Cloud PLM and IT Basic Instinct

January 27, 2012

The amount of publications about PLM and cloud is growing. This is not surprising me. There are two reasons to that. Cloud is clearly hyping. Second – major player such as Autodesk is making their move towards the cloud. Carl Bass, Autodesk CEO announced that today’s technologies allow to Autodesk to come with a reliable and affordable PLM system. Almost at the same time, during DSCC 2011, Bernard Charles is announcing that DS invested about $2B in the development of the most sophisticated online cloud platform in the word (he was talking about Enovia platform).

I was reading ECN article Seeing Past the Clouds – PLM and what’s What? by Eric Marks. The article is speaking about trends in the cloud PLM and four possible strategies: public, private, community and hybrid. I can clearly understand the difference between public and private (read one of my previous posts – PLM Cloud: dedicated, private, public). However, the concept of community cloud is a bit complicated, since it is point on how cloud services will be used, rather on if it goes to public servers and multitenant opposite to private server placement. At the same time, I found the passage about "hybrid cloud" the most interesting. Here it is:

And lastly there are “hybrid clouds” where a private cloud can extend onto a public cloud for specific activities and on an as-need basis. The benefit of a hybrid approach that incorporates a public cloud is that it provides extra performance scalability for the private cloud that would be in use.

I can clearly see how it can make a difference. I’m sure you’re familiar with Basic Instinct movie. Let me make an association with IT. The basic IT instincts are control and cost. As I’ve been told by IT people in one of the manufacturing companies in Mid West – if the cloud is be more cost-effective for effective for us, we will be moving towards the cloud. Otherwise we stay in our racks. Hybrid model allows to keep IT on premise and extend to cloud in order to have a cost effective expansion and scale. It sounds like something that can keep everybody happy and, at the same time, it is clearly Trojan horse that cloud providers will put in organizations. As soon as such solutions will be running in production, rest of the game for cloud providers will be to leverage the economy of scale and not to blow up "security" red-herring.

Another passage from ECN article practically confirms that.

According to Edward Quinn, Mevion Medical Systems IT Manager, “to do this, Mevion is leveraging a “hybrid cloud” in order to be able to scale quickly and efficiently to distributed cloud data centers at far less cost than purchasing expensive equipment or renting/building out corporate data centers. The IT department can leverage the advanced international infrastructure already in place by leading cloud computing companies and activate and pay only for the services that its business needs.”

What is my conclusion? There are many reasons why companies can decide to move towards the cloud – better collaboration, ease of install, mobile, and many others. However, the cloud fundamental is about how to drive costs down using the economy of scale. PLM won’t be an exclusion from this game. In order to move towards that, vendors need to pass "IT police" in every organization. Hybrid cloud looks like a good weapon leveraging IT basic instincts. Just my thoughts….

Best, Oleg

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PLM and Process Tools: Opportunity or Complication?

January 18, 2012

I’d like to talk about BPM again. I was writing about BPM in the past. Navigate to this link to take a look on few pasts topics related to Business Process Management. Almost four years ago, I asked a question – Should PLM develop its own process tools? I think, the question is still not answered. Here is a quote from my historical article about what is the place PLM can take in the BPM game:

So where does PLM play into this game? I see two possible options: (1) PLM providers will focus on the development of process management tools; (2) PLM providers will allow the integration of PLM information and IP (Intellectual Property) into existing process tools provided by platforms. I believe that option (1) will be very helpful in integrating PLM systems into the enterprise software already available within the vast zoo of software within the organization, option (2) can simplify deployment and and keep the implementation of PLM simple.

I was reading Beth Stackpole Design News article PLM startup targets efficiency. It is a short article. Have a read and make your opinion. Don’t miss also comments to the article too. Based on what Kenesto is saying, manufacturing companies are still looking for good process management solutions. I found the following passage interesting:

…PLM’s tight ties to CAD still limit its use beyond engineering — a fact Kenesto is hoping to avoid with its process-automation-for-anyone approach…. traditional PLM is basically a process automation tool that is too complex to use effectively, prompting many users to circumvent it, using spreadsheets or email to share critical product data….Kenesto isn’t a replacement for PLM systems, but rather a different approach for solving the process automation piece of facilitating engineering workflows. Kenesto, which is cloud-based software, employs conventions that most users understand, like sending and receiving attachments, so it feels in many ways like a familiar email system…

The idea seems to me simple and interesting. Kenesto will be on the cloud, disconnected from CAD, providing graphical DIY tools to engineers to route documents and messages.

