PLM Cloud Future: Back to Database?

December 30, 2010

I was reading Salesforce.com announcement made earlier this month during Dreamforce 2010 conference about introduction of a new database.com platform. I found it as an interesting turn in the future cloud platform development. You can take a look on a short video introducing the new element of Salesforce.com platform.

What is database.com is about? The main driver behind this is how to solve a problem of fast application development and deployment. Before that introducing, Salesforce spent time introducing multiple clouds- basically imitating product portfolios in a traditional application form. However, the limit of such an approach and the ability of 3rd party developers are very critical. So, database.com is coming to solve the problem.

I read Michael Fauscette’s report about Dreamforce 2010 conference. Here is an important, in my view, piece of this report Michael is talking about database.com:

Database.com and the database cloud is an interesting announcement on several fronts. In the simplest form, developers should find the offering of interest since many are looking to deploy apps that provide ubiquitous access, multi-device, multi-OS, etc. Having a cloud ready database to use for development could speed up that process. Database.com is the latest in Salesforce utilizing assets that they already had developed by putting a public front end on the asset and offering it as a product. If you think about it, when Salesforce.com started in 1999, building applications for SaaS was new and they had no available cloud platforms including the database tier. They had to develop all of these assets and now that they are mature Salesforce is opening them up for other ISV’s to use, starting with the Force.com platform and now with the Database.com offering. Database.com supports any development platform, any development language and any device. With the offering ISV’s get a scalable multi-tenant database with automatic upgrades, tuning and backup.

Platforms, Cloud, Data

Data is playing a significant role in every computing platform. We can see multiple efforts of platform players to provide data management solutions on cloud. The most significant players in this space, in my view, are Amazon, Google, Microsoft. Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) is a web service that makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud. SQL Azure is a highly available, scalable, multi-tenant database service hosted by Microsoft in the cloud. Google and some other vendors are rolling out their own proprietary data management and database technologies.

PLM Cloud Data

Earlier in 2010 CAD and PLM vendors made some announcements and introduced applications and researches leveraging cloud. However, a very small emphasize was made in the context of how data will be places and management on the cloud. The most prolific statements were made by Dassault and SolidWorks. DS V6 platform was mentioned as a future cloud platform. In my conversation with Jeff Ray of SolidWorks, he mentioned the first cloud V6 enabled product (the current name – SolidWorks Connect) to be available later in 2011. PTC and Siemens PLM are keeping neutral positions with regards to the availability of their product on cloud.

What is my conclusion? Data becomes an important piece in the next step of cloud platform development. In my view, Salesforce.com is proving that by introducing database.com cloud layer. This data layer takes us back to a very fundamental point of granular and flexible data management introduced in PDM back 15 years ago. To manipulate data on cloud can be a next serious differentiation characteristic of future PLM cloud platforms. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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Posted by olegshilovitsky

PLM Network Effect and Single Point of Truths

October 23, 2010

Few weeks ago, I had a chance to attend a webinar – Learn How PLM Propels Innovation at Mercury Marine. The webinar is available now on demand. Navigate you browser to the following link and can see a recorded version of this webinar (requires an additional registration). This webinar provides a comprehensive study about Siemens PLM implementation at Mercury Marine. I recommend to spend your time and watch this. If you are running PLM implementation you can find some interesting hints of the decisions that were made by Mercury Marine people and implementation team. However, I want to focus on a specific issue covered by this implementation – Single Source of Truth. The notion of a single source of truth is a popular one in PLM world. In the past, I wrote about it in few of my posts: PLM and A Single Point of Disagreement and Back to basics: PLM and Single Point of Truth and My slice of PLM Single Version of Truth. So, why I decided to come back to the story again? I want to add few perspectives on this in the context of some industry and technological trends that became clearer over the past year

PLM and Single Model

The idea of a single point of truth based on few concepts that were developed by PLM industry during last 10-15 years: flexible data repository, common data model, data integration and federation. The fundamental belief of these concepts relies on the ability to manage a central database that provides a universal and scalable data storage used for product lifecycle. In addition it assumes that company data will be integrated into this repository and all people in the company will have an access to this data. However, in case of data located in other systems, data federation can be used to connect external data sources into this repository, which assumes a central data model consolidating these parameters. All major PLM vendors are using these concepts. Implementations can vary and it differentiates one PLM system from another.

In the case of Mercury Marine, the following picture presented a clear view on how product lifecycle integrated around central data model and data representation in TeamCenter.

This model represents a stable way to implement data lifecycle with the ability to control global changes, access and proces orchestration. However, this architecture has few potential downsides: 1- it requires definition of single model and agreement about this model in an organization; 2- additional cost of integration and 3- high sensitivity to change requests.

Networks vs. Databases

In my view, we have seen a significant growth into network-based architectures over the last decade. The boost of networks caused by development of Internet technologies and wide adoption of web resources and mobile expansion. If you come today to any organizational IT, you easy can find people that understand RDBMS. However, try to find people that understand Networks. Not so easy… Remember client-server technologies 10-15 years ago? Everybody understood mainframes… Today, the same happens with networks. Try to find people that understand networks of data, RSS, mobile data connectors, on demand replications, complex network data architectures. In my view, network organization will become dominant in the next 10 years. A significant growth in data and high demand to lower the cost of data management solutions will require to find a new reliable way to manage a product data lifecycle. Think about the following “dream architecture”:

Yes, it lacks of details, for the moment. However, network effect can change current product data life cycle towards new ways to keep consistency of data and will provide an alternative way to data organization.

What is my conclusion? The biggest question enterprise IT will need to answer is the cost of IT servers. Data management and data lifecycle is one of the most strongest data consumers in the organization. Central PLM databases and consolidated data storage can be too expensive for 2010s. Organizations need to learn about successful PLM implementation and understand how to make them more efficient in the future. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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Posted by olegshilovitsky

V6 Technologies for PLM 2.0

June 27, 2008

I’d like to share my view on V6 technologies Dassault Systems presented last week on our technological forum DevCon 2008. If you haven’t chance to join this conference you can explore some materials and video presentations in official DevCon Web Site (www.3ds.com/devcon) and DevCon 2008 Facebook Group (www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=20454081856).

 PLM 2.0

What make me very excited about V6 technology in the future is that this is first production system that allows making design and collaboration in 3D on top of application server running standard commercial relational database live and online. Until now people doing design in CAD for 2D or 3D were pretty locked to manage their information using files on disk or shared file storages. From now, this is not true anymore. Using CATIA V6 and ENOVIA V6 you are able to run your design, engineering and manufacturing projects without connection to particular workstation loaded with your assembly files. All design data is stored in central location powered by ENOVIA V6 server and accessible can be accessible for multiple locations and multiple application on very granular level in database. Re-use and leverage this data becomes much simpler than before when you were required to extract data from different CAD files and translating data to different formats.

Future V6 solutions will be able to access design, engineering and manufacturing data in database in order to streamline organization processes, optimizing supply chain and make product information available for consumers.

 

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Posted by olegshilovitsky

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