Do It Yourself (DIY) PLM and Microsoft Excel Services

November 26, 2011

Many of the engineers (and not only) are using Microsoft Excel. People are literally lives inside of Excel spreadsheets. When it comes to PDM and PLM, I prefer to call it DIY (Do It Yourself) PLM. If you really on the DIY path, I think you need to be aware about so-called Excel Services available in Microsoft SharePoint since version 2007. In 2010, Microsoft improved significantly the capabilities of Excel Services.

You can read more about Excel Services by navigating to the following link. In addition, I found a very interesting video interview with Jon Campbell, program manager within Microsoft Excel services team. It was made almost a year ago. At the same time, I found it still something you use to educate yourself about SharePoint Excel Services.

Note, Excel services are very sophisticated. I was screening another article about Excel services – Excel Services in SharePoint. Here is the set of recommendation how to use Excel services to build a custom application:

Custom Applications: Excel Services help create custom applications—for example, ASP.NET applications—that can:

1. Call Excel Web Services to access, parameterize, and calculate workbooks.

2. Open, refresh external data, set cells or ranges, recalculate, participate in collaborative editing sessions with other applications or people, save, and save as.

3. Use custom workflows to schedule calculation operations or send e-mail notifications.

Above all this, in multiple server configurations, Excel Services load-balances requests across multiple Excel Calculation Services occurrences in a farm configuration. If your installation includes multiple application servers, Excel Services will balance the load in an attempt to help ensure that no single application server is overloaded by requests.

What is my conclusion? SharePoint is wide adopted by manufacturing enterprise companies. To use Excel as a platform to develop you DIY PLM solution can be an interesting option. However, I want to warn you about an appropriate resource planning and service budge allocation. DIY normally on the expensive side. SharePoint is not an exclusion from this list. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Leave a Comment » | Daily PLM Think Tank | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

What is PLM Software Associated Cost?

November 7, 2011

Buying enterprise software is different experience from busing consumer goods or even automobile. Direct cost (licenses) is very often is a small fraction of the overall cost. So-called Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is combined from multiple elements – licenses, maintenance and support, implementation, etc. Few days ago, I was reading an interesting article in Redmondmag.com – Study: SharePoint cost high due to inadequate skills. The article is talking about what is the associated operational cost of SharePoint. I found the following numbers in research made by Osterman Research interesting:

Theaverage cost to manage SharePoint is $46 per user per month, according to a "State of the Market" study by Osterman Research, which surveyed "more than 120 IT executives, managers, and staffers at mid-to-large enterprises." The study, conducted via an August survey, was commissioned by Seattle-basedAzaleos Corp., a provider of management services for e-mail, collaboration and unified communications, based mostly on the Microsoft stack.

What is my conclusion? Actually no conclusion today. I wanted to ask your advise. SharePoint is obviously not a PLM system. However, the nature of problems SharePoint is solving for many organizations is very similar – content management and collaboration. I was thinking about some comparison and tried to find similar numbers for PLM systems. What is the cost PLM system operation? What does it included? Is it a meaningful component of your PLM operational budget?

Best, Oleg

Leave a Comment » | Daily PLM Think Tank | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

Why PLM Should Care of SharePoint?

August 15, 2011

Business professionals around the world are using SharePoint to organize information and streamline the business processes. I talked with many people about SharePoint for the last years. The conclusion across the board – SharePoint is a technology that requires lots of IT and services involvement. SharePoint Dev Wiki shared an interesting article last month: SharePoint Development Orientation – Why Should We Care? by Lou Estrada. The following passage caught my attention:

SharePoint serves as an 80% solution for 100% of the organization. It provides value for everybody. It cannot solve all business problems, but it is not pigeon-holed to any one in particular, either. Chances are, more people will use SharePoint to help solve more problems than any custom application you have written. I have never written an application that had such potential.

