Why PLM need to learn about Google Knowledge Graph?

May 21, 2012

Last week was clearly Facebook week. However, if you had a chance to take your head out of Facebook IPOand Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan wedding, you probably noticed an interesting news that came out of Google. It called Google Knowledge Graph.

If you never heard about it, start with Google’s blog post – Introducing the Knowledge Graph: things, not strings. The following Google video can give you an initial idea of what is that.

What is behind Google Knowledge Graph?

Google Knowledge Graph (GKG) is a database of information about what Google calls “things”. The ideas are going to multiple places – semantic web, internet of things, semantic search, linked data, etc. In my view, Google acquisition of Freebase two years ago, became an important event towards building of knowledge graph. Here is an interesting passage from Google blog:

Google’s Knowledge Graph isn’t just rooted in public sources such as Freebase, Wikipedia and the CIA World Factbook. It’s also augmented at a much larger scale—because we’re focused on comprehensive breadth and depth. It currently contains more than 500 million objects, as well as more than 3.5 billion facts about and relationships between these different objects. And it’s tuned based on what people search for, and what we find out on the web.

It is not so clear how GKG was built and organized. Google clearly mixed information collected from Freebase, CIA Factbook and Wikipedia. You can read Deconstructing Google Knowledge Graph blog post for more information about “How?” it is done. It is still on the level of guesses. I’m sure in the next few months we will see more examples and explanations.

Why PLM vendors should care?

PLM vendors and product are struggling with the high level of complexity. It comes also from the side of semantic richness of data as well as from the side of user interaction complexity. Google Knowledge graph shows an interesting way to simplify knowledge representation and knowledge interaction with end users. Another aspect is related to the large-scale information modeling. The information about products and product lifecycle is getting more and more complicated every day. PLM products running on SQL databases will have to find a better technological foundation for the future scale.

What is my conclusion? Web technologies are moving forward with the speed of light. I cannot say the same about enterprise software. For the majority of people in manufacturing companies, life is a bunch of Excel spreadsheets and databases with applications running for years. The cost of existing IT environments is skyrocketing. The trends like BYOD shows that people cannot tolerate outdated IT anymore. So, how to build a product knowledge graph in your company? This is a question PLM managers need to ask these days. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Picture credit to Mashable GKG can change search forever article

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PLM and Google Enterprise

March 22, 2012

Let’s talk about Google today. I’ve been writing about Google technologies and Google enterprise efforts quite frequently. One of the questions, readers were asking me – when Google develops PLM? The interest was obvious. Many people believe Google technologies can be quite powerful to work for enterprise.

Read the following article – Google and the Enterprise: The Point? Money. Steve Arnold is analyzing Google trajectories in enterprise software. The main conclusion – working with enterprise organization is significantly different from working within consumer internet. Here is my favorite passage:

In one memorable, yet still confidential interaction, Google allegedly informed a procurement manager that Google disagreed with a requirement. Now, if that were true, that is something one hears about a kindergarten teacher scolding a recalcitrant five year old. Well, that may have been a fantasy, but there were enough rumblings about a lack of customer support, a “fluid” approach to partners, and a belief that whatever Google professionals did was the “one true path.” I never confused Google and Buddha, but for some pundits, Google was going to revolutionize the enterprise. Search was just the pointy end of the spear. The problem, of course, is that organizations are not Googley. In fact, Googley-type actions make some top dogs uncomfortable.

Another interesting article related to Google Enterprise on GigaOM. Notice an excellent explanation about what influence Google made on Microsoft. In particular, we can think how Google forced Microsoft to come with MS Office 365in order to compete with a growing competition with Google Apps.

For all Google’s effort, the incumbent powers Microsoft Office and Exchange Server still lead the corporate applications and email market. Last fall, market researcher Gartner estimated that Google Apps for Businessrepresented less than 1 percent of Google’s overall revenue and there is some doubt as to whether the enterprise apps business remains a priority for the company… Still, market share and revenue may never have been Google’s goal. By offering a lower-cost option to the Office/Exchange tandem, Google forced the market leader to respond, and that may have been the point all along.

I share Steve’s assumption about how much focus Google can put behind the enterprise deals. Absence of key execs reporting to Larry Page confirms Google is not planning to make Enterprise PLM Googley in a near future.

