PLM360+NetSuite: Changing the integration game?

May 18, 2013

PLM and ERP integration is not a new topic. Step in the discussion about any PLM implementation and you will come to the topic of PLM+ERP integration in less than 5 minutes. Integration between two enterprise software suites is usually a complicated tasks which involves lots of planning, adjustments and hard-wiring from both sides.

Cloud software brings a new perspective to PLM / ERP integration domain. Of course, it will not dismiss planning stage. Lots of EPR and PLM planning tasks are still needs to be done. However, cloud integration is simpler. Web APIs and architecture as well as cloud deployment can make integration between cloud products easier. Early stage SaaS products exposed some difficulties in integration. Usage of REST APIs and additional cloud-based integration tools is streamlining integration tasks.

Earlier this week Autodesk and NetSuite announced partnership focused on providing seamless integration between two products – Autodesk PLM360 and NetSuite. You can find press release of the announcement by navigating to the following link. Here is an interesting passage:

The bi-directional integration of these revolutionary cloud technologies gives manufacturers a single, closed-loop solution to accelerate product design and development, reduce risk of errors and delays, streamline supply network collaboration, and gain critical real-time visibility into costing, scheduling, capacity and profitability.

Market research shows that manufacturers are increasingly turning to cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications to run product development, production, supply chain, order management, financials and other core business applications without the time and cost burden of on-premise software and servers. Gartner predicts that nearly half (47 percent) of manufacturers worldwide will be using or piloting SaaS applications by 2015, up from just 2 percent in 2010.[1]

In the following video, Gavin Davidson and Brian Roepke demonstrate the new integration between NetSuite Manufacturing and Autodesk PLM 360 software at SuiteWorld 2013:

Couple of thoughts about the scenario presented. I found natural to see not only traditional BOM transfer function during the PLM/ERP integration, but also modern social collaboration functions presented by NetSuite. Also, additional cloud-based tools such as Fusion 360 (cloud design CAD) and online cloud simulation tools naturally fit into the scenario.

What is my conclusion? Integration is tough topic. Usually it requires implementation effort and additional services. It looks like cloud software (both ERP and PLM) is about to define a new trend in the ability to establish a different level of integration. Time and customers will show how it will work. Nevertheless, it is clear that cloud vendors are trying to resolve old integration problems in a different way. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Disclosure: I’m responsible for PLM and Data Management product development at Autodesk.

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3 steps how to put PLM / ERP each in their place

March 14, 2013

PLM and ERP integration. Endless topic. My PLM blogging friends – Chad Jackson and Jim Brown decided to discuss it again at their Tech4PD video blog. Even if it is presented as a debate, I found much more similarity between their statements about PLM/ERP integration rather than differences. They both agree PLM and ERP systems are taking a big part of engineering information environment, both systems are important, PLM and ERP are complimentary in terms of their business functions.

There are differences in the positions, of course. Jim is advocating for single source of products data integrated with ERP, CRM and other systems. PLM is the master of product data. From Jim standpoint, the data from PLM system is integrated and represents as product master data to all other data management systems. Chad agrees, the integration needed, but think low-touch integration is more secured and can be less risky. His (Chad’s) opinion is that total integration proposed by Jim is a too big shot to take. Chad advocates for simple integration and so called "one time information push". From Chad standpoint to keep integration simple is an easier and less risky path to integrate data. If you have few minutes, I’d encourage you to watch the video for few minutes (especially if you want to see how Jim takes a swim with polar bears).

So, a simple conclusion after 7 min of video – data needs to be integration between PLM and ERP. Well, it gave me sort of disappointment. Ask anybody in the industry they will tell you about needs to integrated information between PLM and ERP. I like the way Jim present the need – we have to have a comprehensive solution. At the same time, Chad put it down in a very pragmatic way- complex integration won’t work. We need to have something simple in place. The debates between Jim and Chad made me think about possible steps to resolve the complexity of integration between PLM and ERP.

