PLM Excels and Microsoft Cloud Office 365

June 28, 2011

Do you know what is the most widely adopted PLM system in the world? You probably can guess based on the title of this blog post – Microsoft Excel. I’ve been writing about Microsoft Excel and PLM many times.

PLM Excel Spreadsheets: From Odes to Woes
Why Do I Like My PLM Excel Spreadsheet?
Do We Need Chief Excel Officer To Manage BOM?

Microsoft just released Office 365 in the cloud:

Earlier today, I was reading details about Microsoft new cloud offering. Navigate to the following link to read – Microsoft puts Office in the ‘cloud,’ confronts Google. What is the story? For many years, Microsoft was leading in Office space selling Microsoft Word, Excel and Outlook to individuals and enterprises. The market share of Microsoft Office products is huge. However, for the last couple of years, Google succeeded to introduce a strong cloud competition to Microsoft Office products – Google Apps. To compete with them, Microsoft is placing Office product in the cloud for a very competitive price. This is a very interesting quote from Reuter blog post:

Google, which has had the most success in the small and medium-sized business range, says there are now 40 million users of online Google Apps suite. Microsoft does not publish equivalent numbers, but research firm comScore has estimated 750 million people worldwide use Office in some form.

PLM and Office in the Cloud

So Office is hearing in the cloud. What does it mean for manufacturing companies and PLM vendors? One of the most problematic side effects of working with Office and specifically with Excel was the ability to share data and collaborate between different people in an organization. Separate Excel files, even if you put them in the shared drives, are very bad for this. Multiple PLM systems were focused on how people can work collaboratively sharing information about drawings and bill of materials. With the introduction of Office 360 and growing competition of Google, PLM companies can find their collaborative solution with cloud collaboration supported by Excel running on cloud. Microsoft is emphasizing how Office 365 will be used by small and medium customers first. As you can see on the picture below – it is just $6 /month.

What is my conclusion? I don’t think, PLM vendors will be in a real jeopardy because of Microsoft Office moves to the cloud and competing with Google Apps. Large manufacturing companies are complicated, and PLM vendors sit deep inside with the implementation of complex PLM product suites. However, what happens with hundreds of these that are running Microsoft Excel as their PLM system? Time to make some thinking and calculations. Important…

Just my thoughts.
Best, Oleg

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Autodesk, SolidWorks and Collaboration Renaissance

June 28, 2011

Brian Roepke of Autodesk brought my attention to Autodesk Nitrous Lab Project earlier this week. The context of this comment was about some Autodesk viewing technologies that don’t require any flash or plug-in. So, I decided to put my hands on Autodesk Project Nitrous this morning. When I’m still trying to figure out what is that viewer technology Autodesk is using there, Nitrous made me think about what is going with collaboration and cloud.

SolidWorks n!Fuze – PLM Collaboration Renaissance

Few months ago, I’ve posted about SolidWorks n!Fuze – a new cloud service coming from SolidWorks to help share and collaborate between engineers. I found interesting the way SolidWorks were planning to introduce this service. On the fundamental level, it is not introducing any particular new functions – you can load SolidWorks files and share them. So, what is new? The cloud storage based on Enovia V6 and completely new user experience.

SolidWorks n!Fuze was in Beta testing few months after SolidWorks World 2011. I had a chance to play with that. The user experience was good. The service is not available now. According to the information provided during SolidWorks World, it will be released later this year.

Autodesk Nitrous – a dropbox for CAD files?

Project Nitrous provides a very simple set of functions: upload files, upload new revisions, manage folders, preview, tag and comments. Take a look on few screenshots I made during my tests. The subscription to the service was easy and straightforward. You are getting 1GB of data when you register with Autodesk ID.

The home screen is simple. You can get to the list of file or folders, comment, sort, filter and tag.

Viewer is integrated into a web browser.

I found versioning function a bit strange. It wasn’t clear if it keeps separate copies of the file. When uploading a new version of file, I was alerted that name of the file was changed. The overall it gave me a history of versions in a separate screen.

