How to re-invent “PLM collaboration” world?

March 24, 2012

What do you think about “PLM Collaboration”?… Yes, I can hear you – boring. However, what if I tell that collaboration can be cool again? Over the past year, I was tracking few vendors investing and playing with a collaboration topic. Today I decided to give you my perspective on what I believe will re-invent “collaboration” to the degree that will allow to regular people work and love these new collaborative tools.

Easy To Get

This one is simple. Nobody wants to deal with installations these days. If you want to provide a collaborative system, please make it available online or in the way that simplifies a path to start using a tool. This is absolutely critical.

Access and Mobile

Access is one of the very important things, collaboration needs to adopt. Collaborative tools need to be available everywhere and not restricted to a particular environment, infrastructure or device. This is in the past. Nowadays, mobile and BYOD rocks the field. All together it will create a significant challenge for IT, but it is just must go this way.

Collaboration and Cool

Cool is important! Don’t make it boring. You may say cool is not important when it comes to the business. I think opposite. Even if enterprise companies are still driven by old generation people, “new influencers” become more and more visible. People want to keep the same cool devices and use the same cool systems as they use at home.

New Gen of Collaboration Tools

I’d like to share few videos related to new collaboration tools I’m following. The first one is Vuuch. The company was established back in 2009. The idea of Vuuch is to improve collaboration by social interaction. Last version of Vuuch – V5 introduced additional features that make a deeper connection to working processes. You can see a video here. My guess usability is one of the biggest topics.

SolidWorks n!Fuze is a system to help engineers to collaborate mostly with SolidWorks files. It adopts cloud and improves connection between people and files outside of organization. It was released last year (2011). It was a flagship product for SolidWorks and use Enovia v6 cloud platform. At the same time, SolidWorks admitted many mistakes that were made.

Autodesk Cloud. This product is kind of n!Fuze remake together with the attempt to bring easy collaboration with files. It looks a bit Googlish, but fundamentally lack of many functions. The user experience of Autodesk cloud shows that customers are more in focus.

TeamPlatform. This is a newest addition to my “collaboration collection”. I found the application behavior slick and nice. This system clearly taking the cool and best experience of consumer web. You can navigate here to learn more. It supports few scenarios around file collaboration, managing projects and other files. It is too early to say what TeamPlatform can do, but it looks interesting.

What is my conclusion? I think more companies will try to challenge large vendors with new type of applications leveraging cloud, mobile and other best practices. It is interesting how they will be able to find a precise scenario to interest engineers and other people in organizations to start using that. We will need to get back to this topic in few months to see trajectories of collaborations.

Best, Oleg

picture credit David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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“True Cloud” Solution and PLM Competition

July 2, 2011

CAD, PLM and engineering software world is very competitive. Time ago, CAD vendors competed on the number of features. It is not unusual to see lists that comparing features and functions. However, nowadays the competition on features becomes useless. In the era of iPad apps and Web 2.0, you can just say that this application isn’t cool enough :) . I’m almost not following competitive conversations online, and you can rarely see such a type of topics on my blog.

The following Vuuch blog article struck my attention – Vuuch is the first "true cloud" PLM application. Take a time during your 4th of July long weekend and read this article. My good fried, Alex Neihaus is taking the conversation to the level combining some competitive statements mixed with really geeky and cloud language. Here is my favorite passage from this blog:

…despite lots of strategy talks with customers and high-concept keynotes at user conferences from the big PLM vendors, the first company across the finish line with a true cloud application for the PLM community is Vuuch…

…To be a true cloud app, it’s not enough to have a web portal that users access. That’s what Gmail is. Instead of your messages being stored on an internal server behind a corporate firewall, they are stored on Google’s servers. Big deal. That ain’t what we call cloud. To really be a cloud app, the application must have an API that can be called remotely. That is, it must not only have UI, it must be callable from other applications, using cloud technologies…

I found this definition a bit shocking and decide to provide some clarification about cloud technologies that can help to readers to translate this from geeky to normal.

Cloud Computing in Various Forms

First of all, I’d like to point readers to Wikipedia’s article about Cloud Computing. It is educational and provide a comprehensive analyzes of multiple aspects of cloud applications.