1. Move from "data ownership" to "data publishing". This is an important shift. Enterprise system integration people spent decades debating "data ownership" topic. It is all about "master" and about how to establish a logic of data ownership. The concept of data publishing takes the data ownership upside down. You shift the focus on how to use data. The access can be provided using multiple ways (APIs and variety of data formats). My personal preference to use linked data and RDF/RDFS model (format) for that purpose.

2. Move from "data mapping" to "data description and connection". In other words, link everything. In the original concept of data integration (Chad called it "data push"), the focus is on how to map data located in one system to another system. The whole purpose is to take data in one system, convert (map) and put in another system. After you accomplished "data publishing" concept, you don’t need to transfer data. You just find right data using model qualifiers. It simplify the business logic and helps to establish more reliable data integration mechanisms.

3. Include links to data elements from other systems. Think about this option similar to links on web pages. If you need to extend data or navigate to related data, you just follow the link, which takes you to the right place.

What is my conclusion? I can see PLM and ERP integrations fail in many companies because it relies to old and outdated integration principles. These old principles relies on data ownership and business of protecting data in a boundary of enterprise applications. It is going to change soon. The new one doesn’t move the data while provide an open and reliable mechanism to build an integration system similar to web. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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BOM 101: How to modularize the Bill of Materials

February 14, 2013

I want to get back to my BOM 101. In my view, Bill of Material management is one of the fundamental processes in PDM/PLM and requires lots of attention. I want to take the feedback made by Jos Voskuil and turn the conversation to be more business oriented. One of the trends in manufacturing today is customization. And this is a big challenge for manufacturing companies. Life was good in mass-production world, when the goal was to provide large series of items with predefined configurations. Not anymore… Today, clients are interested to how customize everything. Companies dealing with ETO type of business are facing similar challenges.

Efficient Bill of Materials management system can solve this problem. If you have flexible BOM management system allowing you to manipulate BOM structures and integrated with you ERP environment, you are half way done. However, technology out of the box won’t help you. It requires to apply some best practices too. One of the practices I want to discuss is "modular Bill of Materials". Wikipedia provide a very short article about that, but I liked the definition.

Modular BOMs define the component materials, documents, parts and engineering drawings needed to complete a sub-assembly. While the terms BOM and modular BOM are most commonly used in association with physical products, the concept can be used in a variety of industries (e.g. software, medical records). Modular BOMs are used by modern information systems to serve a variety of purposes, such as defining the components needed to produce a sub-assembly, and providing cost information for each component and "rolled-up" cost information for the overall sub-assembly.

The core idea of modularization is to create a set of "modules" (aka sub-assemblies) that you can manipulate in order to create a final product. The product development process will be divided into two essential steps: create your modular bills and create a planning bill for a specific product. The last one will allow you to roll out cost and delivery time for a specific product order. Below I put five steps to follow in order to modularize the process of Bill of Material management in your company.

1. Identify family groups. This work can take time, but will allow you to make some steps to improve you product portfolio. Most probably you already have some portfolio management tools in house. Engineering has a tendency to complicate everything. So, you may find an overwhelming number of product families in your company. So, you must take some time and optimize that.

2. Identify options. These are elements of products and bill of materials that can be added to multiple product families. Usually represents additional features that can be added and can be replaced. The typical example of options is different configuration of car in-dash navigation and entertainment system. What is also important at this stage is to identify constraints between options (conflicts, incompatibilities, etc.)

3. Create Master Bill of Materials. This is a very important step. Master Bill of Materials represents all families and all options. This is "THE" bill of materials of all your products, which allows you to plan and to manufacture any product and configurations. In most of BOM management system you operate with ‘phantom’ feature to create an efficient master bill of materials. The reliability of BOM management system is very important at this stage.

4. Create planning BOM. Planning bill of materials represents a specific product, configuration, order, etc. You generate "planning BOM" out of your master BOM in order to create a specific delivery task for your manufacturing system. You practically derive your planning BOM out of Master BOM. Tools that allows you to copy/compare structures and BOM levels are absolute must to make it work.

