PLM Online Data Sharing: From Spreadsheets to Databases?

July 17, 2011

What is the most popular PDM/PLM system in the world? My bet it is probably MS Excel. The flexibility and ease of availability, made Excel so popular between engineers. Managers probably don’t care… in the beginning. Later, companies started to hire CExO (Chief Excel Officers) to manage the complexity of Excel files. I’ve been reading Dropbox for File Sharingby Robert Green of Cadalyst. It made me think if a situation similar to Excel will happen with PDM/PLM on the cloud. I can see few CAD/PLM vendors are thinking "cloudy". However, at the same time, the majority is not thinking about how to innovate on the cloud and still discussing a potential cloud adoption.

So, what cloud products will become the future Excel on the cloud. Rober Green is talking about Dropbox and sharing of CAD files. However, I want to raise a different point. CAD files can stay in the company. What if we will be able to share our fancy Excel spreadsheets. It sounds like a good alternative to our old friend MS Excel? We can add CAD files too. Dropbox is a good service. However, are there any visible alternatives? I made a small research and want to present you few solutions, I found interesting.

SpreadsheetLIVE

This service is still completely free. It creates a very interesting "spreadsheet oriented" environment. You can think about multiple scenarios and implementations you can make. Services such as API is supported as well.

Google Docs

I don’t need to talk much about these services. This service is "really free" and "really unlimited". You, of course, limited by your 2GB quota. At the same time, there is a nice feature that allows you to provide an access to the spreadsheet (view only or read/write).

Microsoft Live (Office 365)

Office Live is a similar environment as Google Docs, but made by Microsoft. It is free, but limited to 50MB. You can access spreadsheet for editing. However, if you have no account, you will be in a read-only mode.

Longjump

Longjump is a full-fledged cloud database service. You can import spreadsheet by passing via CSV file. The service contains database, reports, pivots, etc .. However, it is not free, and you’re supposed to pay $500 depends on the plan. This is something that can remind you a bit your favorite PLM environment.

Intuit Quickbase

This one is the most expensive and the most polished solution I found. Your data will be imported and converted to a real database. Data cannot be converted from Excel and requires to pass via CSV format. On another side, Intuit has a very good reputation of trusted online service provider. You will be paying around $300/user/mo and will be limited to 1GB of data for an initial plan.

What is my conclusion? Online data business is growing faster than you probably expected. Very soon, engineers will have lots of opportunities to dump local excel files and move to something smarter. Will PLM providers catch them on this way and propose an alternative solution? A good question. The number of "PLM Excels" is huge. To catch some of them, can be a valuable business. Just my thoughts..

Best, Oleg

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Google+, PLM and the Product Data Sharing Models

July 7, 2011

Social is trending. It was specially true this weekend. The social hype taking individuals, organizations and social vendors. Personally, I want to write off, I’m not a very social person. I urge other people to be social by writing blog and distributing the content on multiple social networks. However, when it comes to consuming, I rather prefer something that will help me to consume social channels in a most efficient way.

Google is coming with Google+. I found the excitement about Google+ interesting. I had no chance to try out Google+. My social channels didn’t bring me the invitation to Google+. So, I cannot join the club of social geeks trying out Circles and other elements of Google+. At the same time, I read quite many articles shared by top geeks writing non-stop about Google+. Navigate your browser to the following article - Google+ Is a Marketing Sensation and you will get a taste of what I’m talking about.

Google+ made me think about model of information and social channels. Navigate to the following article on TechCrunch - Zuckerberg not so subtle dig at Google Circles. The interesting thing there is related to the analyzes of social groups and sharing models – symmetric and asymmetric. Facebook is supporting completely symmetric sharing model. You need to get your fried confirmation to establish connection and share information. At the same time, Google+ followed Twitter and created completely asymmetric social channels in Google+ Circles.

Asymmetric vs. Symmetric Sharing Model

There are two fundamental sharing model – asymmetric and symmetric. Google+ has an “asymmetric sharing” model where you can share one-way with people, but they don’t have to share back. Facebook has a “symmetric sharing” model where two people mutually confirm that they are friends, and then can start sharing stuf with each other privately or publicly. Twitter has an “asymmetric follow” model where people Tweet out publicly and anyone can follow what they are broadcasting without that person necessarily following back. It’s one-way.