Autodesk Nitrous is available as Labs product. You can register and use it now. Navigate to the following link to subscribe.

What is my conclusion? CAD and PLM vendors are thinking about the cloud. Looking on services like Dropboxand some others, SolidWorks, Autodesk and others are trying to create similar services adopted to the CAD content. In my view, these are just experiments by CAD companies about how to leverage cloud and relevant infrastructure. Will real customers end up by adopting these services? I’m not sure. Security is still the issue for most of them. At the same time, newcomers like GrabCAD are working on a bit different flavor of cloud libraries containing publicly shared CAD models. GrabCAD is helping engineers to sell their work and services online. A different aspect of collaboration maybe?

Just my thoughts..
Best, Oleg

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RSS, PLM Collaboration and Activity Streams

June 9, 2011

Do you know what is RSS? I’m pretty sure a large amount of casual internet users are not aware about what is RSS and what is RSS readers (Aggregators). I even believe there are people that using Google Reader without actually knowing they are using RSS. On the other side, RSS is a technology that in my view can be very efficiently used to improve collaboration.

Enterprise RSS Hub

Time ago, I wrote about Enterprise RSS as an interesting opportunity. Navigate your browser to the following link -How to improve collaboration and information delivery with RSS. You can also take a look on the associatedForrester research paper from 2007 written by G. Oliver Young – Enterprise RSS Tackles Information Worker Overload.

Vuuch – Better Collaboration via RSS?

I was intrigued to read Alex Neihaus comments on Vuuch 4.5 release mentioned Vuuch support RSS as one of the most exciting features. Here is the passage:

A new Home page with activity streams and RSS feed capability. Vuuch 4.5 features a redesigned home page that now offers an activity stream. The Vuuch 4.5 activity stream is a time-ordered list of changes to the projects and deliverables the user is involved with. Unlike consumer social networking sites and their business-targeted clones, Vuuch 4.5 activity streams are specific to the projects and people that the user is currently working with. By “narrowing the focus” to just the things the user cares about, Vuuch 4.5 eliminates the need for users to manually filter the social system’s content to get value from it.

Here is Vuuch video presenting how it works. Take a look an make your opinion. The idea of providing information about changes is not a new. However, to make it RSS-compliant is interesting, since it leverage proven technologies and improve system openness.

What is my take? I think RSS is a good and reliable technology. Web relies on this technology for years. As 2 years ago, I still hold the opinion that this technology is undervalued by vendors in enterprise space. RSS can help to make systems more open and interoperable. The fact Vuuch decided to use it a good sign. On the other side, RSS is probably too “geeky” to become a feature for end users. Many people I talked to are still preferring email simplicity and reliability instead of RSS Reader.

Just my opinion.
Best, Oleg

Freebie.

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PLM, Microblogging and Communication

April 23, 2011

Communication is a vital part of everything we do. How do we communicate these days? Email is one of the most popular ways to communicate. Recently talking to many people I found that many young people these days have no email account. So, what is the next way to communicate? Social networks and microblogging software (like twitter) is a new way. However, manufacturing companies are still run by email systems. What will happen to these systems in a near future? What transformation required to make it more efficient?

I read CMS Wire article – IBM Says Merge Your Email into Activity Stream. IBM is under going transformation of their Lotus system to make it more efficient. Ed Brill, Director Messaging and Collaboration IBM Lotus Software is talking about future transformations into Activity Streams. No surprise these days, IBM is using "App" concept to present a new way to transform communication. Here is my favorite passage:

…But IBM doesn’t think we should live in our collaboration tools. The activity stream will be the app Brill told us — on the desktop, on the mobile, in the browser. Imagine getting up in the morning, opening Activity Stream app on the mobile and seeing what’s important to do that day/right now…

IBM roadmap is talking about big mix of tools coming out of Lotus and even Cognos to create meaningful information streams. IBM research team is working on this. IBM is not mentioned dates.