SharePoint – an Advanced Development Platform

What I learned for all these years of dealing with multiple SharePoint usage examples is that SharePoint became a great platform for development of solutions of any kind. Similar to last 20 years of Microsoft Windows, you have an army of SharePoint developers who are interested to develop point solutions to solve business problems in any organization. Here is another quote from the same blog:

Furthermore, SharePoint is a springboard for professional solutions. Developers start with the 80% solution (or 5% or 95%) and simply close the gap. This is much more cost effective than developing or purchasing completely custom solutions. Businesses are likely to catch on simply because their custom development dollars can go much further. Developers start with all the features and infrastructure SharePoint has to offer. We get a head start with out-of-the-box (OOTB) features like easy integration with data and assets stored in SharePoint, easy integration with other solutions in the environment, a built-in API to access even custom data and functionality, built-in authentication and authorization, and much more.

Why PLM people should care?

When it comes to Product lifecyce management in manufacturing companies, organization of information and processes are two top critical questions. Let’s bring few more facts. A significant portion of cPDM business is delivered by service organization. According to analytical companies in this space, the number is about 50%. Another fact – because of complexity of usage, the majority of PLM implementations have problems to be delivered downstream. I believe, already today, organizations have complicated choice between proprietary PLM platforms and less-proprietary SharePoint as a platform to develop business solutions for product development . The question PLM people need to ask is what solution will be preferred by developers in manufacturing IT to deliver next business process feature?

What is my conclusion? I think, SharePoint can provide a good competition to many PLM platforms to deliver business solutions for product development in manufacturing organizations. When it will come to IT, the decision towards lower TCO can be a killer feature to define future of proprietary PLM platforms. Just my opinion. What is your take?

Best, Oleg

4 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

Autodesk and SharePoint: collaboration with no compromises?

July 6, 2011

Collaboration and SharePoint are two of my favorite topics. I’m following them for the last couple of years. In one of my very early posts on PLM Think Tank I wrote about SharePoint PLM Paradox? Microsoft SharePoint 2007 business model made it very successful. Technology was decent and I’ve seen many customers and business partners are making success with SharePoint deployment and development. I saw a definite potential for SharePoint to enrich PLM experience from both technological and user experience side. However, I don’t see the roadmap towards SharePoint success in CAD/PLM business as something simple and straightforward. Different vendors in CAD, PDM and PLM spaces are targeting differently SharePoint. Earlier this year I put some of my thoughts about PLM and SharePoint in the following post – PLM and SharePoint: Business Together? The SharePoint roadmap was bumpy for some of the vendors, and I shared my view on PTC’s, SharePoint and ProductPoint Retirement. Navigate to the following link to learn more.

SharePoint 2010 – even more collaboration?

Microsoft announced SharePoint 2010 almost two years ago. The new version of SharePoint put additional focus on business aspects of SharePoint integration within enterprises. Content type management, BCS, Lists, Web Parts, Workflow – this is only a short list of enhancements and topics Microsoft was focusing on in SharePoint 2010. I put some of my thoughts about the Sharepoint 2010 path in PLM back in September 2009. Navigate to the following two blogs to read more: SharePoint 2010 Communities and PLM Social Demands and SharePoint 2010 for Collaborative Product Development Applications.

Autodesk, SharePoint and PLM Option

In my view, Autodesk stayed neutral with regards to SharePoint long time. It doesn’t mean Autodesk products didn’t provide some support for SharePoint. Nevertheless, I haven’t seen SharePoint as a strategic option for Autodesk.Autodesk Vault, provided set of technologies and tools for product data management (PDM) and collaboration.

Earlier last week, Autodesk announced about Vault and SharePoint collaboration. Navigate to the following link to read the announcement – Autodesk Vault Works with Microsoft SharePoint 2010 to Provide Access to Design Information Across the Enterprise. In my view, this is a notable change in Autodesk’s strategy. Here is the passage from the announcement:

The solution takes advantage of features and functionality provided in SharePoint 2010 and Autodesk Vault 2012, giving SharePoint 2010 users direct access to engineering and design data within Vault, including search and navigation, and the ability to view and print design data.… SharePoint 2010 users now have direct access to building information modeling (BIM) and digital prototyping data within Vault and can incorporate it into existing enterprise data, tools and processes.

