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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PLM Collaboration and Microsoft Office 2013 Cloud Strategy

November 12, 2012

Microsoft is releasing to manufacturing Office 2013 version. For many years, Office was a symbol of Microsoft’s desktop empire. Not anymore. You can find it interesting, but the major focus on Office 2013 is… cloud. Navigate your browser to the following article – Microsoft Office 2013: Best New Features for the Enterprise.The following passage was my favorite:

Probably, the most dramatic change in the new version of Office is how it’s linked to the cloud for a wide variety of purposes in ways that either didn’t exist or were much more limited in Office 2010 and previous editions.

For starters, a tight integration with Microsoft’s SkyDrive online storage service is intended to make it simple and convenient for end-users to save their files in the cloud both in Office 2013 and Office ProPlus. This ties into the increasingly popular workplace use of services like Box.net, Dropbox and Google Drive, which simplify not only access to files but also sharing them with colleagues, leading to better collaboration.

I recommend you another article – Microsoft’s Wave of Office, Server Product Releases Brings Flood of Questions to get exposed to few interesting facts about Microsoft Office 2013 cloud dependencies. One of them is related to SharePoint and Workflow processes. Here is a very interesting passage:

By default, SharePoint 2013 runs newly created workflow services on Windows Azure, and you have to install the old Windows Workflow engine on SharePoint 2013 instances in order to run previously used workflows.

PLM collaboration and Microsoft Cloud

PLM vendors are not standing aside of cloud development these days. One size doesn’t fit all and PLM vendors are trying multiple strategies. From very conservative IaaS option announced few weeks ago by Siemens PLM and up to services provided by Arena Solutions and Autodesk PLM 360. Speaking about Microsoft, Aras PLM cloud enabling is heavy lifted by dependencies on Microsoft Azure.

Introduction of Microsoft Office 2013 cloud option can enable some interesting shifts and changes in PLM collaboration. Manufacturing companies are heavy dependent on Office products (specifically on Microsoft Excel). Until now, desktop and file nature of Excel was a significant inhibitor to collaboration. By connecting Office 2013 to cloud Microsoft can change a game for many manufacturing companies (especially small ones). It can provide some advantages to PLM cloud vendors that can connect their services to Office cloud offering.

What is my conclusion? Cloud adoption is increasing. Period. Microsoft’s move to the cloud is a good sign for PLM companies experimenting with cloud, and it provide more grounds to develop connections between Microsoft Office cloud services and PLM cloud products. Collaboration and content sharing can be a first priority on the list. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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Will Google lose in the enterprise (and PLM)?

October 19, 2012

It was long time since I talked about Google and PLM. Probably, it was too long. Yesterday night, I got a tweet message Simon Floyd of Microsoft (@floydinnovation) suggesting me the following next blog title (Google gives up on PLM). Well, I didn’t know Google even considered to be in PLM game. My Google/PLM attitude was always somewhat more passionate about Google products rather than Google ability to run enterprise business. Earlier this year, I posted – PLM and Google Enterprise. Simple conclusion – Google is not coming to PLM tomorrow.

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.

Even if Google is not coming tomorrow to solve your PLM problem, the data approach of Google is something that PLM vendors can adopt. Adam O’Hern wrote a nice piece about PLM and Google approach.

Navigate to this link to read – PLM Should be like Google. Really. Here is another interesting passage:

Google doesn’t insist on hosting the entire internet on its own servers the way most PLM systems do. Wherever your files happen to be, Google will find them. Furthermore, Google doesn’t discriminate about data types. If a bunch of hyperlinks vouch for the validity of a file—no matter the type—Google serves it up. Of course it helps to use SEO-friendly content, but that’s up to you, the user, not some rigid system imposed from the top down.