Cloud computing refers to the use and access of multiple server-based computational resources via a digital network (WAN, Internet connection using the World Wide Web, etc.). Cloud users may access the server resources using a computer, netbook, pad computer, smart phone, or other device. In cloud computing, applications are provided and managed by the cloud server and data is also stored remotely in the cloud configuration. Users do not download and install applications on their own device or computer; all processing and storage is maintained by the cloud server. The on-line services may be offered from a cloud provider or by a private organization.

Modern development of cloud qualifes three levels of cloud based solution – SaaS, PaaS, IaaS.

SaaS (Software as a service) is a software deployed over the internet, available to the end user as and when wanted. It is also called sometime "software on demand". Payment is per-usage or subscription. SaaS can be considered as the oldest and mature part of cloud computing. Examples of SaaS are salesforce.com, Netsuite, Google Gmail and some others.

PaaS (Platform as a service) is a combination of a development platform and solution stack delivered as a service on demand. It provides the infrastructure that can be used to build a new software application or extend the existing ones without underlying cost of buying and deploying additional hardware and software. Sometimes, PaaS is used to extend the capabilities of existing SaaS solutions. Examples are Force.com (from Salesforce.com); Google App Engine and Microsoft Azure.

IaaS (Infrastructure as a service) delivers computer infrastructure, typically a platform virtualization environment. It includes service, software, data-center and network equipment available as a single bundle. The best known IaaS environments are Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) and some others.

PLM on the Cloud

The idea of PLM on the cloud isn’t new. The first company pioneering cloud deployment in PLM space was Arena Solution (former Bom.Com). Nowadays, vendors are talking about cloud solutions. I can see different PLM vendors are taking various strategies related to the cloud. Among 4 main companies in this space, Dassault is leading with their cloud offering based on utilization of AWS and placements of V6 platform on EC2. Autodesk strategy seems to be interesting too. On one side, Autodesk Buzzsaw is a mature application service (SaaS – according to classification above). On the other side, Autodesk is trying "cloud water" with multiple applications – some of the utilize cloud infrastructure (i.e. Amazon EC) and some of them are focusing more on mobile (AutoCAD WS). Siemens PLM and PTC are more neutral in this cloud game. Vuuch, as I learned from Alex Neihaus’ blog, is now joining PLM on the cloud race.

What is my conclusion? Competition is a tough thing. Especially, when it comes to technology. Customers are not interesting in technologies and more focused on applications these days. I’m a very happy customer of Google Apps and I don’t care if Gmail is "true cloud app" or "false cloud app". I see PLM and engineering software lives in the world of SaaS. Efficient leverage of PaaS and IaaS can be PLM cloud apps successful. Just my opinion, of course. YMMV.

Best, Oleg

*pictures are courtesy of Wikipedia and Vuuch blog

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PTC Social Link and SharePoint: What the Future Holds?

June 17, 2011

One of the products I had a chance to review more closely earlier this week was PTC Social Link. I had a chance to post about social technologies before. Navigate your browser to the following links to read my earlier blog articles. Social PLM, Collaboration and Structured Discussion; PLM and Social Technologies Dating? Social Enterprise Discussion and Next Collaboration Buzz.

The following video provides a quick round trip for what PTC Social Link can do. Watch it and make your conclusion. I found it educational. According to the information PTC provided earlier this week, they are using Social Link internally to improve product development processes.

Activities

I found "an activity" concept interesting. Watch the following screen shot. As an engineer or a person in the organization you are interesting about what activities are running around a particular CAD model, drawing or similar piece of data. Social link gives you a summary view of activities placed alongside to this data.

Social Link, Technology and Web Parts

PTC is using SharePoint to implement Social Link. I can see some advantages in taking a leverage of Microsoft technological stack. SharePoint provides a good platform and Social Link leverage existing user experience, infrastructure and customization capabilities. To give you a glimpse of what is possible, navigate to the following link and read SharePoint 2007 Automatically updated web parts post. Web Parts is one of the fundamental elements of SharePoint technologies and Social Link uses it as well. However, if you don’t have in your team people familiar with SharePoint, this advantage can become a problem. It is your choice, of course.