5. End item bill. This is a final stage. End item bill represent the customer world and the way to translate planning bill of materials into the delivery. There are multiple ways to create end item bills – create bill for every SKU#, manually configure options or implement automatic rule based configurations. In my view, the last one is the most promising alternative. However, it requires additional efforts to implement. So, don’t be surprise many of customers are manually configuring end item bills.

What is my conclusion? Modern manufacturing practices require good technologies and best practices applied together. To me, BOM modularization is one of best examples. You need to have an efficient BOM management system with technologies and user experience allowing you to work collaboratively on BOM in a very granular way. At the same time, you need to apply some planning steps to rationalize and optimize the way you work with configurations, custom orders and product customizations. The cost is a fundamental driver in a modern manufacturing world. An efficient BOM modularization will allow you to follow demands of customers for customization and keep product cost down. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Image courtesy of Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Is SAP HANA the future of PLM databases

February 7, 2013

I’m on the road in Europe this week. Europe met me with snow in Zurich and not very reliable internet connection later in Germany. On the plane, I was reading about future investments of SAP in HANA (new in-memory database) that suppose to revolutionize enterprise software industry. Navigate to the following link and have a read – SAP’s HANA Deployment Leapfrogs Oracle, IBM And Microsoft. I found the following passage very interesting.

What SAP has done is to provide one database that can perform both business analysis and transactions, something its rivals are able to provide only by using two databases, according to Gartner analyst Donald Feinberg. “It’s the only in-memory DBMS (database management system) that can do data warehousing and transactions in the same database. That’s where it’s unique.”

Databases is a fascinating topic. At the end of the day, the enterprise software industry (and not only) is solely relies on database for most of the applications. The days PDM apps were running on proprietary databases and filesystems gone completely. The last one I knew was PDM workgroup. In my view, SolidWorks is still running bunch of customers using this solution, but nobody is taking database-less solution seriously these days. Most of PDM and PLM applications are running on MS SQL and Oracle databases. Despite PLM power of IBM, I haven’t seen any significant usage if DB2 for PDM/PLM. Another interesting quote, I found about HANA is related to competition. According to author it will take few more years until Microsoft and Oracle will be able to catchup.

SAP has taken a big step ahead of rivals IBM, Microsoft and Oracle with the announcement on Thursday that its in-memory database called HANA is now ready to power the German software maker’s business applications. The pronouncement is sure to darken the mood of competitors, who one analyst says will need several years to match what SAP has accomplished.

I’ve been writing about HANA and applications before on my blog. Take a look here. Also, you can find lots of interesting resources online here. Applications of HANA database are interesting and when it comes to analyzes of massive amount of data makes a lot of sense in context of product development and manufacturing.

For SAP customers, HANA-powered applications can speed up the sales process dramatically. For example, today when salespeople for a large manufacturer takes a large order from a customer, they may not be to say on the spot exactly when the order will be fulfilled. That information often comes hours later after the numbers are run separately through forecasting applications.

What is my conclusion? Customers are interested in real solutions that can save money to them. Technology is less relevant in that case. Ability to answer practical questions is more important. SAP has money and customers. Many years, SAP is using database solution from main competitors – Oracle and Microsoft. Will SAP be able to pull new technology to revolutionize this market? Will Microsoft, Oracle and open source databases will be able to catch up this game? An interesting question to ask these days… Just my thoughts.

Best Oleg

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BOM 101: Preliminary Product Structures and Part Numbers

February 1, 2013

I want to continue my BOM 101 thoughts and speak about working with Bill of Materials during early stages of product development. Engineers are using multiple sources of information to create an initial Bill of Materials. The initial BOM structure can come from CAD system, other BOMs developed earlier and also created from scratch. One of the important steps during this process is to assign Part Numbers as early as possible.