BPM and PLM: Integration Complexity

One of the biggest problems of BPM in the past was a problem of integration. Tools like SharePoint, WebSphere, and many others provided quite powerful solution to support processes in your organization. However, when companies tried to implement it, organization faced significant complexity to integrate existing “content oriented” systems (i.e. ERP, CRM, PLM) with process management tools (BPM). Most of BPM tools ended up acquired by large platform tools, and you can find them as part of larger platforms.

What is my conclusion? It seems to me “cloud” is a game changer in Kenesto play. By introducing solution in the cloud, Kenesto will try to simplify the process of integration with existing CAD, PLM and other enterprise tools. DIY approach can simplify IT life in organizing engineering processes. At the same time, it can introduce a challenge for IT trying to rule application and business processes and not interested to give it up to end users. The simplicity claimed by Kenesto can be another game changer. Kenesto is searching for beta customers. You can read more here. You can watch Kenesto in action to prove it right. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Disclosure: I’m serving as an external advisor to Kenesto

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PLM and IT Consumerization: Top 3 Show Stoppers

November 23, 2011

Have you heard about "Consumerization" in IT? I’m sure you had a chance to read about this trend. If not, navigate to the following Wikipedia link. The idea, in a nutshell, is related to a growing usage of the application and devices originally available in the consumer space in enterprise and/or business.

Consumerization is a stable neologism that describes the trend for new information technology to emerge first in theconsumer market and then spread into business organizations, resulting in the convergence of the IT and consumer electronics industries, and a shift in IT innovation from large businesses to the home. For example, many people now find that their home based IT equipment and services are both more capable and less expensive than what is provided in their workplace. The term, consumerization, was first popularized by Douglas Neal and John Taylor of CSC‘s Leading Edge Forum in 2001 and is one of the key drivers of the Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 movements.

There are quite many examples in this space. The simplest one is usage of private smart phones in business. It was significant 1-2 years ago when enterprises hesitated to move towards Apple’s iPhones and restricted employees to use alternative Windows Phones or Blackberries. Another example is usage of multiple Apps coming from app stores by people. Collaboration software is another example. How many times you used Google Apps or gmail because the similar service provided by IT in your organization wasn’t available?

I’ve been reading Trend Microconsumerization Report 2011 on the plane yesterday and found some interesting numbers there. Navigiate your browser to the following link to read more.

So, what happens in PLM? Can we find ourselves using consumer application in engineering and manufacturing or the domain is too specific to be exposed into consumer application? Here is my take. I don’t believe, there is a real risk to replace CAD, CAE and other specialized application. However, there are two segments of applications that can be heavy involved and impacted by consumer applications: communication and collaboration. Email, data sharing, social networking and communication (video conference utilities, etc.). It made me think about the potential of risks and aspects companies can be exposed as a result of such a "consumerization".

In my view, a single element of exposure can happen because of employees using non-IT approved applications. It is DATA. It made me think about the potential showstoppers. I can select three and I want to speak about them separately.

1. Data Ownership.

As a result of consumer application usage, data can easily migrate or been originated outside of organizational facilities. It can cause losing control of IT organization and cause risks in losing IP related to the core company activities. The accounts in consumer applications can be compromised, and data ownership cannot be claimed. It is very hard (even impossible) to get data back from outside services and/or locations.

2. Data Security

I have really mixed feeling about this topic. Even if I truly believe, in many situations iT uses the topic of security as "a red herring", the security risks are indeed existed if employees are using consumer services. Consumer service security capabilities are not standing aligned with enterprise requirements and sometime consumer web apps provided by small companies that really doesn’t care about security so much. As a result of that, information located outside of organization can be accessed or access can be compromised.