However, the topic of Google and Enterprise is interesting and requires some additional analyzes, in my view. I’ve been reading Information Week blog last week- Google Enterprise, I’m not impressed. Take some time, read the article and make your own opinion. John McGreavy is discussing the ability of Google to handle enterprise customers. Google’s honestly believes that consumer product quality is enough for enterprise and "millions of users cannot go wrong". I’m share this opinion partially. However, the enterprise game is not only about products. It is a lot about what we call "enterprise attitude". I found the following passage explains well the situation:

It’s all in the numbers for Google. Hundreds of millions of users can’t be wrong. It signs up people for its software tools, and then it figures out how to make money. Enterprises can take it or leave it, and Google knows we will take it, the execs all but suggested. I’m not so sure. While we’re integrating consumer technology into our business, we also deliver many purpose-built systems to provide a competitive business edge. We depend on reliable, focused vendor support. We need to understand future product direction. We need partners that don’t chase shiny new things for a living and understand the discipline of delivering shareholder value through risk-managed innovation and execution. (SAP, listen up.)

Don’t miss comments to the article. Navigate here to read them. Lots of them are addressing Microsoft vs. Google debates. I found most of the comments consistently pointing to the following weak points in Google Enterprise business – pricing, support, administration scale for large enterprises.

What is my conclusion? Enterprise is a complex space that requires a balance of product quality, sales strategy and support processes. This is something big elephants like IBM, Microsoft and SAP can do better than Google. Does it mean Google’s products cannot be used for enterprise? Clearly no. Will Google invest into future enterprise product offering and PLM? I’m not sure it will happen in a near future. Will Google products works well and will continue to inspire enterprise software developers? My answer is yes. Just my thoughts and opinion.

Best, Oleg

Picture credit to SolidSmack blog.

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Will SharePoint and Yammer struggle from PLM problem?

September 17, 2012

As you probably know, enterprise social vendor Yammer is now part of Microsoft SharePoint division. As always, after integration, the question you want to ask is how both products will interplay together. Immediate after acquisition, I posted – Will Microsoft-Yammer kill social plm? – not yet… One of the conclusions I’ve made was about the ability of a collaborative system to provide a right context for communication. Few days ago, my attention was caught by Microsoft SharePoint Blog – Productivity Improvement with Yammer and SharePoint 2010. Chris Buckley brings a very simple use case of communication between SharePoint and Yammer.

Here’s the use case: You add a document to SharePoint, or maybe you’ve found a useful presentation or site within your company portal and want to share it with your team through a Yammer group on your company network. You can push a document with the comment from SharePoint directly to Yammer – adding tags and mentions, and bringing it to the attention of your followers or the relevant group.

I believe, the scenario is very applicable in the context of collaboration between engineers and other people in manufacturing company. This scenario made me think about the efficiency of communication. Sharing of document in Yammer can connect it contextually to communication that happens between people. On the other side, I’d expect to be able to share a part of the document or to highlight a specific contextual fragment. Otherwise, the communication reminds a traditional email.

What is my conclusion? The ability to share a context between multiple systems is critical for communication. So far, I can see very little attention in SharePoint and Yammer integration. Maybe SharePoint 2013 will bring some additional capabilities. Many PLM systems are trying to improve the way people collaborate today. However, the majority of them are struggling with the ability to share information in the contextual way. Similar to SharePoint / Yammer. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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What Outlook.com can make for PLM collaboration?

August 13, 2012

If you follow news these days, you probably paid attention to Outlook.com – newcomers from Microsoft and "Gmail twin brother". You can learn more about what Microsoft offers, navigate to the following link. Microsoft is quite aggressive by calling Outlook.com – next email for next billion mailboxes. You can check the following lifehacker article comparing Gmail with Outlook.com to see how new Microsoft’s web mail stands against Gmail. The next picture can give you a glimpse of what new email can do.