Visual Guide to Circles in Google+ by @ross
View more presentations from Ross Mayfield

PLM and Product Data Sharing 

It made me think about PLM and the importance of the future data sharing models. One of the fundamental needs of product development is to be able to share information with the right people at the right moment of time. Sounds simple? Yes. You can tell me now – this is what PDM/PLM Collaboration is all about! Last 20 years of development of various “data management and collaboration system” ended with a complete win of email and Excel spreadsheets when it comes to the point where an organization needs to decide how to share information. Data sharing is still a huge problem in every product development organization. To solve it, organization needs to focus on creation of a model to support efficient product data sharing. Should we create a symmetric model (similar to Facebook) or to allow people to be connected to the right content at the right point of time (asymmetric circles or twitter lists)?

What is my conclusion? For the last 10-15 years, PLM vendors invested a significant effort in the development of systems that can control data. However, not much was done in the area of data sharing and data consuming. This is something PLM can learn from Google+ and Facebook. Efficient product data sharing is a key for PLM to become a mainstream tool to support product development in many manufacturing organizations. Unfortunately, most of the PLM systems are not there yet. Right place to innovate. Just my thoughts..

Best, Oleg

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Chromebooks: Another Small Step Towards Cloud PLM?

May 14, 2011

I’ve been watching updates from the Google I/O 2011 conference during this week. Google came with the announcement of Chromebook. In my view, this is a logical continuation of all Google web and cloud efforts – Apps, Chrome, etc. When it is still not related to any CAD, PLM and other cloud efforts, I found the following passage in Google’s announcement interesting:

Even with dedicated IT departments, businesses and schools struggle with the same complex, costly and insecure computers as the rest of us. To address this, we’re also announcing Chromebooks for Business and Education. This service from Google includes Chromebooks and a cloud management console to remotely administer and manage users, devices, applications and policies. Also included is enterprise-level support, device warranties and replacements as well as regular hardware refreshes.

The following video can get you some ideas about what Google is planning to offer.

What is my take on this? Cloud is coming. However, it will not come in a single one-big-step. It will include many small steps towards introductory of new and useful services for people in manufacturing companies. Chromebook is one small single step in this direction. Just my thoughts.

Best, Oleg

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PLM, Google and Cloud Babysitting…

May 9, 2011

I’m continuing to think about Amazon cloud failure. As you may have noticed, the “cloud” is a frequent topic on my blog. I’ve been talking about the cloud with many people and organizations during the last couple of years and learning what are best practices in delivery of stable cloud solutions with a high level of availability. To avoid failure, the tick is redundancy. When one of your cloud servers fail, you need to make a switch. You would prefer this switch happens automatically. However, in most cases, it is somebody who babysit this service and responding on the alerts of server’s health monitoring.

Photo Courtesy: MichaelMarlatt at Flickr (License)

Google Apps and Enterprises

I read the following article in InformationWeek – Google Urges Enterprises To Go Web 100%. Read the article and make your opinion. If you are in manufacturing business and your company is not Ford, Toyota, Airbus and similar, you can find lots of parallels between the conversation Google’s Enterprise Mid Market Sales Chief has with the audience. You probably tired with running all your business processes using Excel and Email. At the same time, you cannot consider a significant investment into PDM/PLM programs just because your resources are not on the same level as most of PLM vendors demand it should be. Here is my favorite passage from InfoWeek article:

The IT groups at midsize enterprises are often so wrapped up with dealing with the basics of PC and server support and upgrades that they have little attention left over to focus on issues like improved collaboration, Remley said. But business managers at those same organizations see the inefficiency in trying to run too many projects by email, where a dozen people will make edits to the same document and a project manager is forced to reconcile all those versions. With Google Docs, they could instead have all been working with the same document online, he said.

PLM in the cloud?

PLM companies are having mixed experience with the cloud. In my view, all of them (vendors) are having love&hate relationships with the cloud. In my view, all of them are watching what is going, but not committed 100% to the cloud. The exception is maybe only Arena Solution (former bom.com), which was pioneering “on-demand PLM” since early 2000s.