3. Data Compliancy

If data is located in your X:\ drive or Google Apps account, it is work related and most compliancy rules needs to apply. SOX, FRCP, GLBA. All elements and requirements needs to be in place. Not sure Instagram or Foursquare software are actually aware about how to meet regulatory (requirements) in that situation. It is a really good question that needs to be asked before you placing company data in these applications.

What is my conclusion? Where consumer apps provide a great deal of usability, flexibility and cost-efficiency, companies need to be concerned about DATA, employees shares outside. Email, collaboration, conference file-sharing services – all needs to be concerned as a potential service exposes data in your organization. To work with software vendors that actually thinking about how to provide cloud (and other) services without breaching your data and increase company risks needs to be a priority for many IT organizations.

Just my thoughts..

Best, Oleg

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PLM Cloud an Gartner Flip Flop

November 5, 2011

Cloud conversation is taking a sharp turn. Private cloud vs. public cloud. This is actually can be a very interesting and quite a big game changer for PLM companies. In one of my previous blogs, I was talking about cloud trends and different cloud options -dedicated, private, public. It was quite common to consider enterprises will push towards "private cloud" as the first option on their "cloud highway". Private cloud keeps IT "business as usual" status quo and, at the same time, leveraging cloud technology. Major IT analytical companies behaved in a very supportive way with regards to this option. Navigate your browser to the following article in Info World -Gartner endorse private clouds…

However, I figured out that Gartner just made a flip flop. Read another InfoWord article that was published about a week ago – Gartner flip-flop: try private cloud firstby David Linthicum. The article contains few links on Gartner reports. If you have a time over the weekend or later this week – have a read and make your conclusion. I found the following passage interesting:

Adding virtualization to your data center does not make it a private cloud, so server huggers needs to move beyond that approach. This [Gartner opinion] is refreshing to hear, considering that my consulting life has revolved around explaining the differences between virtualization and cloud computing lately. To be clear, adding virtualization does not make it a cloud. Clouds, including private clouds, don’t require virtualization, but they do need self-provisioning, use-based accounting, multitenancy, and APIs, among other cloud attributes.

The next passage of David’s article emphasizes even more one of the core elements of data re-branding in so-called "private clouds":

The trouble is that hardware and software vendors have gone gaga over the concept of private clouds, using it as a new argument for you to purchase more IT gear. There’s a been a ton of confusion around just what a private cloud is and does, as they push the same old stuff rebranded as "cloud." I find that most enterprise technology consumers don’t know what a private cloud really is, but instead latch on to the idea they can continue to hug servers. We love our servers.

I found it specially interesting in the context of on-going conversation about how the future of PLM cloud will look like. In another post "Cloud, Head’s-down drafters and Technological analogies" I’ve been talking about a potential confusion around PLM cloud software and how to differentiate multiple ways to implement PLM on the cloud – new multitenant cloud systems and existing PLM systems cloud re-branding.

What is my conclusion? Companies will decide how to adopt the cloud. The interesting thing, I discovered this week – it won’t be a linear process. IT is trying to establish a running pathway to get existing software on the cloud in a very gradual way. It includes planning, validation, etc… However, urgent business pains and short opportunity will provide an advantage for cloud providers to offer their services to companies at the time they needed with the right speed and cost. It will be interesting to see all flip-flop that will happen to IT on this way. Just my thoughts..

Best, Oleg

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PLM, IT Transformation and Self-Organization

June 14, 2010

I was reading HBR Blog post by Andrew McAfee “IT’s Three Key Organizational Transformations“. The issue of IT spending made me think about the amount of software packages and IT services, a typical organization absorbed during the last 10-15 years for product development, engineering and manufacturing. The question, I wanted to ask and discuss, is what will be the future of these systems?

Disparate Systems and Product Development
The IT landscape in a typical manufacturing or engineering company is a blend of many systems. Each system is responsible for a particular business or engineering function. In many situations engineers are using different applications (in some cases, number is really big). As I had chance to discuss in “PLM and Heterogeneous Product Development, multiple systems is the reality and won’t be changed in a visible future.

Single System Myth And Transformation
I can see some of the business application vendors are still following “a single system” approach. Such big single systems are very complicated in setup, implementation, maintenance and, the most important, in change management. Vendors are still working on these systems will be actively looking how to transform these systems into a slim, agile set of the components (or services). In my view, we’ll see more and more smaller application.