What caught my attention is that Microsoft is attacking the email problem from the same angle many of the companies today are attacking PDM, PLM and engineering collaboration – how to make it simple. Navigate to the following articleby Microsoft introducing new email. Here is the passage I liked:

Webmail was first introduced with HoTMaiL in 1996. Back then, it was novel to have a personal email address you could keep for life – one that was totally independent from your business or internet service provider. Eight years later, Google introduced Gmail, which included 1 GB of storage and inbox search. And while Gmail and other webmail services like Hotmail have added some features since then, not much has fundamentally changed in webmail over the last 8 years – though yesterday’s frustrations about the small size of inboxes are now things of the past. At the same time, email is becoming less and less useful as inboxes become cluttered with newsletters and social updates, and people increasingly keep up their personal connections in social networks instead of their email address books.

Will Microsoft re-invent gmail second time? Microsoft claims they invented webmail with hotmail back in 1996. It is true, hotmail came earlier than Gmail. Few days ago, I’ve got an unconfirmed note that there are more hotmails accounts in the world than gmail accounts. I cannot confirm that. Will Microsoft inject their outlook.com solution into existing Office and Outlook? This is a question that can make some difference to engineers and other people dealing with collaboration and PLM. At the end, lots of companies (even if they have the variety of enterprise app) are run by email.

Microsoft claims they invented webmail with hotmail back in 1996. It is true, hotmail came earlier than Gmail. Few days ago, I’ve got an unconfirmed note that there are more hotmails accounts in the world than gmail accounts. I cannot confirm that. Will Microsoft inject their outlook.com solution into existing Office and Outlook? This is a question that can make some difference to engineers and other people dealing with collaboration and PLM. At the end, lots of companies (even if they have the variety of enterprise app) are run by email.

What is my conclusion? Usage matters. Today majority of people in manufacturing organizations I know are using MS Office and Outlook. This is a first user interface most of the people open in the morning. If Microsoft can inject Outlook.com into this place, it will automatically pretend to serve as a powerful collaborative tool. Then the question will be how to embed PLM apps into this space. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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PLM Cloud and New Microsoft Office Reality

July 16, 2012

For many years, Microsoft and Office were 100% associated with PC. Not any more. If you follow earlier news from today, Microsoft announced of the biggest releases for a long time – Office 2013. Long awaited release brings lots of new stuff in the Microsoft Office eco-system. Navigate here to read more from Business Insider Live blog post. The following picture is a very good one slide summary of what Office 2013 is about.

So, cloud is one of them. And it seems to me a very important one. Microsoft is going in a very sophisticated way to introduce the cloud to the masses via the hybrid Office 2013 approach that took roots first in Office 365 – PLM Excels and Microsoft Cloud Office 365. My assessment one year back that vendors need to start thinking about what will happen in the day Office will run seamlessly between cloud and PC. Here, the day just came. Here is a passage from the previous post – by default Office App store documents in the cloud, but you can save them locally.

The official statement Microsoft is taking about the cloud and PC combination. Navigate to the following post to read more – What Office 2013 will mean for your business. The following passage makes it clear

Microsoft has been saying for years that Office isn’t just the familiar desktop applications; it’s a family of applications plus servers that enable extra features in the applications, so running Office on the desktop without the Office servers means you miss out. Get Office 2013 through Office 365 and you get the servers as well. Unless you chose the Office 365 Home Premium plan – which is intended for consumers and comes with 20GB of document storage on SkyDrive – buying an Office 365 subscriptions to Office 2013 also get you Office 365 accounts with the Exchange, SharePoint and Lync services.

What is my conclusion? Microsoft Office is a dominant part of many PLM implementations. Excel is the most widely adopted PLM technology. Maybe the last statement is a joke, but only “half joke”, in my view. Microsoft is steering the wheel towards cloud and services. It will work in favor of PLM vendors pushing toward the cloud as an opportunity -Autodesk PLM 360, Arena Solutions, Dassault and Aras. It will be interesting to see the reaction of other PLM market players. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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PLM and SharePoint Technical Definition

April 30, 2012

I’m off to Detroit, MI this week for Aras PLM user conference – ACE 2012. Microsoft .NET and MS SQL are two important elements of Aras infrastructure. For many enterprises these days, Microsoft IT based technology is no-brainerdecision. It runs everywhere.