In addition, the press release release is talking about technologies such as social computing, federated search, Microsoft Web Services and Microsoft SQL Server.

What does it mean? Brian Schanen put two videos on his blog presenting how Vault is integrated with SharePoint 2010. Here is one of them presenting Manufacturing scenario:

Let me make some observations. Autodesk is highlighting some changes in Autodesk Vault such as “a project oriented UI” and process orientation. The presented scenario shows collaboration in the context of engineering change order. This is one of the most popular scenarios presented by mainstream PLM vendors in the context of design and engineering collaboration. Huh… Autodesk is moving to PLM? This is not a new topic. Almost a year ago, I posted -Autodesk, Data Management and “Why PLM?” topic. There is no consensus about Autodesk PLM move in the industry community. In my view, PLM move will not be an easy jump for Autodesk.Recently, I can see some changes in Autodesk PLM orientation. During the recent meeting with Autodesk Management, Carl Bass, Autodesk CEO made some interesting statements with regards to Autodesk and PLM strategy. You can listen to Carl’s talk and see presentation by navigating to the following link (you will have to register and leave Autodesk you email address to access this link).

SharePoint Technology: Strengths and Weakness

Technological aspects of SharePoint integration with Autodesk Vault is another interesting question. Since I wasn’t able to find any published information about that, I can only guess and rely on Autodesk video, Microsoft SharePoint technology and architecture slides. SharePoint is a technology and platform. SharePoint platform contains lots of benefits for every company running Microsoft stack and, in addition, has lots of bells and whistles. Many enterprises are running their collaborative efforts and content management projects using SharePoint. At the same time, in order to be successful, it requires consultancy, consultancy and again, consultancy. It is important to estimate the cost of free SharePoint. Deployment is another aspect of how SharePoint option will play for Autodesk customers. Read the following blog – PLM and SharePoint Scalability to get a glimpse of the idea. SharePoint can be a powerful tool, but it requires an appropriate planning.

What is my conclusion? My hunch, statement is probably outdated. PLM ideas have some roots in the ground. PLM mindshare vendors are selling PLM solution, and Autodesk is asking themselves a question what alternative to put in front of PLM collaboration and Top Down single point of truth. Bridging SharePoint and Autodesk Vault is a step towards trying to find that solution. Autodesk MLP hardly can be considered as an option. There is probably a better option. Autodesk needs to figure out how to develop that. Interesting time… Just my opinion, of course. YMMV.

Best, Oleg

1 Comment | Daily PLM Think Tank | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

Future Promises and Concerns about PTC after Planet PTC Live

June 16, 2011

Picture-18.pngAs you probably know, I spent the beginning of the week in Las-Vegas attending Planet PTC Live 2011. Those of my readers who follow me on Twitter already paid attention on the overflow of tweets and absence of posts. Yesterday night catching my red-eye flight to Boston, I started to put some of my initial thoughts about what I’ve seen at PTC Live.

Thinking About Apps

One of the fundamental changes I can observe within PTC move to Creo is establishing of Apps sitting on top of the configurable platform and sharing common working environment. The original idea is probably not unique. The idea of workbenches, desktops, suites and many others was before in enterprise software. However, the initial set of apps and future plans shows good understanding of customer needs and easy flow. The devil is in details, and I can see next months of working with a broader set of customers interesting.

Windchill 10 and Usability

The problem is usability is an important one. Among the use communities, PLM is often associated with the complexity of user experience, cumbersome user interface, long and complicated learning curve. PTC definitely recognized the problem and presented some ideas in Windchill. The Windchill 10 UI looks much better compared to what I had a chance to see before. However, at the same the overall Windows UI looks complicated.

