DSCC 2011: How Dassault Blends PLM and Search Based Applications?

November 11, 2011

Few months ago, I had a chance to write an article about PLM and comprehensive search. It was about enterprise search. Since then some other events happened in this domain – HP announced acquisition of Autonomy and Oracle announced about their interest to buy Endeca. Interesting enough, you can find that all major enterprise search vendors gone (acquired). I’ve been laughing with Laurent Coulliard, Dassault Exalead CEO during Dassault System Customer Conference (DSCC 2011) earlier this week in Las Vegas about the fact Dassault was the first started this enterprise search technology acquisition rally. Actually, we got it wrong, since Microsoft acquired FAST few years ago. Thinking about DS as a provider of PLM software you may think what is the big deal of enterprise search. Dassault is not like Microsoft, Oracle or HP. If you want to dig more about search and Dassault, you may read an exclusive interview Laurent Coulliard gave earlier this year to Steve Arnold of ArnoldIT. On the picture below Laurent is presenting Exalead during DSCC 2011.

So, since last year, Exalead search technology belongs to Dassault, and I wanted to find an answer on the question I placed in the title of this post – how Dassault is planning to blend their PLM technologies with Exalead? Here are some facts in pictures. Dassault is continueing to run the vision of Search Based Applications. In a nutshell, it means the following:

Search-based applications (SBA) are software applications in which a search engine platform is used as the core infrastructure for information access and reporting. SBAs usesemantic technologies to aggregate, normalize and classify unstructured, semi-structured and/or structured content across multiple repositories, and employ natural language technologies for accessing the aggregated information.

Dassault is planning to provide a very broad coverage of data from external to internal and also from unstructured to structured information. At the same time, Dassault put Exalead on the scale of industry experience by claiming to "reveal information intelligence". For the moment, it seems to me not much more than a pure marketing effort. However, this marketing effort clearly stating where DS is planning to go.

Laurent was talking about two examples of Dassault Exalead Search Based Applications: EXA-MRO and EXA-Reputation. You can see some information about Exalead plans by navigating to the following link featuring Exalead presentation on DS PLM Forum in Moscow. EXA-MRO is focusing to search spare parts during a maintenance process.

EXA-Reputation is helping you to analyze what is your brand or person reputation on the web.

What is my conclusion? Dassault is clearly innovating by adding Exalead technology to their portfolio. As Laurent mentioned during our conversation, everybody these days understood that the ability to handle information becomes very important. Search technology is an interesting competitive advantage Dassault is having. Compare it other CAD/PLM players (Siemens, PTC and Autodesk) – they need to outsource these capabilities to companies acquired by Oracle, Microsoft and HP. I believe Exalead will be used by Enovia to improve their search capabilities. I haven’t seen a demo of this, but assume Dassault will replace Autonomy OEM by Exalead. Delivery of EXA-like applications sounds like an interesting trend. However, speaking about Enovia vs. Exalead platform it is still hard to see how they are blending together. Which, of course, can be played nicely by saying – it is all part of DS V6… voilà. Just my thoughts, of course.

Best, Oleg

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PLM and Comprehensive Search

March 30, 2011

For the last few months, I’ve been asked multiple times about the role of Enterprise search and PLM. Since last year, after Exalead a French search company was acquired by PLM giant Dassault Systemes, the interest for search among people in manufacturing increased. In the past, I had a chance to share my opinion about PLM interest to Enterprise Search. All PLM vendors having deep relationships with search products. They are having OEM or partnerships relations with companies like such as Endeca, Autonomy, SharePoint.

The following publication by Martin Butler Research caught my attention few days ago. It provides a short, but very pragmatic view on what is Exalead as well as what are benefits of Exaled usage by companies like PLM or other enterprise software vendors. Here is my favorite quote:

Although Exalead can be used to provide an out-of-the-box search solution, it’s true strength is to provide an information access platform for creating highly customised search-based applications. For organizations looking at embedding search functionality into new or existing applications Exalead should be high on the agenda. It’s patented results navigation interface, which uses advanced clustering and refinement techniques, also adds to it’s pedigree.

In my view, the comprehensive PLM implementation requires a better set of technologies to accomplish their implementations. High end PLM is swamping in non-efficient technologies developed 15+ years ago. To bring a better search infrastructure can help PLM vendors to improve the quality of data management and information processing for companies like Boeing, Toyota, Renault and other. On the flip side, it is going to make existing PLM implementation even more complex.

What is my conclusion? Search is an important infrastructure. The demand for search is in manufacturing growing as well. To be competitive, software vendors in this space such as PLM, CAD and others are trying to bring new technology to solve old problems. This is a good sign, in my view. However, one of the biggest problems in PLM and enterprise software is the complexity of solutions. This is quite important. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Freebie. (Exalead didn’t pay me to write this publication)

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Search Based App and PLM Innovation

February 21, 2011

Picture-91.pngThe following article in E-Commerce Times written by Paul Doscher of Exalead USA caught my attention this morning. Navigate your browser to the following link and read Search Based Applications: Smoke and Mirrors or Real Innovation. Exalead is an enterprise search outfit snatched by Dassault Systems in 2010. DS paid €135 million for Exalead technology and the concept of Search Based Applications (SBA). I had a chance to put some of my initial thoughts related to the DS-Exalead last year in my post – PLM Lifelike Search Injection. The E-Commerce article made me think again about how Search Based Applications (SBA) can change current PLM trajectories.