It is near impossible to talk about PLM and Microsoft’s technologies without talking about what potential role Microsoft SharePoint can play in establishment of scalable PLM solutions. Usually, Microsoft SharePoint and PLM are over-hyped by lots of marketing slogans. I decided to take off marketing and get down to SharePoint technical definition that can help PLM and IT managers in organization to decide about how to position PLM and SharePoint in their strategies and implementations.

The following article – Making Sense of SharePoint 2010 by Tim Anderson provides a very good foundation for my post today. Have a read and make your conclusion. The following quote is the best introduction to what is SharePoint in a nutshell:

So what is SharePoint really? Technically, it is an ASP.NET application which runs on Internet Information Services (IIS), Microsoft’s web server, and which stores most of its data in a SQL Server database. Conceptually, it is the outcome of Microsoft’s efforts over many years to create a web storage system, a document repository accessible via a web browser.

SharePoint is extremely good if you are working with Office documents. It provides a very tight integration with Microsoft Products. The majority of companies today are running Office. I was able to see some companies taking off to Open Office or Google lately, but not doubt – Office is mainstream even after of public web 2.0 disruption. The following passage explains clearly your advantages of working with Office in SharePoint – seamless integration.

SharePoint is designed to integrate with the Microsoft Office client applications such as Word and Excel . If you do not use Office, SharePoint is unlikely to be worth running. When used with Office, a key feature is that users can open a document from a SharePoint site, edit it, and save it, without being presented with a Save As dialog. This is one reason SharePoint works better than simply storing documents on a web site with download and upload features.

I want to add few words about multiple versions of SharePoint. There are three versions – Foundation, SharePoint Server 2010 and SharePoint Enterprise 2010. Here is the summary:

Foundation includes document management, discussion forums, wikis, and support for applications including workflows. SharePoint Server 2010 extends this with search, compliance features including document retention policies, server-side Microsoft Word automation, social media features including status updates, ratings and tagging, individual profiles and content sites, video and audio media support, templates for workflows, improved scalability, and more. SharePoint Enterprise 2010 adds server-side support for Access databases and Excel automation services, business intelligence integration, support for forms applications using InfoPath (part of Microsoft Office), more scalable search and more.

PLM and SharePoint

I think, the overall hype of SharePoint replacing PLM solutions is over these days. Nevertheless, SharePoint became practically ubiquitous these days if you think about enterprises. The infrastructure provided by SharePoint is well-known by IT and service organizations. As soon as it approved to be used in organization can provide a backbone for collaborative applications. You need to take into the account the cost of SharePoint.

The base Foundation product is surprisingly rich, considering that it is a free add-on. SharePoint involves licensing for three products, each with separate CALs (Client Access Licenses). These are Windows Server, which is always required; SQL Server, which is required unless you use the free SQL Server Express, and SharePoint itself, which is required for editions other than Foundation. Since SQL Server Express is limited to single-server installs and 10GB per database, some organisations which can get by with Foundation will still need SQL Server and its CALs.

You can consider SharePoint as a platform for customization.

SharePoint is an application, but it is also a platform. Since it is built on ASP.NET, code that runs on ASP.NET will generally run in SharePoint too. Office services for Word and Excel enable applications that parse, manipulate and create documents.

What is my conclusion? SharePoint is stable Microsoft based infrastructure. If your company is running on Microsoft products you can consider it as an option to develop additional applications. Check your PLM provider on how flexible PLM platform and applications can be integrated with SharePoint – you can save a lot of service money and people resources in the future by doing so. Reading from Aras website:

Our application framework is implemented on the Microsoft .NET and Microsoft SQL Server platform. And Aras technology has built in security from the ground up and a world-class professional services and support team to meet your unique design, development and infrastructure needs.