Mobile and Cloud

These two topics are trending these days. I see them as very important things. I liked Windchill Mobile application presented by Brian Shepherd iPad. My favorite feature was the way to work with assembly decomposition on parts. It is pretty cool. The interest to mobile is very high these days, and it is a good sign to see PTC jumping to the PLM mobile race.

Picture-19.png

Cloud is another thing that I’m discussing a lot on my blog. I’ve heard PTC talking about the cloud as a "deployment option". You can deploy to Amazon, Azure, etc. I think, the cloud topic is broader than just deployment and includes other aspects such as multi-tenancy, parallelism and some others.

Social "Things"

PTC introduced Windchill Social Link earlier last year. The trend for social application is strong. I can see almost all enterprise vendors are working on social apps these days. Salesforce.com Chatter, SAP StreamWork and others. What is the differentiation between SAP social app and PTC social app for a specific customer? How they work together? How many social applications do we need in a single manufacturing enterprise? All these valid questions and need to be answered.

Microsoft

I had a chance to speak with people at PTC working on the partnership with Microsoft. PTC is strong Microsoft’s customer, and I’ve seen multiple examples of common Microsoft / PTC technologies working together. At the same time, it will be interesting how PTC customers will be moving to the "post-PC" era. Life was simple with regards to platform supports last 10-15 years. Similar to "a fashion world", we are moving to multi-platform world now again. This is an interesting time to watch.

SharePoint

PTC is presenting strong support related to SharePoint technologies. At the same time, the information about discontinuation of Windchill ProductPoint shows that something is wrong here. PTC retiring ProductPoint. According to the plan, ProductPoint was providing a support for smaller manufacturing companies. The ubiquitous access to information, well know user experience (shared with Windows) was a foundation for success. Navigate to the following link to learn what is my opinion about that. After few conversations with PTC people, my conclusion about ProductPoint retiring is positive. There is nothing wrong is trying the water and pushing back. SharePoint still remains the platform many companies are relying on. At the same time, customers need to asses carefully their spending before going to SharePoint journey.

One Size Does Fit All

There is something that related to the PLM vendors work with smaller manufacturing companies. Very often, vendors are calling it SMB. Without neccarily going to clarify what actually SMB means, my concern is in the way PLM solutions can scale between all companies. I’m personally not a supporter of ‘one size fits all’ approach. In my view, it doesn’t work in other places, and it shouldn’t work for PLM as well. However, to balance between multiple solutions is somewhat that always was hard to PLM vendors. Maybe the idea of Apps can be a good here. So, today I can see some holes in the PTC solutions targeting smaller manufacturing companies.

Complexity

Unfortunately, PLM has a strong association with a word "complex". PLM companies are doing well in this space, as I can see that. The complication of core functionality multiplies with complexity of customer environments, need to provide tailored solution and smooth deployment create the feeling of "messy PLM projects" nobody wants to be involved in. I think, this is still a painful topic, and it is not much addressed by PTC specifically and PLM industry in general.

Integration

We are not living in a world of a single software vendor. Companies are using lots of application and software suites these days. Design, Engineering, Manufacturing, Supply chain, etc. The number is huge and every company is using dozens and hundred applications to get job done. It is a very important goal for PLM product to be connected and interplay with these products. Unfortunately, the dominant idea of "master data" is what used by PTC (and other vendors here). I’ve been attending a session related to PLM-ERP integration during the event and found topics that remain open for the last 10-15 years. The solution proposed here has strong reliance on "workshops" and "people agreement" in a company. Remember – technology is simple, but people are hard. Pushing a solution towards people agreement about how to integrate systems makes it very complicated, in my eyes.

Single Point of Truth

The last, but not the least one. The concept of a single point of truth is strong and heavily supported by PTC / Windchill. This concept remains with us for the last 10-15 years in PLM and maybe even more before with ERP and other enterprise software. My take on this is simple – there is no single point of truth. Company is complicated and it is impossible to have everything synchronized and working as a single whole. Even if a company can do it, it will remain valid only for the next 5 minutes. Next change will disrupt it again. The cost of change is tremendous and companies cannot afford that. Something needs to be changed here.