What is my conclusion? Good news for PLM companies. If somebody thoughts Google come tomorrow with PLM product, no worry. This is probably won’t happen. No Google PLM 2012. When I think, Google technologies are fascinating, the absence of focus and experience with enterprise companies, makes Google teeth-less in front of large enterprise software dogs. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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Google vs. Microsoft at General Motors: What does it mean for PLM Cloud?

November 18, 2011

Cloud big time… It is probably coming to General Motors. Google is fighting against Microsoft to supply 100’00 license deal for GM. Navigate your browser to the following article – GM is the latest battleground between Microsoft Office and Google Apps. Read the story. Automaker is running 100’000 seats of Notes. Will the number moves to Google or Microsoft? The following passage is interesting:

If GM were to deploy Google Apps to the 100,000 seats it has apparently contracted to study, it would be a huge win for Google. No other customer approaches that scale: The City of Los Angeles signed a contract for 30,000 Google Apps seats two years ago, but only 17,000 seats have been rolled out, with the LAPD still stalling. Genentech has about 15,000 users; KLM about 11,000 users, Valeo about 30,000, the U.S. General Services Administration about 17,000, and Rentokil about 35,000.

Think about the numbers. Also, think about other customers mentioned above. Does it ring the bell? I think it does.

How PLM software vendors can leverage Google Cloud?

It is always good if somebody fights your fight. The story about Google vs. Microsoft GM Cloud fight made me think about what PLM vendors got to do with regards to this? Companies like GM are very conservative. You need to spend a huge deal of money to convince behemoths to change their strategies. Assuming Google will convince GM and other automotive companies to shift towards Google App from Microsoft SharePoint and Office. It can turn up an opportunity window for PLM and other engineering and manufacturing solution providers into GM-like deals. Is it going to work? I think, it is hard to say, for the moment. However, long term Google has a huge potential. Will Microsoft be ready to protect their home turf? I’m sure they will. It will come as a bundle of W8, Skype, Office and other solutions. They have a chance to keep the territory.

What is my conclusion? The battle about cloud solutions is still in the future. PLM companies are trying shallow water by playing cloud with a small amount of customers. For most of them, it is about how to check technologies and solutions. Company like DS already spent huge chunks of money for R&D cloud efforts. Autodesk is still preparing to come to PLM space and surprise everybody. It is not much known about Siemens and PTC. In the past CAD/PLM companies leveraged their partnership with Microsoft, IBM and other large technological partners. How to choose the right partner for the future cloud battle is a good question to ask. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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Will Database in the Cloud supercharge PLM for Small Companies?

October 23, 2011

I want to talk about an interesting segment of cloud technologies – cloud SQL Database. For the last months, I’ve seen multiple announcements of vendors in this space. Overall, it seems as an interesting trend. In a nutshell, cloud SQL database is a service that allows you to have your SQL database running "somewhere" on the cloud. Thinking about PDM/PLM solutions for small companies, database is a critical component. Database installation made overall product installation complicated. Future configuration, tuning and administration of this database create another level of complications.

So, what is available today on the market to provide cloud SQL database services? Here is the list of most popular solutions: Amazon EC2 RDS, SQL Azure, Google Cloud SQL, Salesforce’s Database.com, Oracle Database Cloud.

SQL Azure

Microsoft is building their own Azure platform. Databse service is part of the Microsoft’s cloud platform. If you 100% relies on top of Microsoft development stack, you may find SQL Azure attractive. Read more here and watch the video:

Google Cloud SQL

Google just announced the availability of Cloud SQL service few weeks ago. Read the following article Google Adds Cloud Based SQL Database to App Engine and Google’s blog Goolge Cloud SQL: Your database in the cloud to learn more. Here is the passage from Google’s blog about what Google provides to developers:

  • No maintenance or administration – we manage the database for you.
  • High reliability and availability – your data is replicated synchronously to multiple data centers. Machine, rack and data center failures are handled automatically to minimize end-user impact.
  • Familiar MySQL database environment with JDBC support (for Java-based App Engine applications) and DB-API support (for Python-based App Engine applications).
  • Comprehensive user interface for administering databases.
  • Simple and powerful integration with Google App Engine

Salesforce Database.com

Salesforce is aggressively pushing more services to power more salesforce services on the cloud. The fact salesforce is using database.com domain for these purposes is very symbolic. Take a look on this following video to learn more about database service.