Now I want to turn from "research" space to the software that available today and can be used inside of the organization. Rawn Shah Forbes blog article – Corporate Microblogging Helps Employees Migrate Work Conversation Online. There are two examples of software mentioned in the article – Yammer and Socialcast. Both are microblogging platform for enterprise. When started few years ago, Yammer presented as Twitter for enterprise. I found quite many people in my eco-system mentioned that their companies are implementing Yammer and successfully use it for communication.

Enterprise microblogging systems have a different and significant role in conducting business than what you may find in public systems like Facebook or Twitter. They provide insight to what is actually going on within the company, and allow employees to breakthrough the often thick glass walls of organizational silos. They are going to be a vital component of social business. By starting with simple conversations they help employees transition to conversations in an online mode, beyond phone calls and face to face meetings, lifting the whole organization to new levels of social business maturity.

Information Streams

The biggest criticism I’ve heard about social communication is related to the definition of "noise". Do you really want "everybody following everybody" noise coming to you via new social tools? No, I don’t think so. However, the problem of email nowadays is exactly the same. Email is a single overloaded stream of information. Opposite to Facebook and Twitter, we consider everything in our email box need to be read. This is a source of so called "email overload". The new way to handle communication is to use "information streams". I have them in my twitter account as "lists". Similar organization can be applied to other communication tools. Yammer has three possible way to group communication between people – networks, groups and community.

PLM and Microblogging

The term "collaboration" is one of probably most confusing. PDM and PLM vendors presented multiple concepts and products that supposed to help people to collaborate. None of them was able to shift the way people communicate and email was king of the road all the time. Microblogging tools may create a new way to communicate also inside organizations. Is it possible to use the same tools like Yammer to communicate between people in product development organization? I think positive about that option. One of the key elements to succeed in this transformation is to connect information to this communication. This is a tricky part of this transformation game.

What is my conclusion? The internet and mobile tools created new ways to communicate. Tools like Yammer and Sociacast can transform communication paradigms. Manufacturing organizations and product development can use these tools to make communication easier. PLM tools will integrate towards mainstream communication platforms to leverage the power of microblogging and social networking.

Just my thoughts.
Best, Oleg

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PLM Open Source: Strategic or Off Road?

March 17, 2011

I’m watching closely everything that happens around with Open Source. The world of Open Source is changing all the time. Remember, in the beginning it was about Linux. Then it comes to other places – content management, CRM, enterprise search, mobile platforms and many other places. What happens with manufacturing and engineering systems? Is there a place where Open Source can provide some advantages? I read an article Open Source Software Hits a Strategic Tipping Point by Laurie Wurster. The author discusses what traction Open Source getting in the industry. Here you can see some information about the level of Open Source acceptance on the picture below provided by Gartner.

Picture-25.png

These numbers made me think about what possible path Open Source can take in engineering and manufacturing software segments.

Open Source Debates

I can observe multiple debates in the software community about what is Open Source and what software can be qualified as Open Source. In general I can see an open source as a model that promotes availability of the software source code to the system end users and following modification. However, the model, is not clean and transforming all the time. Some disputed models in this space are community-based development as well as mixed licensing where some of the system code is proprietary and another piece is open under one of avaialble open source licenses. Alternative, stricter definition refers to the Gartner’s definition of Open Source as a software released under Open Source Initiative licenses.

Open Source and Engineering Software Segments

In my view, Open Source might have a different potential in engineering and manufacturing software segments. It depends on the level of specialty, community size and existing software product and vendors strategy in this segment. In general, I can see an open source trend is to go bottom up from more generic type of software to more specific one. The size of the potential community is also very important. For example, CAD/CAE is a segment, which can be characterized by very specific skills, large number of mature products and software vendors. Despite few examples (Archimedes, BRL-CAD,avoCADo), I think, chance for CAD Open Source is relatively low in coming few years. On the other side, data management has a wider implementation scope. There are several mature open source products in this space such asMySQL, Cassandra and others, so a potential data management solution such as PDM can be very possible created by community of data-oriented developers. The last segment I wanted to touch is so called "software for collaboration". In my view, this is one of the most confusing in the space of engineering and manufacturing. At the same time, there are many open source tools in this category that can provide a value and can be easy enhanced with additional features.