What is my conclusion? I found Planet PTC very energetic and enjoyed communicating with the executive and marketing team. Two days wasn’t enough to get connected to many people, but I found online community (and especially the community on tweeter) very active, and I’m looking forward to staying connected on the blog, tweeter and other social net. I think some of the things PTC is thinking and working about are very promising and following industry demands. At the same time, the strategy is still lacking some fundamental decisions related to how PLM improves the work with the rest of enterprise software. Another element of the concern is related to the scalability of solutions for different companies. My take – one size doesn’t fit all in manufacturing industry. It shows some promise in Creo Apps, but not reflected in anything else. This is just my opinion, of course.

Best, Oleg
Disclosure: PTC paid for registration and hotel during the event.

Leave a Comment » | Daily PLM Think Tank | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

PLM Simplification, Alfresco and AutoCAD Integration

May 31, 2011

One of the trends I am following constantly on my blog is the simplification. PLM is very complex and still way too expensive. However, I can see multiple evidence of changes that happen around us. Open source and IT consumerization are two interesting strategies. Normally, I’m not reading press releases. In modern social Web 2.0 environment, press releases are like dinosaurs. Even so, the following press release, made me stop for scrolling down my browser – Formtek Announces Enhanced Engineering Data Management Solution for Alfresco®, Including New EDM Connector for AutoCAD®.

Alfresco and SharePoint alternative

I’m following Alfresco for a couple of years now. In a nutshell, you can hear about Alfresco as an open source alternative for SharePoint. Dig a bit into Alfresco website – you will find the evidence of Web 2.0 DNA. The following interview with Alfresco CEO John Powel explains about what problems in content management Alfresco is pretending to solve – content complexity, solution cost, deployment complexity.

AutoCAD and Alfresco Content Management

AutoCAD content is widely available everywhere. You can hardly find a company that has no AutoCAD drawing. Therefore, to expand the content management solution to AutoCAD content is an interesting move. Microsoft and SharePoint made few steps to develop better connectivity to AutoCAD. Autodesk Vault has some modules and functionality to publish the content to SharePoint. However, publishing is complicated. It is so 95…. I’m going to learn more about Alfresco AutoCAD interface on June 8. Navigate to the following link to watch the webinar.

Formtek will demonstrate its new EDM Connector for AutoCAD®. The Formtek EDM Connector for AutoCAD provides access to Alfresco repository functionality – including browse, open, check-in, check-out, and view/edit metadata functionality – directly from within the AutoCAD application. The Connector also maintains the integrity of AutoCAD referenced drawings (XREFS), as well as other types of referenced files (DGN, PDF, raster, etc.), by automatically associating them to the current AutoCAD drawing within the Alfresco repository.

What is my conclusion? In my view, open source platforms can provide an alternative to existing data management systems. However, the integration is still a problem that needs to be solved. "To CAD or not to CAD" – this is a typical dilemma in engineering data management. Last month on ACE 2011, Aras, presented the integration strategy, which included CAD systems as well. The evidence of content management platform integration with AutoCAD is another example. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg
Freebie unlike most of the press releases.

Leave a Comment » | Daily PLM Think Tank | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

PLM User Experience and The Evil of Folders?

May 24, 2011

Ask people about usability of PLM and other enterprise data management systems. From my experience, the answer is simple – it is way too complex. Very few PDM systems in the past were recognized as simple and easy to use. It made me think about Folders.

Folders: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

A long time ago, folders were invented to organize files in the operation system. The idea of folders and files did proliferate and became the major paradigm for information organization almost everywhere. It was so easy to place files into folders, so office people started to use this organization to store and classify the information. Wide expansion of Windows platforms just helped to spread the idea of folders even more. At the same time, the simplicity of folders has many drawbacks. One of them is the need to duplicate information between folders. The introduction of "shortcuts’ in Windows didn’t solve the problem. In many situations, people will prefer to copy files between folders and not to create a "shortcut" to another folder. Another drawback of folders is inability to find information in an easy way.