Oracle Database Cloud

Very recently, Oracle announced Oracle Public Cloud. As part of this cloud offering Oracle is providing an access to their popular database via so called Oracle Database Cloud Services. Watch the following video for more:

Amazon EC2 RDS

Last, but not least. Amazon is one of the most popular providers of cloud infrastructure today. As part of Amazon Elastic Cloud (EC2) you can have an access to Amazon Relational Database services (RDS). You can learn more here. Amazon is not developing their own database, but provide you an access to one of the popular databases on the market. This is an interesting differentiation from all previous solutions that I described.

What is my conclusion? As you can see database service from the cloud is not a unique service these days. Large vendors like Oracle are jumping into this space to compete with their old competitors (like Microsoft) and newcomers (Google and Salesforce.com). It is an interesting decision point for PDM/PLM companies developed their infrastructure for years on top of existing infrastructure. The opportunity to remove complexity is huge, in my view. However, to change existing infrastructure and make this change (both technological and business) will be not a simple task. The fastest will be winners in this game. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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PLM, Sharing Information and Googe+ Circles

October 1, 2011

If you developed or implemented PDM or PLM system, you probably know that definition of users, groups and roles are an essential piece of your implementation. The ability to set them and maintain within the time is very important and can influence many aspects of how a system performs and how business processes in the company will be managed. I’ve seen multiple implementations of users, groups and roles management tools and all of them looks pretty much the same.

Recently, lots of conversations happen around a so-called “social” topic. In a nutshell, lots of these talks about how to streamline organizational processes as a result of re-use some of the experience social networking website and web 2.0 applications gathered for the last 3-5 years. Social networks have been challenged by a significant increase in the level of complexity. Systems growing to 10s and 100s million of users invested a lot in the development of mechanisms to group people and establish different mechanisms define users and groups. Privacy concern made a key role in forcing social networks to develop very sophisticated information sharing mechanisms.

Most probably you had a chance to experience Google+ already. If you haven’t, make a try… Despite the obvious comparison with Facebook, I found it, actually, very different. Even if Google+ is only 3 months old, it is already running to add new features. I’ve been reading Mashable article – Now you can share your Google+ Circle with others. Google Circles are the mechanism that allows you to split and share multiple information streams. Watch the following video to see how you can share Circles:

This feature made me think about how Google+ Circle Share feature can be used to share information between different people and teams across the organizations. The user experience is the key point here. Instead of running complicated tools you can help people to find a right person to connect in the organization based on the contextual information (i.e. people’s role, project belonging, etc.). Do you think the idea is completely crazy? Tell me what tools are you using, for the moment, in your organization?

What is my conclusion? Everything becomes flat these days. Organizations are not exclusion from this rule. Complicated hierarchies and dependencies need to go away. To develop new ways to share information between people in organizations is extremely important. Google+, as well as other social nets are good examples of what future may look like. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

 

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From MultiCAD, to Multi-Cloud. Thoughts about Cloud Realities…

September 27, 2011

I think we are actually in the beginning of a very interesting time. Obviously, you know a lot of things about Multi-CAD. No need to explain. However, I think we are slowly moving into something new – I’d call it "Multi-Cloud". It is less than one day passed since I posted "Autodesk Quietly Launched Their Cloud". Well, it is not quiet anymore, and you can see a lot of blogs and social media coverage coming around Autodesk Cloud news. You can navigate to the following link to learn more. Autodesk is bundled quite many tools on the cloud o strength their cloud offering. However, Autodesk cloud activities coupled with some older news and rumors made me think about future cloud realities. So, I wanted to share it with you.

Dassault and Autodesk: Cloud File Share.

I wanted you to note two products – Autodesk Cloud Documents and Dassault V6 SolidWorks n!Fuze. There is one similar thing that shared between all these events. It is about how to move us from our local storage, we use for CAD files and other document, to the cloud.

I actually tried Autodesk Cloud Documents yesterday (you can take a look on my blog from yesterday). In a nutshell, Autodesk Cloud Documents is a place where you can upload your AutoCAD drawings, Autodesk Inventor Assemblies, DWF files as well as any other documents. As soon as you have done, you can exchange it with other people, view, make a comment and retrieve from multiple devices.