Part Numbers (PN) and development lifecycle process

Initial PN allocation plays a key role in overall product development process. From the moment we assign Part Numbers, the status of product development can be tracked by the Item Lifecycle mechanism. Newly created PN are obviously getting "development" status. However, measurement of time lapsed since PN assignment until Item actually entered into BOM and later until specification document becomes available will allow you to follow process of development on the very early stage.

Par Number and PLM/ERP integration

Part Number assignment requires some degree of system integration. The easiest way to get things done is to manage PN in your PLM systems. However, a reality is different. Very often, item master is managed by ERP system or another data management system. It can be also home grown database that historically keeps record of Item masters and allocate Part numbers. So, to integrate these systems will be extremely important to manage Items lifecycle in the company.

What is my conclusion? It is very important to have item lifecycle started at the very early stage of product development. Unfortunately, very often companies are postponing this step because of the integration complexity. PLM/ERP integration project is starting on the late phase of PDM/PLM implementation. Internal company politics are adding an additional level of complexity to this decision. It takes weeks or even monts to decide where to manage Item Masters. A significant portion of product cost is defined during early stage of the development. To have early BOM/PN visibility can optimize the process. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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BOM 101: How to optimize Bill of Materials

January 14, 2013

Last week, I started the conversation about Bill of Materials and modern challenges. BOM is a heavy topic. Previous blog made me think about few additional things related to BOM management and I decided to share it with you too. One of the concepts I see as important in modern PLM and other enterprise systems is to maintain the idea and implementation of single BOM. For many years, I’ve seen multiple-BOM concept as one of the fundamental ideas to implement BOM management in many enterprise systems – PDM, PLM, MRP, ERP, etc. However, I believe, we need to start revising BOM management systems towards usage of one consistent BOM.

Function oriented BOM

The simple definition of BOM is not functional. The wikipedia article about BOM defines it a list of raw materials, parts, components and sub-assemblies required to build a product. In my view, you can see many BOMs in organizations reflecting "product structure" as a main driving behind how BOM organized. As a result of this, many companies are experiencing difficulties with operations and processes that involve these BOMs. Opposite to that, you should think about BOM from a functional standpoint. Form of BOM follows functions. The final form of the BOM or structure of the BOM is a reflection of what we want the BOM to do.

Wide Company Usage

Very often BOM starts in a single department. The compartmental organization logic made BOM separation very natural. When it is done, you feel pain relief, since you think it removes cross department conflicts about BOM structure. However, it is not true. It hits you back immediately when you start planning your cross functional processes. BOM needs to be structured to support the way product will be manufactured. Also important to include business view by structuring BOM around end items that imply some business view on a product you are creating.

Part numbers and Documentation

Don’t mess with these two main groups of identification parameters. Don’t try to combine them. Build BOM around part numbers and think about how to simplify the relationships between Parts and Drawings. The complexity of these relationships will make your future change process messy and complicated. Traditionally, BOM ends up in the drawing sheet. It was in the past. With massive adoption of 3D CAD systems and computer automation, you can re-think it. Managing part numbers is a separate topic that I will address in another post.

Modules and Flattening

Use grouping techniques to create part of BOM that can be easy handled and replaced. Use logically combined parts that belongs to specific configurations. It will help you to simplify your ordering system. Modern tools allows you to deal with hierarchies much easier. However, think twice before you introduce an additional level in BOM hierarchy. Flat BOM is much easy to handle. It is very important to create a BOM structure that allows you to run change processes as easy as possible. Analyze your change processes upfront.

What is my conclusion? The simplicity is an ultimate sophistication. It is very easy to create a complex, hierarchical BOM structure trailing all 3D CAD structures as well as engineering structures. However, to make a simple BOM that can be used by all department is not a simple task. Think bottom up – first about function of your BOM in terms of what you are manufacturing, second about change processes and only after about BOM structure (form). Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Image courtesy of [just2shutter] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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PLM, Product Cost and Bridge to Nowhere?