I’ll pay a close attention understanding how Aras keep following integration with SharePoint and Microsoft technological foundation. Follow my blog and twitter later. this week.

Best, Oleg

Disclosure: Aras paid my registration and traveling expenses to ACE 2012. Microsoft wasn’t involved. Both Aras and Microsoft are in no way influenced the content of this post.

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PLM and Multiplatform Development

December 28, 2011

Please welcome a new-old word – multiplatform. When did you hear about for the last time? For those of you counting 15+ years in the industry it reminds the time CAD was a place of heavy workstation with ***NIX operation systems, etc. For a very long period of time, CAD and PLM were a place where 99% of software was developed on top of Microsoft platforms. I touched this topic in my blog almost a year ago. Navigate to this link to refresh your memories. So, I decided to come again to this topic.

The diversity of software-development platforms for engineering and manufacturing these days is much broader than 2-3 years ago. Apple, Table, Android, iPad – all these names came to the play recently and changed the landscape of what we do. Take a look on the following chart I made playing with these names on Google Trends:

PLM – Legacy and Integration Services

These two topics become even more important in the context of multiple platforms and enterprise software (PLM is a typial use case). Existing implementations need to be support. Service companies and IT will make implementation and develop new solutions based on the software provided by vendors. This is a very complicated set of dependencies.

What is my conclusion? I think, world changed again, and we are moving from mono-development culture to multiple platforms again. It raises multiple decision points in front of software vendors and service providers. It looks like coming years will provide a bigger challenge to these companies to make a right choice about how to balance between legacy and future, existing platforms and future trends. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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Microsoft Socl and Social PLM Thoughts

November 21, 2011

Do you know what is Microsoft Socl? I didn’t know until yesterday. However, now I know. It is a new research project by Microsoft, which supposed to become a next social network. Mashable just wrote about it four days ago here. Who is behind this project? This is what Mashable article says:

First published by The Verge on Wednesday, Microsoft tells Mashable that, “Microsoft’s FUSE Labs is an internal research group working on a number of forward-looking projects related to future possibilities around social search. Socl is one of the projects that we are exploring. We’ll let you know as soon as we have more to share.

However, watch the video:

You may ask me- how it is related? We already got MySpace, Facebook, Google+… now what? – Socl. Here is the point. As you probably know, I’m less interested in social networks, but more interested in PLM management.

Will PLM lose social competition to CRM?

The PLM vendors recently speaking a lot of “social” and how it is going to change their product offering. I had a chance to write about it multiple times. However, I want to point out to one specific blog I wrote 2 years ago (24-Nov): How many social platforms we need for enterprise? I wanted to get back to the same question again when I was watching socl video by Microsoft. At the same time, PLM vendors are developing social platforms – PTC, Dassault, Autodesk… Everybody is trying to play this social card.

I can see a very significant problem for all PLM social solutions – they are disconnected from people. Don’t take me wrong – obviously people are using PLM solutions in enterprise companies. However, the majority of people are not. Remember, time ago, PLM competed with ERP about “who” owns the item definition. ERP won, PLM lost the competition. Why do you think it happened? In my view, here is the reason – you have to to touch “Item Master” to manufacture the product. So, you will use ERP and it manage Item masters. You are not necessarily needed to touch “item” to run PLM. You can do it, of course. However, it happens much rarely. The same happens with social and CRM. If you are contacting your customers – you must be social. Therefore, everybody will touch Salesforce.com Chatter or similar social platform from CRM provider. However, PLM social platform will be downgraded to people that touch PLM platform only.

What is my conclusion? Social platforms cannot change the position of a system in the organization. You need to have people around the social platform to make it work and progress. It happens to CRM, but it probably won’t happen to PLM. So, maybe PLM vendors need to focus on something 100% of the users need? Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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