Let me talk about Dassault V6 Cloud store. The product I want to focus on is called SolidWorks n!Fuze. I posted about n!Fuze before. Simply put, n!Fuze is cloud-based product which allows you to upload SolidWorks drawings and any other files. You can then collaborate, exchange and use 3DSwYm communities to collaborate between people uploaded and exchanged documents.

Google Drive Rumors

Another product I want to mention (or actually rumors) is Google Drive. Actually, the prototype of Google Drive is existed today Google Docs. In online discussion, you can hear many bloggers and publishers are agreeing that Google will re-brand their Google Docs into Google Drive. However, specifically for this conversation the detail level of how it will happen actually doesn’t matter. It means only one thing – Google will provide an even bigger place to store your documents online and collaborate (aka working together).

Multi-CAD vs. Multi-Cloud

We are going to face a new problem with CAD and PLM software. Before today, Multi-CAD was one that many people tried to resolve. For the last few years, the problem of Multi-CAD collaboration started to disappear. It doesn’t mean you can easily move from one CAD system to another. At the same time, industry developed different methodologies how companies can either use the same CAD systems in-house and collaborate using information (documents) from multiple CAD systems.

Multi-Cloud Future?

So, you thought, Multi-CAD was your biggest problem? Not anymore… Multi-Cloud is going to rock now. What does it mean? We will see a growing amount of providers of cloud solutions. As you see from my earlier letter, both Dassault and Autodesk are working on their cloud offerings that help them to share document and other content. In addition, the specific offering coming from CAD/PLM providers, another company (i.e. Google, Dropbox, etc.) started to offer their platforms (also) to share document and information. So, I can clearly see conflict of interests between all companies mentioned above.

What is my conclusion? In my view, the conflict is clear. In a short period of time, we are going to see multiple companies are asking for their customers to join their cloud programs. With the obvious absence of differentiations and, in addition, the competition coming from non-CAD companies, customers will have to make a though choice… Most of the products for this purpose were developed in past few months (or at least 1 year) and introduce a limited and competitive functional background. I think, customers will have to make their "multi-cloud" decision. Welcome to the new "cloud" reality. Who do you think will drive in the future Multi-Cloud enterprise? A good question. I want to know your opinion. Please, speak your mind. It is only my opinion, and I’m looking forward to discussing with everybody.

Best, Oleg

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PLM and Location Based Intelligence

September 13, 2011

I learn about SAP and Google Maps collaboration from LBZone few days ago. Navigate your browser to the the following link – Intuitive Overlay of Enterprise Data onto Maps to Fuel Better Business Decisions. SAP is traditionally investing in business analytic software via SAP Business Object product. The following passage explains how Google consumer oriented services can be used together with enterprise tools.

SAP and Google are working together to pair enterprise applications with the kinds of consumer tools that enrich millions of people’s lives every day, such as Google Maps and Google Earth™. With location-based intelligence capabilities, SAP envisions bringing corporate information to life via Google’s dynamic, interactive map, satellite and even street-level views. As a result, customers could analyze their businesses in a geospatial context to effectively understand the "where" of their information, as well as global, regional and local trends and how they are impacted by different scenarios — helping to increase efficiency and profitability, among other benefits.

I can see few interesting scenarios related to product development that require location-based tools such as: maintenance and service operation, supply chain and some other. Visualization of location information can simplify user interface and help to find data trends that hardly can be recognized using location-based visualizations. It will be interesting to see if latest PTC acquisition of 4CS for service lifecycle can find advantages of location-based software.

What is my take? There is a clear trend to merge consumer web tools with enterprise software. So called "IT consumerization" is definitely needed to be watched by PLM vendors. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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PLM User Experience and Google Related

August 17, 2011

PLM User Experience… Yes, I know. This is a painful point. Everybody wants it simpler, intuitive and easy. My best quotes about how to design a good user interface belongs toSteve Krug – “Don’t Make Me Think”. One of the most painful elements of user experience in data-management systems like PDM and PLM is “clicks”. You need to click to move to another screen, open a form, open another form… very painful. Apparently, user experience is a common problem. Take a look something new coming from Google Israel calledGoogle Related.