What is my conclusion? I think Open Source gains acceptance and making progress in diverse fields. Depending on the application field it can become strategic or get off road. However, your organization needs to have a set of skills to make an open source happen. It is all about implementation, changes, coding, testing. It cost money and resources. Multiple tools can be combined into compelling solution. Do you think Open Source is for your organization? What flavor of Open Source do you prefer and see more applicable? I’m going to discuss it next month during my Beyond PLM panel on Aras Community Event (ACE) next month.

Best, Oleg
Freebie.

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Facebook for SIM and PLM Revolution

February 15, 2011

I read today’s news coming from Gemalto and read “Facebook takes over the world, one SIM card at the time“. Gemalto announced their new product – Facebook for SIM. Here is the quote:

Facebook for SIM, which enables anyone to enjoy the service on all handsets, even if without a data connection or data subscription. With this announcement, Gemalto brings Facebook to millions of mobile phone users regardless of their handset type. “Increasingly people want to be able to stay connected and communicate with their friends on Facebook anytime, anywhere,” said Henri Moissinac, Head of Mobile Business, Facebook. “Gemalto has developed a creative solution in Facebook for SIM that enables people without mobile data plans to stay connected to their friends on Facebook in an affordable way.”

Facebook pushes forward to expand their market share into billions of regular cell phone and not limit themselves to smartphones, tablets and computer devices. It made me think about “simplicity and PLM” again.

Cross-Functional Handoff

In my view, bad communication between people and teams is one of the reasons why product development fails. Absence of requirements, disconnect between people in engineering and manufacturing. No feedback from customers going directly to development teams. These are elements of bad communication. To organize efficient cross-functional handoff can be a factor to revolutionize product lifecycle practices. However, making it easy can be a key. Today’s tools for process organizations are complex and very inflexible.

Communication Mainstream

Organizations are literally run by email. PLM and other enterprise software vendors invented “collaborative software”. However, complicated collaborative model doesn’t compete efficiently with simply email. Alex Neihaus of Vuuch wrote few days ago “PLM Collaboration Must End… right now“. He got attention. According to Vuuch, ESS-Enterprise Social System (beyondplm: I’m not sure we need another TLA) will take off into the mainstream via “social technology”. My hunch is that email as well as SIM card with Facebook’s commands is the best social technology. Facebook is stepping back from the Internet to simplified devices. Where is PLM Mainstream Revolution is the right question to ask.

What is my conclusion? Enterprise software and PLM specifically are constantly missing the opportunity to expand into mainstream business and expand their influence “beyond traditional boundaries of PLM”. The complexity of product lifecycle ideas, business processes and implementation made the whole thing complicated and expensive. Maybe it is a time to agree that “simple always wins” and find an alternative way? PLM Mainstream Revolution? After Facebook Egypt revolution, it can be an interesting story. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Freebie. Freebie. Freebie.

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PLM and Seamless Multi-lingual Collaboration

February 10, 2011

Global environment is the reality of today’s business. Engineering and manufacturing organizations are located in multiple places worldwide. To help people to collaborate despite lanugage barriers is a very important goal. In the past, multi-language support in software was limited to providing versions of software working in different languages. However, in case of product development and manufacturing the language support cannot be limited only to language localization. These days focus shifts towards something I call “language transparency”.

Language Transparency Tools

Almost a year ago, I posted about some of my ideas related to seamless translation ideas. Navigate to the following link to read this historical blog post and associated comments. In my view, Google Wave, which I used as a primer of possible technology, can provide a kind of language transparency infrastructure. On Demand Translation tools will play an important role in streamlining collaboration in product development and manufacturing organization.

Another example is mobile. Navigate your browser to QuestVisual to learn more. This augmented reality like application enables you to provide seamless translations of fragments of texts around you. I found it pretty cool.

Multi-lungual PLM: Who Cares?