November 5, 2012

Product cost. Talk to any manufacturing company in the world and they will tell you that cost is one of the most important factors for them. Fundamentally, you need to produce goods to enable profitability of your enterprise. Sounds simple and straightforward. It looks like one of the first pieces of software any company should buy is "product cost software". Actually, in the reality, things look different. Many companies are talking about "cost-management" solutions, but it is not so easy to build one. Back last year, I’ve been posting about the product cost – CAD, PLM and Product Cost. I’ve been reading an article by Jim Brown, my blogging and twitting friend, about product costing – Product Cost Management as a link between enterprise systems. Navigate to the following link to read more. Jim is providing very interesting insight on cost management following the acquisition of Perfect Costing Solution by Siemens PLM. Jim provides his definition of cost:

Product Cost Management– An agreed, coherent, and publicized system of culture/goals, processes, people, and tools following the product lifecycle, that ensures the product meets its profit (or cost) target on the day that it launches to the customer.

Jim defines "product cost solutions" as financial bridges. Here is an interesting war-map between enterprise software vendors (domains) from Jim’s blog. Take a look below. Here is an important passage in my view:

Who will occupy the physical to financial bridges? Siemens has made the first move to acquire one of the bridges (Tsetinis). My educated guess is that a PLM company will be the next acquirer as well. However, there are eight or nine of the Product Cost Management bridges of varying width that link to the different stages of the engineering product life cycle. Given this variety, it is not unthinkable that one or more of the scenarios outlined above will occur simultaneously.

Jim’s war-map made me think about 3 main factors that in my view, prevents enterprise, engineering and manufacturing software vendors to build a good cost management solution. Here they are -

1. Information about cost is located in multiple systems. It is not easy to software companies in the enterprise world to give up on data ownership. So, despite multiple discussions and conversations about standards, I found still a lot of protectiveness to share data openly.

2. Design and engineering user experience is not cost-driven. Design and engineering activities provide a significant influence on cost. 60-70% of product cost is defined during the early design time. However, engineers and designers are not dollar-driven. Cost is more a "check-mark" for them and not a natural way to design and build products.

3. There are lots of cost-influence factors not captured by any system. Last, but not least. The information about what influence cost is very often not captured by any system and located in people’s head. The fact somebody (or few people) know something that can significantly impact cost, can make software useless and effort to create this software a joke.

What is my conclusion? It is hard to find a person who will tell you "cost is not important". However, nobody wants to take a responsibility for cost. In the world of enterprise software, vendors are protecting their islands and fortresses. As we know, to build bridges is not the best strategy to protect yourself. So, why PLM, ERP, SCM and any other TLAs in the enterprise software world will be interested to build a good bridge? At the same time, product cost is huge and very important issue. The pressure from customers will force PLM and other enterprise software vendors to solve a problem and build solutions. One of the possibilities to improve cost management is to make software more open to facilitate data exchange and data access. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Cost War Map picture courtesy of Tech-Clarity blog.

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Will ERP be on cloud ahead of PLM?

July 31, 2012

What do you think about PLM vs. ERP competition? Err… Good question, right? In my view, PLM sales people are long time jealous about ERP sales success. The mainstream adoption, CxO focus, the amount of money organizations are spending on ERP and many other factors. PLM companies felt like a step child in front of ERP success. I have to say, situation changed a bit for last 3-5 years. The adoption of PLM is growing enterprise companies more often mention PLM as a strategic investment. Nevertheless, the question of the potential overlaps between PLM and ERP functionality is not unusual when it comes to discussions about Bill of Material, Manufacturing planning, Supply Chain and some others.

Cloud is trending these days. I’m following many discussions about cloud, enterprise software and cloud PLM, specifically. The topic is still very far the consensus. Opinions go sometimes in opposite directions from total adoption of cloud computing and cloud enterprise systems and up to significant concerns about security, performance, licenses and availability. Nevertheless, “cloud” made me think about “what if…”, PLM software can use cloud as “a secret weapon” to outperform ERP companies?