What is my take? I played with Google Related this morning when working on my daily social medial stuff. I found it slick and useful. It definitely helped me to save few clicks back and forth in a browser. Maybe UX designers thinking about next PLM products need to take a note.

Best, Oleg

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Will Google Develop A Better PLM for Motorolla?

August 17, 2011

Note. To be honest, I don’t have much to say with regards to the last Google purchase – Motorola. I’ve been listening, reading and thinking about various aspects of this purchase together with thousands other bloggers and hundreds of analysts and news websites.

Obviously, I’m using mobile and Google. However, my interest is primarily in software for engineering and manufacturing. Between all these articles, analyzes and publication one post by Business Insider caught my attention – THE TRUTH ABOUT THE GOOGLE – MOTOROLA DEAL: It could end up being a disaster. Read the article and make your opinion. Here is the quote I found the most interesting in the context of PLM:

"…Hardware manufacturing and sales are about supply chains, parts, factories, physical distribution, and consumer marketing–all things that Google has little or no experience with…"

This is something that smells interesting to me. There is no better way to try your software "in-house". Google just added a unique place to experiment with all Google technologies inside of 19’000 people enterprise with design, production, manufacturing plants, supply chain, etc. This is can be a good trigger to develop a future PLM system for Motorola using Google’s platform. Is there PLM player who can do it? Navigate to the following link. Motorola is actually using an open-source PLM – Aras Innovator. Earlier, this year, Aras made a bold statement about their move to multi-platform deployment away from existing .NET code base. Aras on Linux platform with some cloud-based features can be a good opportunity for Motorola. I believe other PLM vendors will not stand still as well. Recent Dassault announcement about Cloud V6 is just one of them.

What is my conclusion? It is hard to predict what route Google-Motorola will take. However, earlier or later Motorola is going to embrace the technologies developed by Google to optimize their business. Product Lifeycle Management question will come. It is just a matter of time. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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Google+ potential for PLM and Business use

July 20, 2011

Well, time is running fast, and I counted my first week of G+ experience. It is still too early to share any specific experience, but probably a good time to share some of my initial thoughts. For the moment, I can see Google+ as a real geekdom. Most of the people there are mostly experimenting, so did I. The main question I wanted to ask, in the beginning, is how Google+ can be used by businesses as well as how Google+ potential can be used in business applications.

Personal Workflow

I started from the analyzes of my personal workflow. I can seaparate my activities into content creation, content consumption, maintaining relationships and broadcasting. The main tool for my content creation activity is blog (WordPress). For the last years, any attempts to replace or combine WordPress usage with additional tools failed. My main content stream is blogging. It seems to me, Google+ is not going to change anything here for me in a visible future. I still don’t have a stable picture stream – all professional and personal photos are fragmented and only part of them lives on the cloud. On the side of consumption, G+ easy became a part of my consumption streams. The easiest way for me was to consume Google+ as RSS stream, which in parallel can be viewed on iPad using Flipboard. Sharing was easy as well. I’m sharing my content today on multiple sites – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others. Google+ becomes another one, for the moment. Not a big difference…

Relationship and Networking

Building connections in Google+ is different from other networks. First of all, Google+ is asymmetric. It means you can connect to a person without having this connection confirmed. It is different from Facebook and LinkedIn. Circle mechanism is powerful and I like it much more than existing list mechanism in Facebook and Twitter.

Google+ and Business

The biggest question I have is what Google+ can provide for business. For the moment, Google+ is blocking creation of business profiles. However, take a look on the following video. You can hear clear statements that Google is planning to introduce Google+ to a business domain.

Google+ and PLM Business Domains

What are possible domains of Google+ applications in business. Future usage of Google+ tools for a better collaboration is obvious – ad hoc meetings, chat, email, mobile group calls, messaging. Circles provide an efficient team and group organization mechanism. Finally, a video conference can be a good competition to Skype. Next level of benefits related to future integration of Google Apps. It can make collaboration even stronger. Group sharing of spreadsheets can be a very strong feature in PDM/PLM domain.

What is my conclusion? Obviously, it is too early to make a conclusion. It is interesting to know what we will feel with regards to Google+ closer to the X-Mass party. What I can tell is that for the last week Google+ succeeded to take some attention, and I embedded it into my day-to-day flow. I like user experience and some features look very promising. Time will show if this is for real. Just my thoughts.

Best, Oleg

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