Few days ago, I’ve seen the announcement coming from Dassault Systems – Dassault Systemes Chooses SDL Translation Management Systems to Provide a Unified Translation Platform. SDL is the outfit focusing on localization and translation. I wonder if DS is planning some cool multi-lingual features to be supported in V6. Collaborative tools like V6 have a potential to work across multiple organizations, divisions and departments. The competition becomes stronger in PLM world. If you follow announcements you can see few of them such as Daimler decides for NX, Austin Martin decides for NX and BMW decides for V6. All of them shows a very strong competition going between mindshare PLM vendors.

What is my conclusion? Business is going global. To break language barriers becomes an important objective for manysoftware providers. Having technologies that can provide a seamless integration level is extremely powerful, in my view. It can provide a good differentiation feature for global deployment. What is more important is that such type of tools is very people-oriented and can increase a perceived customer value. I’d be interested to learn more about how various PLM tools support multi-lingual collaboration. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Freebie. No vendor paid me to write this blog.

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PLM, Projects, Tasks and Social Productivity

February 2, 2011

I’ve got an email from one of the blogging colleagues about the acquisition of Manymoon by Salesforce.com. Manymoon was a company developed so called “social productivity software”. I tracked Manymoon as a company doing some nice work in developing applications complimentary to Google Apps. The question I’ve been asked by my reader was “Is Salesforce is thinking about PLM?”. This question made me think about the dynamics in the development of various types of collaborative applications, but specially those that can be used to run product development and manufacturing projects

Manufacturing and Project Management

In my view, business life is about projects. Project Management software is a straightforward decision in many companies. Microsoft Project is an easy choice after you discovered that you cannot control your projects just by using the power of Microsoft Excel. However, when it comes to product development and manufacturing life becomes more complicated. With multi-discipline project management involvement you will prefer a software packages that integrated with product design and manufacturing information. You can see few examples of such a type of software coming from different PLM and ERP suppliers.

Aras PLM Program Management

Enovia V6 Program Central

TeamCenter Express Project Management

This is, of course, not exhaustive list of possible solutions. I can see multiple pros and cons in adopting them – complexity of implementation, price, integration with other applications and many others.

Emails and Social Productivity

I think, many companies and product development projects are literally run by emails. It is very easy in the beginning. However, within the time it creates a lot of complications. Lost emails, complicated message threads, different versions of documents. However, email remains the simplest and easiest tool to use for many people. I found Manymoon example interesting. Their connection with Google Apps tools looks powerful and the manage additional aspects of communication and project related information such as tasks is simple. Spend some time on the following videos and make your opinion if you like it or not.

What is my conclusion? I think complexity of applications needs to go down. In my view, Manymoon apps are demonstrating that. Even if conceptually it seems similar to project and program management products PLM companies developed before, future won’t be going the same way. Simplicity always wins. I can see some signs of interest in how to make PLM applications simpler. New applications like SolidWorks n!Fuze and Vuuch social tools are following the simplification path. Even if these new applications are not covering the scope of existing solutions, it seems to be a right way to go. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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3D, Games and Product Development

January 27, 2011

Almost two years ago, I published the following post – Virtual World: Where is the boarder between game and PLM software? Gaming technology is developing very fast. Today’s games open lots of opportunities to improve existing design and engineering software, as well as to develop a new class of application. This week, during SolidWorks World 2011 in San Antonio, Dassault and SolidWorks presented a new product – Post3D, part of 3DVia brand portfolio.

The idea of this application is to allow multiple users to participate in a product review in a virtual way. You can take a brief look on what Dassault means by that on the following video:

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Virtual Collaboration – Community and Game

I found the idea of Post3D inspiring. There are few straightforward issues with Post3D – the ability to load 3D models and review them. My hunch, there is something beyond that. The main point is the ability to communicate in a different way. In addition such type of software can release product from 3D CAD boundaries. By using game-like technologies, in the future, you’ll be able to share and use 3D data beyond the point of creation in CAD system. The ability to interact in 3D is one of the key aspects in a vision of Dassault’s CEO Bernard Charles. In the next longer video, you can see Dassault’s Charles personally demonstrating the new virtual showroom together with his colleagues during SolidWorks world.