Almost more than a year ago, SolidWorks, during SWW 2010 made some very preliminary announcements with regards to the availability of SolidWorks product on cloud. You can read – Jeff Ray on V6, the Cloud and Killing SolidWorks by SolidSmack. This year SolidWorks presented the promised “Connect” product (new name n!Fuze) – SolidWorks n!Fuze -The Cloud Remake of PLM Collaboration?. For a long period of time, I thought Siemens PLM is very neutral to the “cloud appearance”. Reading Dezignstuff blog during the weekend, I noted Matt’s post – Tony Affuso’s Keynote from Siemens PLM conference that happened last week in Las Vegas. Here is a very interesting passage related to what probably Siemens PLM is thinking with regards to the cloud:

…Affuso said “we like the cloud”. Here’s the thing. After seeing some presentations on what the NX customer does, they are mostly from international organizations with distributed engineering and other product development efforts sharing work from large geographical separation. Cloud makes sense for huge conglomerates sharing data from many sources. In fact, a whole lot of things make sense when seen from a full-on PLM point of view that people like me who develop products in a closet tend to not understand. So if nothing else, I’m getting some perspective from this conference.

What is my conclusion? Cloud is coming. I’d say differently. It is coming with the internet. Web constantly opens new levels of capabilities, cost reduction and optimization. On the other side, it is not a “silver bullet” that will solve all your problems in a single shot. Remember, few very successful companies were born in the end of 1990s / beginning of 2000s when everything related to the .com/internet was considered as absolutely ruined. I think, smart companies will babysit cloud services to provide the functions, delivery model and cost combination that will be winning for manufacturing companies for a long run.

Just my thoughts… I’d be interested to know where are you staying with regards to the cloud planning? Please comment and speak your mind.

Best, Oleg

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Google Cloud: Ready for CAD / PLM?

March 15, 2011

Cloud is continuously discussed among the people in CAD/PLM industry. The opinions are varying and discussion is going up and down. Vendors are arguing about availability, security, bandwidth, portfolio and many other things. I’ve been writing about multiple ways cloud can be introduced to the community of people in manufacturing companies. Two years ago, I wrote -Where is PLM shortcut to the cloud? The idea of massive deployment of elastic services and storage on AWS and S3 got a lot of supporters since then. The whole companies like Netflix are relying on AWS to deploy their solution. The example of Netflix is specially good, since it contains a deployment of a significant amount of video content on the cloud. Another post, also two years old – Should PLM take an Excel on Cloud? was about a potential of moving content to the cloud.

Google Storage and Cloud Connect

The following article caught my attention last week – Google user-managed storage launched with sizes up to 16 terabytes of space. Here is the quote: Storage for Google Docs, Picasa Web Albums, and photos from Blogger can now scale up to 16TB. The prices per year are extremely reasonable: 1TB is $256 a year and the numbers scale up from there. Much smaller portions are available starting at $5 a year for 20GB. If you are going to the maximum of possible 16TB, the price will be around 4K /year, which make it very reasonable these days. Compare it with the storage in your company and make your own conclusion. Another interesting application launched by Google called Google Connect, which is literally allows you to plug-in your lovely Microsoft Office environment directly to Google cloud. Guess how simple will be to convert all your Excels to Google Spreadsheets?

CAD/PLM: SolidWorks n!Fuze Cllaboration

Some CAD/PLM companies are very supportive and started slowly to inject their “cloud-vision” to the masses. At the last SolidWorks World 2011, Dassault introduced a new application called SolidWorks n!Fuze. The vision behind n!Fuze is simple: You work with SolidWorks and at the same time you can share SolidWorks files using Enovia V6 platform on the cloud. Sounds nice. You can see my blog SolidWorks n!Fuze: The Cloud Remake of PLM Collaboration?

The original name of SolidWorks cloud product was SolidWorks Connect. Which make it very similar to what Google Connect is doing with Microsoft Office. SolidWorks Engineers explained me during SolidWorks World 2011 that the main goal of n!Fuze is to help engineers to collaborate by sharing files. It is interesting if n!Fuze will be able to synchronize SolidWorks files content between multiple users by uploading them to Enovia V6 platform. What will be the advantage of Enovia V6 platform vs. Google is another interesting question to ask.

