interesting in Arena PartList is that confirms the idea of simplification as one of the fundamental innovation drivers these days. Arena dropped PLM from the name, back to basics of BOM and introduce the tool that can be used by everyone immediately.

Integration is a key.

One of the painful elements in the work of engineers is when they need re-enter information twice. This is the most stupid thing and software vendors need to solve it. Arena allows to connect to part catalogs of suppliers as well supports importing tools. In my view, it is not enough. In the past, Arena Solution was troubled by CAD-PLM integrations. To integrated CAD and On-Deman PLM wasn’t simple back in 2000s. But today, it is different. I want to see more how Arena PartList solves integration challenges to prevent engineers to re-enter information to their Bill of Materials. PartList proposed import/export using excel and CSV files. However, it sounds ’95 and way too complicated for web solution.

What is my conclusion? I think, simplification is a key. Arena PartList is cool and great from that standpoint. It reminded me one of my Google-related posts. I can almost use Google spreadsheets (sorta-Excel-in-the-cloud). The ability to bring CAD bill of material in and massage until it becomes real Bill of Material is one that probably missed. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Freebie. Arena didn’t pay me to write this post.

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Posted by olegshilovitsky

SolidWorks, Cloud and Product Data Management

February 15, 2012

Cloud is one of my favorite topics. Back, two years ago, on SWW 2010, SolidWorks made a broad statement about the future of SolidWorks on the cloud and SolidWorks technological experiments in that space. I can see lots of changes happened since that time. Cloud computing is clearly going mainstream. It takes companies to understand what and how they should behave on the cloud. I wanted to put some thoughts about SolidWorks, cloud computing, and product data management. Until now, SolidWorks didn’t make any new announcement related to "cloud products".

SolidWorks Users and PDM

As I mentioned yesterday in my post, SolidWorks keeps the status quo in PDM. Enterprise PDM remains the mainstream PDM story for SolidWorks and as I can hear from many people at the conference, the adoption of EPDM is growing. At the same time, the overall PDM adoption in SolidWorks community is relatively low. My very conservative assessment is that about 70-80% of SolidWorks customers today have no product data management solution. The problem of these customers to adopt PDM solution mainly related to two major factors: complexity and IT resources.

SolidWorks n!Fuze

SolidWorks introduced first (and for the moment, only one) cloud data management product – SolidWorks n!Fuze. The initial kickoff of this product wasn’t very successful. Some mistakes were made in terms of product usability as well as pricing. It was mentioned during the Q&A session with SolidWorks VP R&D Gian Paolo Bassi. I’ve heard the same opinion from others’ people, including SolidWorks product managers and R&D people. Version 2 of n!Fuse is expected to come later this year. I’m expecting to see improvements in user experience. Maybe some changes in pricing will be done as well.

Cloud and SolidWorks opportunity

Back in SWW 2010, cloud topic raised lots of debates. However, if I analyze them in a detailed way, most of criticism was about taking SolidWorks CAD to the cloud. At the same time, I was able to hear that use of cloud to improve data-sharing capabilities and collaboration can be a very interesting option. Today, it is even clearer to me. The opportunity to improve product data access and data management using cloud technology is huge, in my view. Two major showstoppers for EPDM adoption – complexity and IT resources can be removed by cloud. Even very small teams and individual engineers will be able to access CAD models, drawings and other product data inside the company and beyond using mobile devices.

What SolidWorks competitors are doing?

In my view, the opportunity is well understood by competitors and the community. Few years ago, PTC introducedWindchill Product Point. PTC tried to leverage SharePoint to address problem of complexity and IT resources. In my view, it didn’t work and PTC retired ProductPoint. Autodesk is clearly coming after the opportunity by focusing on smaller manufacturing companies. At the same time, it is not clear how Autodesk Nexus PLM will address the need of "PDM-less customers". Autodesk announcements clearly stated a combination of Autodesk Vault on premises and Autodesk Nexus PLM on the cloud as two main components of the solution. From my conversation with Autodesk people, I understood that they are aware about the potential of PDM-less customers and thinking how to address that. I can see potential forAutodesk Cloud (introduced few months ago), but in my view, it suffers from similar problems you can see in SolidWorks n!Fuze.

What is my conclusion? Cloud is a game changer. The ability of cloud products to solve the problem of complexity of deployment and IT resources with a combination of low-cost and availability cannot be missed. The opportunity is well understood by both SolidWorks and Autodesk selling products to smaller manufacturing companies. I can see everything that was done, until now, as "trials". It will be interesting to see next steps. The simplicity is hard to address, and we all know that. I will be heading to SolidWorks 3rd day general session in few hours, which is traditionally focused on product announcements. Maybe some news will be coming from there. Stay tuned…

Best, Oleg

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