PLM and Self-Organization
The idea of Self-Organization in PLM is interesting. Let me think what how possible it can be done? The value of existing systems is significant from the standpoint of data and processes they support. Since changes in such systems are very complicated, potentially, they can be self-organized into islands of information that will become available via set of services. Within the time, the value of information will become more critical. At the same time, process-oriented pieces of these apps will be transformed into a more agile set of services.

What is my conclusion today? Organizations are overloaded with software products – coming as OTS products and various forms of service deliveries. In addition to that, manufacturing organization created a huge number of customized software that applies to their specific processes. The biggest organizational problem, in my view, is how to move forward? There is a cost of maintaining all these systems (most of them, by the way, are in the active operation). At the same time, the cost of migration to a new system (or systems) is very high. And, there is an urgency to solve real business problems today. So, organization will struggle to find a pathway to self-organization product development and manufacturing systems. What will be technology and/or method to solve this problem? I think, we will have to discover it in the next decade.

Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg

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PLM trends in the intersection of Business and IT

August 24, 2009

 plm-it-interestion-trendsYou can ask me - why would you like to talk about trends? Trends are something normally going toward an end of the calendar year? Something like “2009 trends” or “future 2010 trends”… What’s up now?

I think, current turbulent time brings different time scale on everything we are doing. Businesses need to take decisions about what they are doing on going basis and not on calendar basis. So, thinking about various business needs and heading up to more active post-summer time, I decided to put few thoughts about PLM and surrounding topics.
I’d like to suggest to take a focus of two – Business and IT. And definitely, “business first” notion. In my view, prism of Business will have a very significant impact on everything that will go in Product Lifecycle Management in the near future.

So, I figured out four “major trends” and want to talk about them a little bit more in deep. I will take them in the order from most “business significant” to “more technologically significant”.

1. Upfront cost of PLM projects will impact enterprise PLM

I think initial cost of PLM projects becomes a very significant factor impacting various kinds of PLM implementations in enterprise these days. I’d expect every Business Unit thinking about PLM strategies to ask question - how we can do the same with less cost? I see here various impacts coming from outside of PLM, such as development of “free software notion” in consumer space, OnDemand/SaaS models for CRM and partially ERP applications and, finally, bad perception about PLM implementation performance. I’d expect major business re-thinking in the way business will think about PLM and surrounding business applications. What does it mean for PLM vendors? My thoughts here mostly about alternative business models (free/open source) and new technologies that lower cost of PLM deployments.
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2. Vertical PLM Solutions

PLM becomes very broad solution when vendors start to think in context of various industries, vertical, markets and organization types. One of the possible ways to become more efficient and increase adoption rate, is to focus PLM solutions/implementations on the specific market niche. The potential of a specific market niche/industry can be significant for mid-size software vendor to get in. Another interesting perspective is how “PLM behemoths” will be reacting on such a move. My expectation is for positive reaction and interest to build market/industry specific partnerships and alliances.

3. Alternative non-PLM solutions

This is another interesting move. Do you like buzzword “PLM”? I’d expect not everybody like it and many of the software vendors and solution providers can try to find solution for “PLM problem” in “non-PLM way”. The potential exists in multiple domains - Business Process Management, MDM, Content Management etc. These companies, leveraging new technologies, infrastructure and ideas can compete to provide product development, engineering and manufacturing solutions in the same space occupied by PLM vendors. Even if I see potential risk for current PLM businesses as very low, I think risk for “white space” and “new business” is very significant.

4. PDM renaissance

Th  This is my last point. What can be done in PDM these days? PDM is a core of Product Lifecycle Management and provide basics data management capabilities for most of PLM deployments. At the same time, PDM is mature and provided by many vendors these days/ At the time when customers will be looking for more cost effective solutions, less overlap in business functions and additional optimization PDM can get “a second move”. Such PDM renaissance can be driven by new technologies, usability improvement and new business ideas. This is a pace to innovate in my view.

So far, I’m sure haven’t chance to make fundamental research. These are just my thoughts, and I wanted to share it with you. I will be waiting for your comments and great blog discussion.

Thanks, Oleg

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