Search Based Apps: The Next Step in Enterprise Search

Mr. Doscher quote IDC’s Sue Feldman definition of what is Search Based Applications from IDC 2010 report: "They (SBA) deliver a purpose-designed user interface tailored to support a particular task or workflow. Examples of such search-based applications include e-discovery applications, search marketing/advertising dashboards, government intelligence analysts’ workstations, specialized life sciences research software, e-commerce merchandising workbenches, and premium publishing subscriber portals in financial services or healthcare." Later in the article, Mr. Doscher analyzes different aspects of SBAs and why they will case a shift in enterprise information processes. He defines SBA as a right tool and specifically focuses on semantic processing of data.

I found these analyzes reasonable. The traditional enterprise search results presented as a "laundry-list" became obsolete in my eyes already 3-5 years ago. Tailored SBA will provide a clear differentiation. Amount of data in enterprise organization coming from multiple systems is a reality of every manufacturing company.

If you are interested to learn more about Search Based Apps, I can recommend you to read the following book- Search Based Application by Greg Grefenstette published earlier this year.

PLM+Search=SBA?

In my view, all PLM vendors are facing a significant need to introduce the next innovative shift for their customers. The competition between PLM mind share vendors becomes stronger. Introducing of new platforms (Dassault V6, Siemens PLM TeamCenter, Creo), last announcements made by PLM companies in automotive sector and others – all evidence of strong competition in this domain. I can imagine information processing technologies can provide a significant interest of PLM vendors. All of them already tried to crack an enterprise search box by partnering or OEMing technologies from vendors like Endeca, Autonomy or Microsoft SharePoint. The interesting turn in adopting search technologies is in ability to provide new ways to analyze information.

Does SBA Solves PLM Problems?

I can identify two major problems in Product Lifecycle Management: absolute complexity of application and extremely high cost of change. What SBA and search technologies can bring to PLM in order to solve these problems. I can see some positive elements here- search can make information available. Search technologies can bring more efficient data processing techniques. From this side, search technologies are an absolute advantage, and I’m sure DS will leverage it in their future applications. However, I’m doubting SBA can solve the problem of PLM complexity. If I follow Sue Feldman, SBAs are tailored applications – "a purpose-designed user interface tailored to support a particular task or workflow". From this standpoint SBAs will open a next round of PLM customization and implementation. Each customer will potentially introduce a new set of requirements. From the demos presented on Exalead website, I learned that each SBA was actually developed to satisfy needs of a specific customer.

What is my conclusion? Search technologies are providing a clear advantage in future development of product lifecycle management. I can see a good chance for DS to improve their V6 platform by injecting Exalead stuff inside. At the same time, I don’t see SBA solving key problems of PLM such as complexity and implementation cost. Ownership of these technologies can provide some competitive advantages to Dassault. Other vendors can move to expanding partnership with other search vendors or using open source search technologies such as Lucene/Solr. Manufacturing companies of all sizes will be still interested in how to simplify products and make their next implementation for lower cost. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Freebie

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PLM Life-like Search Injection

June 10, 2010

An interesting turn in PLM trajectory of Dassault Systems – the acquisition of French based Exalead. With this acquisition, we can expect new life-like energy injected into PLM life-blood. In some announcements, Exalead was mentioned as French Google. Exalead indeed shares some Google DNA coming from early days Alta Vista and DEC search experiments. DS-Exalead deal made me think again about an enterprise search trajectory in Product Lifecycle Management. Actually, I already touched this topic at least two times in my blog before: PLM and Enterprise Search: Can We Leverage It In Downstream Applications and What Is The Role Of Search In Enterprise Systems and PLM?

So, PLM+Search=? What can be hidden behind this question mark? First of all, I wanted to put some historical perspectives in the relationships of PLM and search vendors. This is actually not the first time, PLM is catching a search wave. In 2006, Autonomy and Agile Software PLM created a partnership to provide a solution together . In 2007, Dassault made the announcement about a future use of Autonomy as a technology for search in DS and ENOVIA solutions. Endecca, another enterprise search vendor signed an agreement with Kalypso PLM solution provider. The same Edecca signed an agreement with PTC, one of the major DS completitiors. The same PTC by their significant move to SharePoint over the past 2 years, have an access to Microsoft SharePoint search solution. The same Autonomy, one of the leaders in Enterprise Search solutions is providing full stack of connectors that allow them to handle PLM related information too by their IDOL platform.

So, I wanted to put some thoughts towards possible mix of PLM and Search solutions. What can be advantages of PLM and Search merger and what need to be done to analyze previous solutions?

Usability
This is the first thing, in my view. PLM will try to fix the usability problem with application of some search techniques. All PLM applications today are surviving from user adoption rate in the organization due to the complexity in user experience. To have a search solution in this space is an interesting approach. However, what is good for web search not always can work in the same way inside of the organization. This will be an interesting to challenge for search solutions .

Content Processing
Search solutions have a different perspective on how to work with data. It is really not the same as to do it for enterprise application and business process management. How it will fit? What web search is doing by manage data is not really the same as enterprise data processing. Lots of interesting questions are coming here. I assume, we’ll have chance to see soon in the  in DS-Exalead story.

Integration
Crawling data from multiple sources, enterprise search has a potential to become a federated access point for PLM apps. This is the most interesting turn, in my view. However, to execute this route, a significant shift in PLM openness needs to be done.

What is my conclusion today? DS acquisition proved again, that PLM space is alive and will continuously provide innovative solutions for enterprises. As one of the leaders in PLM and 3D, Dassault just confirmed it yesterday. The next important step will be technological convergence and new solutions coming from Dassault.

Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg

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3D Perspectives: How we can search and tag rich media and 3D?

July 31, 2009

My new blog post of DS 3D Perspectives Blog. From 1998 searches circa to Search Media, Tag Results, View Examples.

how-we-can-search-tag-media-3d

voxalead-google-example

Enjoy!

Oleg

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