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What is my conclusion? I can see Game Technologies as a clear trend in a future of design and product development. Games develop a new way to interact. When I watch my kids playing Kinect, I can see a huge potential Gaming technology will bring later into PLM space. However, the learning curve can be tough for non-GenY folks. It will be interesting to see the adoption curve of such visionary tools. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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SolidWorks n!Fuze: The Cloud Remake of PLM Collaboration?

January 26, 2011

This week SolidWorks presents the new product SolidWorks n!Fuze. The actual presentation didn’t happen yet. Today is the 3rd day of SolidWorks World. The 3rd dayGeneral Session is usually devoted to Product presentations. After that, I’m going to join the press conference with executive management of DS SolidWorks Corp. So, I hope to learn more about SolidWorks n!Fuze. What I learned so far was from SolidWorks Blog, my conversation with Rich Allen of SolidWorks and demo I’ve seen in the exhibition hall.

n!Fuze- First Impression

SolidWorks n!Fuze is a product that helps engineers to share SolidWorks data. What I specially like is the simplicity of user experience as well as the integration inside of the main user interface of SolidWorks. It means an engineer don’t need to leave SolidWorks to share data with somebody else. The core principle of n!Fuze data sharing relies on the ability to create Workspace and share data inside of this workspace. You can upload and download files from the Workspace. Basic revision mechanism allows you to provide an update to file in a workspace. Changes will be tracked using some characteristics. SolidWorks people in the exhibition hall explained me that n!Fuze can use multiple criteria, including last save date to manage versions. Earlier, I learned that version mechanism planned in n!Fuze will be very simple and not supposed to cover all possible options available in Enterprise PDM. The interesting functionality I noted in n!Fuze is the ability to leave comments about files and read the full chain of comments. This functionality reminded me DS 3DLive chat and some elements of Windchill SocialLink. If I’d use modern slang, it can be considered as “social feature”.

In addition, to the n!Fuze functionality embedded in SolidWorks, there is a separate web application. This application allows you to navigate, comment and download files. It surprised me that I cannot upload files directly from web interface, and I need to have the SolidWorks Application to load files into n!Fuze.

SolidWorks n!Fuze and Enovia V6

The important thing you learn is that n!Fuze is the first SolidWorks product using Enovia V6 functionality. Enovia foundation or server is hosted (I assume somewhere on the cloud) and support everything n!Fuze is doing. My hunch we’ll see more SolidWorks data management application using the Enovia V6 infrastructure. On the last year SolidWorks World I learned that future PDM products such as Enterprise PDM will be shifted to use Enovia V6 platform as well. You can see another sign of shared Dassault infrastructure on n!Fuze web application – swym.3ds.com beta 2011 sign on the bottom of the slide.

n!Fuze and SolidWorks Labs

SolidWorks Labs activity was a bit slow during the last year. However, I notices the use of SolidWorks Labs TreeHouse 2application embedded into the functionality of n!Fuze. This is a good confirmation of a collaboration between Labs and SolidWorks R&D.

n!Fuze and Collaboration

In my view, n!Fuze is introducing a fresh look on PLM and collaboration. On one side, it does not create something significantly new. The concepts of file sharing remain the same for the last 10-15 years. I can see similar collaborative functionality is available in portfolios of other PLM vendors as well as in old portfolios of Dassault System’s PDM products. However, slick user interface, integration into SolidWorks and social features like discussion give a new trajectory to this type of application.

What is my conclusion? The collaboration topic in PLM is still a place where we will see lots of innovations. The attempt to remake some old concepts to a new reality is a good sign in my view. I can see “cloud” concepts, focus on usability and introducing of social elements as right steps toward converting n!Fuze into something useful. However, I have to note that some functionality of n!Fuze will create an overlap with existing Enterprise PDM features. Users have a tendency to push the limits of product can do from the functional standpoint, and I can see people can use n!Fuze as a basic PDM on the cloud. Just my thought…

Best, Oleg

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