What is my conclusion? Cloud services are growing. Cloud platforms like Google are moving bottom up and provide infrastructure that can make some software vendors offering irrelevant. Few days ago I wrote about cloud scalability of existing platforms. To be able to combine the latest infrastructure of cloud providers with functions needed to customers seems to me the right way to go these days. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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CAD/PLM Strategy and Burning Chrome

March 2, 2011

Choose the platform for your software becomes a new issue in 2010s. Platform was kind of easy story for the last 10-15 years. You had a choice of market share leaders, blue chip companies and that’s it. You cannot get wrong by signing a contract with IBM. This is what people told me a decade ago. Not anymore, in my view… The future choice of a technological platform can be a bit more complicated. I read the article Burning Chrome by TechCruch few days ago. Have a read and make your opinion. This is my favorite passage from this article:

Google’s long-term strategy seems to be to supplant Microsoft by first building the best browser, then making it easy to move your files to Google Docs; and finally, slowly but inexorably, making Windows and Office irrelevant. Obviously no one will abandon Microsoft products wholesale anytime soon; but as cloud computing grows more ubiquitous, Google steadily iterates feature after feature, and people grow accustomed to working in the browser, then one day, maybe only a couple of years from now, a whole lot of people – and businesses – will begin to think to themselves “Hey, we haven’t actually needed Windows or Office in months. Why do we even have them at all?”

CAD/PLM and Technological Platforms

CAD vendors successfully leveraged various technological platforms in the past. Think about Autodesk and PC back in 1980s and SolidWorks and Windows in 1990s. PDM/PLM made their own play with technologies and platforms too. Windows-based PDMs in the last 1990s and early 2000s presented some approach about how to apply Windows based user experience to improve the quality of tools. The overall cost of these systems went down at the same time. Web-based development also provided some great examples of successfully implementation PLM systems.

What Next?

The question I’m asking myself is what next. I can see some interesting trials these days by CAD and PLM developers to leverage existing technological platforms and innovations. Few of them to be mentioned. PTC ProductPoint presents a massive usage of Microsoft SharePoint. Another interesting example is trying to leverage social technology (3DSwYm,Vuuch). Cloud experiments of Autodesk in something they called "infinite computing". All these examples are promising. However, I have a feeling of something missing.

What is my conclusion? “A good player goes where the puck is. A great player goes where the puck is going to be”—The Great One. I can think about Chrome as one of the next innovative platforms PM can leverage. The biggest problem PLM companies are trying to resolve already many years are cost of the deployment and mainstream deployment. To make a system to proliferate together with Google’s idea of network computer can be an interesting strategic move. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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Will Google Docs Goes 3D?

February 28, 2011

Few days ago, I attended webinar One the Edge with Cadalyst – MCAD Smackdown: Direct vs .Parametric CAD. Navigate to the following link to listed the recorded podcast. An interesting comment was made by one of the attendees during the conversation about what is the better 3D option – 2D simply works. Yes, 2D works and surprisingly drives more attentions nowadays. My hunch, the reason why it happens is simple- mainstream. The same reason why DS just released DraftSight 2D CAD package to be available for free download.

I read Google Docs blog few days ago – 12 new formats in Google Docs Viewer. Here is the list:

  • Microsoft Excel (.XLS and .XLSX)
  • Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 / 2010 (.PPTX)
  • Apple Pages (.PAGES)
  • Adobe Illustrator (.AI)
  • Adobe Photoshop (.PSD)
  • Autodesk AutoCad (.DXF)
  • Scalable Vector Graphics (.SVG)
  • PostScript (.EPS, .PS)
  • TrueType (.TTF)
  • XML Paper Specification (.XPS)

Autodesk DXF format exists for years and used by many people to exchange 2D information. By supporting this and some other image formats Google Docs put additional stakes into the future of Google Docs as a mainstream collaborative tool in manufacturing and construction.

What is my take? Google’s target is to serve "individuals" with best tools. Everybody considers Google as a "consumer oriented" company. However, thinking about individual consumers, they can work in manufacturing companies too. To provide them with productivity tools helping them to get a job done can be an interesting option… Do you think, Google will add 3D format support to their viewer? A good question to ask. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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PLM Compound Data and Google Collaboration

January 14, 2011

I made a short note today. Google enhanced the capability of Google Docs with embedding video playback. Navigate your browser to the following Google blog describing how to realize it. In addition, you can take a look on the document providing the specification about what video formats are supported.