CAD / PDM – starting from simple folders

Starting from the early beginning, CAD systems relied on files and folders to save information in computer systems. CAD files spread out on workstations and, later, on PC/Windows computers. The complexity of folder structures introduced various problems related to location of files, references and version management.

Developers of data management solutions for engineers (TDM, EDM, PDM) are heavily inherited and relied on the idea of folder data organizations. It was well understood by people and easy. Many data management systems in the past implant the idea of folder organization and made their solution simple to use. At the same time, in my view, using the same folder paradigm was a problem with increased complexity of data. As a consequence of this, many systems that were initially clear, but system got very complicated with the time.

PLM – Usability Sucks

PLM concepts requires significant expansion of data management scope in the organization. The amount of data and complexity are growing. At the same time, the concept of "folders" was kept by the developers of many PLM systems for capturing and management information structures. It caused a significant complication in data organizations and the overall user experience. Navigating between folders and hierarchical structures became complex and not efficient. File folders, Projects, Requirements, Bill of Materials, Suppliers, Requirements – this is only a short list of various elements of data that need to be organized by PLM.

Possible Solutions

The obvious question asked by many PLM developers was how to improve PLM user experience. Recently, PLM vendors came with several innovations related to that. Some of them moved to enhanced visualization and immersive usage of 3D. Some of them moved to SharePoint as a solution to solve usability issues. However, "folders concept" is still there. Do you think "Folder" is ultimate evil? The discussion is under way, and I don’t see a final point. With the development of some web user interface, we started to see some new and fresh ideas are coming from that side – search, web 2.0, tags and other solutions are proliferating, and we started to see some ideas how to simplify things. At the same time, the conservatism of users pushes it back to something known and even convenient (at least from the beginning).

What is my conclusion? The usability of PLM and other systems related to the data is far away from being optimized. This is not a secret. People demands these days to get it as clean and as simple as possible. The last recognizable effort to change the status quo, was to present Microsoft SharePoint as a universal hammer to solve the usability problem in the enterprise. This is a place where innovation will continuously happen in a near future.

Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

2 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

PLM, SharePoint and ProductPoint Lessons

May 5, 2011

I’m following SharePoint and PLM. One of point of my interest was to analyze how Microsoft SharePoint can be used in PDM/PLM as a technological platform and business driver. Going back in 2009, I posted SharePoint PLM Paradox?. The potential of SharePoint was promising. The potential realization of this business opportunity for PLM companies was interesting.

SharePoint: Shifting Gears

I was watching SharePoint development for the last few years. I’ve seen the highest level of excitement related to SharePoint 2007. Technology was okay. SharePoint huge success came from free distribution of WSS (Windows SharePoint Services). I’ve seen many companies jumping onto SharePoint opportunity to solve their problems in collaboration, files sharing and portal solution. Coming to 2010-2011, I heard a different perception with regards to SharePoint. I posted – PLM SharePoint: Silver Bullet of Fierce Criticism? The most visible piece of the conclusion was related to heavy dependencies of SharePoint development projects on consulting and services during the deployment and operation.

What is the point of Windchill Product Point?

Few days I discovered the following note in Pro-Engineer forum related to PTC and ProductPoint. Navigate your browser to this link. It was available at the time I wrote this post. According to the information on this forum and PTC ProductPoint Retirement FAQ – PTC is retiring Windchill ProductPoint and providing current customers with the opportunity to upgrade their Windchill ProductPoint licenses to Windchill PDMLink for no additional charge through December 31, 2012. This information made me think about potential lessons PLM industry can learn from trying to combine PLM and SharePoint in a single product.

These are my initial 5 points:

1. SharePoint is a technological platform that requires implementation and services. To use it for small manufacturing companies can be dangerous and depends on deployment configuration can be problematic.