What is my conclusion? PTC is thinking about social technologies. Social Link follows social hype, and you can find similarities with products like Salesforce.com Chatter, SAP StreamWork, Vuuch and some others. The question I’m asking myself is what should be the preference of users in a company if they will have a choice between SAP, PTC and other "social technology" applications. My intuitive hunch is that integration with product content (i.e. CAD files, BOM, etc.) can be important. Just my thoughts.

Best, Oleg

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RSS, PLM Collaboration and Activity Streams

June 9, 2011

Do you know what is RSS? I’m pretty sure a large amount of casual internet users are not aware about what is RSS and what is RSS readers (Aggregators). I even believe there are people that using Google Reader without actually knowing they are using RSS. On the other side, RSS is a technology that in my view can be very efficiently used to improve collaboration.

Enterprise RSS Hub

Time ago, I wrote about Enterprise RSS as an interesting opportunity. Navigate your browser to the following link -How to improve collaboration and information delivery with RSS. You can also take a look on the associatedForrester research paper from 2007 written by G. Oliver Young – Enterprise RSS Tackles Information Worker Overload.

Vuuch – Better Collaboration via RSS?

I was intrigued to read Alex Neihaus comments on Vuuch 4.5 release mentioned Vuuch support RSS as one of the most exciting features. Here is the passage:

A new Home page with activity streams and RSS feed capability. Vuuch 4.5 features a redesigned home page that now offers an activity stream. The Vuuch 4.5 activity stream is a time-ordered list of changes to the projects and deliverables the user is involved with. Unlike consumer social networking sites and their business-targeted clones, Vuuch 4.5 activity streams are specific to the projects and people that the user is currently working with. By “narrowing the focus” to just the things the user cares about, Vuuch 4.5 eliminates the need for users to manually filter the social system’s content to get value from it.

Here is Vuuch video presenting how it works. Take a look an make your opinion. The idea of providing information about changes is not a new. However, to make it RSS-compliant is interesting, since it leverage proven technologies and improve system openness.

What is my take? I think RSS is a good and reliable technology. Web relies on this technology for years. As 2 years ago, I still hold the opinion that this technology is undervalued by vendors in enterprise space. RSS can help to make systems more open and interoperable. The fact Vuuch decided to use it a good sign. On the other side, RSS is probably too “geeky” to become a feature for end users. Many people I talked to are still preferring email simplicity and reliability instead of RSS Reader.

Just my opinion.
Best, Oleg

Freebie.

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Social PLM Inbox and Changing Paradigms

November 19, 2010

The Facebook announcement about introducing of FB messaging system triggered a flood of posts. I’ve been looking over them for the last couple of days. I liked the following one – Locked in paradigms. This is my favorite quote about what Facbook is doing:

I very much get it that this is [Facebook messaging] a lot bigger than email and that’s kind of the point. Facebook apparently isn’t interested in building an email system and because they don’t already have an email system that acts like Gmail or Yahoo Mail they can break free from that paradigm.

Facebook Messaging Paradigm

Take a look on the following video. I found it impressive. The idea of simplification in communication and message tracking is powerful. Facebook is taking on an email paradigm and trying to change it. You don’t need to keep an email address of people you want to talk to. You just look for them on FB and talk. Simple? Yes. However, only if these people are on FB.

Product and Social Context

The battle of Facebook with Google isn’t exactly a topic for my blog. However, the idea of paradigm breaking made me think about some attempts to leverage the power of social business in PLM business. Few days ago, I posted an article about the potential of social systems like 3DSwYm to turn PLM into a mainstream. The key point, in my view, was about how to improve content sharing in the organization to streamline collaboration between people. Chad Jackson of Lifecycle Insights commented in a very interesting way:

With FB as well as many other social computing platforms, the context is always YOU. That assumption enables a whole host of simplifications in terms of the software system. Alternatively, the context in product development isn’t you, it’s the product, a project, a part or so on. That complicates things dramatically because you have to post/submit content to the right context and you also have to subscribe/follow the right context.

I found this a bit confusing. If I’m thinking about communication, it focused on the social aspects of communication. When I’m on FB, I’m communicating with all people and/or friends, depends on my privacy settings. Lately, FB came with the idea of ‘Groups’ which allows to think about community building in a similar way 3DSwYm, Chatter and other are doing. The context of communication is a content I put on Facebook. Alternatively, if I’m communicating with my blog readers, the context is my blog post. By finding an interesting content, I can interact with people on FB, Twitter and other social network.