Thinking about that yesterday, I stumbled on the following blog post from CloudAve – Cloud ERP Starts to Break Out–NetSuite Reports Good Numbers. The article speaks about NetSuite. For many people NetSuite doesn’t say much. I’ve been following NetSuite cloud product offering for the last few years and find it very interesting. CloudAve article shed some lights to NetSuite financial performance. Here is what I learned first:

  • Subscription and support revenue was $61.0 million, a 27 percent increase on an annual basis
  • Cash flows from operations were $15.2 million, up by 80 percent from Q2 2011

The increase of subscription for 27 percent sounds to me like a very healthy performance. Remember, we are talking about cloud systems where subscription is the main source of revenues. Article also hints that such a good performance of NetSuite can be a foundation for a future acquisition by Oracle and confrontation with SAP. Here is the passage:

With NetSuite reporting such good numbers, and its success in moving up the food chain, even more credence is given to the “two-tier ERP” notion it’s been evangelizing. I’ve long said that it was only a matter of time before Oracle swoops in to acquire the company (especially so given the fact that Larry Ellison is the biggest shareholder already) and more tightly integrates it in with core Oracle offerings. The acquisition of SuccessFactors by SAP and the corresponding disruption it brings have brought both oracle and NetSuite some breathing room. I suspect however that new SAP Cloud Tzar Lars Dalgaard is working hard on a credible two tier and cloud plan and oracle and NetSuite need to plan for when this comes to fruition.

What is my conclusion? In my view, the jury is still out to judge cloud enterprise offering. Even such companies like Salesforce.com can be considered as well-know leaders of cloud enterprise systems, the coverage of ERP and PLM offering using cloud systems is still very low. Will PLM company miss an opportunity again and lost cloud battle to ERP giants? This is a very valid and important question to ask.

Best, Oleg

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PLM and Multi-Tier Strategies

June 9, 2012

PLM and Single Point of Truth. You probably heard about that before. I tried to address this topic in the past. Navigate to few of my old posts about that – PLM and Single Point of Truth and PLM and Single Point of Disagreement. Earlier this year, I came back to this topic in my write-up PLM and "The Whole Truth" Problem, which raised up few comments about cost of integration and "single PLM option" as a cost-effective alternative. Interesting enough, the topic of multiple systems usage isn’t unique for PLM space only. I’ve been readingCloudAve blog post The Rise of Two Tier ERP and Larry Ellison’s NetSuite Intentions. Here is an interesting passage:

Essentially it’s a further nod by NetSuite to the notion of two-tier ERP, the idea that organizations can continue to use their existing ERP systems at a corporate level, but enable individual business units to innovate with secondary solutions. It’s a smart idea and one which is a natural fit for NetSuite that had traditionally had a hard time selling into the largest corporates who were generally seen as invested in one or other of the large ERP vendors. At the event NetSuite was keen to tell attendees about the case studies of large corporates who have moved to NetSuite for individual business units, all tied to traditional ERP solutions at the corporate level.

Even if the ERP topic and local accounting is a bit different topic, I can see a clear trend to "optimize" IT environment opposite to unification of everything under a single umbrella.

PDM/PLM multi-tier optimization

The idea of multi-tier strategy for PLM implementation sounds as something we might see more in the near future. The main reason is the same – optimization. With a large amount of IT systems already implemented, companies can think about the combination of systems to re-use existing assets and implementation and optimize cost. Cloud can play an additional role in this future optimization by providing companies an easy path to the missing functionality or coverage of remote and geographically separated divisions.

What is my conclusion? How to optimize IT assets? I believe we will be hearing about it more and more these days. When cost of global deployment is skyrocketing, companies will be looking how to leverage multi-tier strategies to optimize the future of PLM deployment and implementation. Large PLM vendors be aware, since it provides an opportunity to niche players and startups. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

image courtesy of designbuzz post

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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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