2. Microsoft business interest is to deploy SharePoint to bigger companies, and it can be asymmetric with the interest of PLM companies to solve PLM SMB problem using SharePoint.

3. There are alternative ways to solve PLM usability problems rather than re-use SharePoint UI patterns. PTC just released new version of Windchill (10.0), which probably delivers better user experience.

4. Maintenance of multiple PLM products is probably way too complicated.

5. PLM for SMB is probably not only about better user experience and subset of functionality.

Just my thoughts… I’m looking forward to discussing these lessons learned with you and to know what is your take? Based on the conversation I hope to have a better understanding of what can be a potential future of SharePoint and PLM development.

Best, Oleg

Customer_FAQ_-_Windchill_ProductPoint_Retirement_4.27.11.pdf

2 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

SharePoint: PLM and Widget Libraries

March 18, 2011

What do you think about SharePoint? During the last few months, I’m getting this question very often. After my post – CAD, PLM and End of Microsoft Dominance, this question is normally combined with the following one – Do you believe in Microsoft? My simple answer is yes. The majority if CAD and PDM/PLM products are running Windows platform these days. Obviously, the absolute majority of customers is running on Wintel boxes. And if you have money and customers, you can fix everything.

I have people asking me if SharePoint can be considered as PDM/PLM software. My usual answer is no. SharePoint is a great platform running on top of Microsoft Windows Server. It includes a very interesting "free product" – WSS (Windows SharePoint Services) or how it called Microsoft SharePoint Foundation in SharePoint 2010. If you decide to take SharePoint path in your PLM implementations, you can combine standard product offering coming from companies like PTC, Siemens PLM and others with the libraries of components that can be used to customize SharePoint. I found good examples of SharePoint widgets on this Syderis community on codeplex. Navigate your browser to the following link to see a list of SharePoint widgets and some guidance how to use them with your SharePoint.

What is my conclusion? SharePoint is great if you’re prepared to handle it. It is free to install, and as some of my readers stated in comments this week, some customers are successfully keeping WSS to get a job done. However, SharePoint can expose you to a significant amount of service expenses. You better be prepared. Make your home work, prepare widgets, resources and people to make your SharePoint implementation successful.

Leave a Comment » | Daily PLM Think Tank | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

PLM and SharePoint Scalability

March 14, 2011

Picture-5.pngSince Microsoft first released MOSS 2007, I can see an increased amount of manufacturing companies are investigating a potential move to SharePoint. Microsoft used brilliant freemium strategy and decided to give away a basic version of SharePoint (WSS – Windows SharePoint Services) bundled to Windows Server license. It created a significant flow of SharePoint viral evaluations in companies. Because of deployment and implementation ease, many companies started to implement WSS to improve the ability to share data and streamline collaboration. Sometimes, the solution growths can be really spontaneous.

I found the link published by Paul Andrew of Microsoft, very useful to evaluate your need and check upfront if your organizational demand and scale can fit SharePoint boundaries. The following two documents Estimate Performance and Capacity Requirements for Large Scale Document Repositories and SharePoint Server 2010 capacity management: Software boundaries and limits will take you to a long journey of planning an appropriate environment for your future SharePoint implementations.

During last few years, some PLM vendors and their partners made a bet on SharePoint as a platform to mainstream PLM deployment in organizations. User experience and IT compliance are two factors that made a significant influence on vendors, partners and companies. Such products as Windchill ProductPoint or TeamCenter Community are completely relying on Office and SharePoint platform as an infrastructure.

What is my conclusion? Microsoft SharePoint is a large a complicated platform. Sometimes, I can see people having some illusions with regards how easy they can deploy SharePoint based solution for their product development needs. To check detailed SharePoint pre-requisites and make sizing of your drawings and other product-related information is obvious, but important. Just my thoughts..

Best, Oleg

2 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

« Previous Entries
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 71 other followers