The importance of rich media content is increasing over the time. Google improves their capabilities to share content. It can be an interesting option for people who considering Google Apps as an option for collaboration inside of organizations. It made me think, Google Doc can be in the future enhanced with the ability to embed players like JT-Openand 3DVia to provide even richer content. The upload procedure is pretty simple. You just upload video to your Google Docs. When you open document, the players automatically turns on.

One question remained not answered. The ability to search these videos and rich media content can be a powerful capability. Google is not saying a word about that.

What is my conclusion? Collaboration tools like Google Docs and Google Apps are increasing their power to support more scenarios beyond basics only. They have an option to challenge specialized tools coming from PLM vendors in a near future. In my view, this is kind of alarm for big PLM bears…
Best, Oleg

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Will ChromeOS be the Next Big Thing for PLM?

December 29, 2010

I read GigaOM – The network computer arrives… finally! About three weeks ago, Google launched the Chrome application store and demonstrated Chrome OS, its browser centric netbook operational system. The Google’s philosophy behind Chrome OS is to build a browser that largely designed for applications rather than a browser for documents we have today.

Google posted a full video record of the event on the Youtube. You can get it by navigating your browser to the following link. If you have some free time during the winter break, watch the Google Chrome OS show. I made few notes when watching these videos:

- Chrome OS is about web and sharing
- Chrome OS is about low cost personal computing
- Chrome OS is about simple application access

If you short on time, watch the following video to have a basic idea about Chrome OS.

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Enterprise Use Case for Chrome OS

At the time consumers might be checking options of Chrome OS vs. other alternatives like iOS and cool Apple devices, enterprises can find reasonable to adopt Chrome OS. Enterprise has a strong need for low-cost computers designed to do a certain task cheaply and without maintenance. Think about mainframe terminals in the past. So, back to the future. Chrome OS and HTML 5-based web apps that runs inside the browser are a perfect solution.

What is my conclusion? End user adoption is a significant problem for PLM software vendors. Complexity, Installation, Implementations – all these factors stops PLM proliferation in organizations. Cost is another aspect. It seems to me, Chrome OS has a potential to become a platform to deliver a value of PLM application to users in manufacturing organization.

Best, Oleg

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Mini PLM and Google Shared Spaces

December 22, 2010

Google Wave gone. Developers moved to Facebook. Nevertheless, Google comes with an interesting Labs project Google Shared Space. You can get more info on the Shared Space wiki pages. In addition, navigate your browser to the following two articles – PC Mag: Google Shared Space Gadgets Use Wave Technology and Google has a new social experience. The technology of usage widget code written for Google Wave without actually trying to achieve to grandiose Wave goal of re-inventing email made me think about some similar experience happens in PLM world these days.

Re-packaging and Mini PLM

I’ve wrote about re-packaging few days ago. I can see Google Wave morphed and re-packaged into SharedSpace. I can even see a repackaging formula: Google Wave – Email Replacement = Google Shared Space. As a consequence of this can come with something that can provide useful PLM-related features without building huge PLM building. PLM vendors were under immersive stress to provide the best integrated environment. Mindshare PLM vendors spent enormous budgets working on vertically integrated solutions. At the same time, Daimler situation presented some weak points of proprietary integrations and client adoption.

Applificiation and Google Wave Widgets

Take a look on the list of Google Shared Space widgets. I found it interesting. Using imagination, you can think about how to utilize them for product development tasks, voting, business process planning, etc.

I made a try with a glimpse of BPMN process. You can see, it resulted in a process I can share with other people using Google, Facebook or Twitter accounts.

What is my conclusion? The consumerization of IT – this is a process we will be watching very intensively for the next decade. It will result in multiple morphing of existing solutions into something that will remind consumer web, but will provide a value for enterprise organizations. Google SharedSpace experiment with widgets is a good try. I’m not sure what success it will bring to Google. Data is a missing point when you move SharedSpace story to an enterprise environment.

Best, Oleg

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