If I turn it to product development, the picture is absolutely similar. I need to communicate with people. The purpose of my communication is business matters. Product design, changes, discussion, etc. Who is the people I need to communicate? The purpose of a social system is to identify them. If I will think about a system like 3DLive, Windchill Social Link of HD 3D, I can see how people can find who made changes for Assembly, Part, Drawing, etc. System likeVuuch, introduce an interesting way to find who are the people connected to Product, Part, BOM by enabling an explicit creation of these social links. The efficiency of a system to identify who is the right person(s) to talk to will define the overall value of the social system.

Will Social System Take Over the Email?

This is one of the most important questions to ask. Email is simple and dirty. People hate it and use it all the time. Facebook is trying to change this paradigm. They are eliminating the need to handle “email body” – to/cc/bcc/subject, and just communicate with people you’re connected to. Social system like Vuuch, 3DSwYm or Windchill Social Link can probably do the same. I found the following quote in another email by Chad Jackson – Vuuch: A unique approach to social computing is product development.

Centralized correspondence is a significant improvement over email. Despite availability of PLM collaboration capabilities, social media sites and instant messenger, I’ve found that email is the medium used most frequently for this sort of correspondence in product development today. I’ll get into the pitfalls of email for product development correspondence in a future post, but suffice it to say that emails can be forgotten, deleted or lost in your inbox. Use of a centralized server to manage the correspondence means it’s kept as a traceable trail that can be accessed by wider audiences at a later date.

Well, email also operates with a centralized server. Do you think a social system in product development will be able to lock everybody in the same server? My hunch is that this will be a very hard thing to do. Email is reliable because it operates in a virtual space of SMTP servers. Google talked about Wave Servers a year ago. PLM collaboration tried to lock people in a single point of a truth system. I can search in my Gmail. Is it equivalent to a single collaborative server? I don’t think so. However, it is still an email. It is relatively easy to find things in my gmail box. The question of simplicity is important. If “a social” or “whatsoever other system name” will be simpler compared to the email and can find people to collaborate in an easier way than your email inbox, it wins.

What is my conclusion? I can see the goal of a social system is very high and ambitious – to replace our old friend email. Facebook pretends to do so in the internet now. Companies like Vuuch will try to achieve it in a product development space. Google failed to deliver it with Google Wave. To learn this lesson is important. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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PLM Vendors, IT and Cloud Strategy

November 3, 2010

I was reading CloudAve yesterday. The post named – IT: Become Relevant or Die. Read this blog and make your opinion. The discussion about cloud is not new. This is my favorite passage from this post:

There are three things happening in IT now. The first is cloud, the second is mobile, and the third is social. CloudBlog agrees. But, what’s happening with IT is that it’s faced with 2-4 percent growth over the last several years. That is the equivalent of shrinkage when compared with spending in other areas. IT’s projects are becoming less relevant and thus are dying.

In addition, take a look on the video Daryl Plummer of Gartner video interview.

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Engineering and Manufacturing software business is relying significantly on IT performance. Most of the large and profitable PLM implementations are driven by IT or IT-related companies. For the last year, I’ve heard many PLM companies are making announcements related to the cloud-technologies. To understand what will be a future impact and what PLM companies are doing with regards to do this, seems to be interesting. So, I decided to put my comments behind what I know about cloud strategies of companies in the engineering and manufacturing domain.

Aras

The last newsletter from Aras, stated the following – Aras Explains PLM Cloud Strategy. The link brings you to the CIMData paper. Details about Aras’ cloud strategy can be found here. Simply put Aras folks are saying “we are ready for cloud – just bring it in”. Following additional publications on Aras’ blog, they are preparing to have some real-life tests in cloud scenarios. I think, “private cloud” can be the most relevant scenario for Aras, focusing on large customers first. I have some concern related to Aras’ cloud strategy in the context of their business model. How it will co-exist with Aras Open Source strategy is not clear.

Autodesk

Cloud was definitely in the focus of Autodesk for the last year. It started, actually, in the end of 2009 when Autodesk acquired Israeli Sequoia back startup Visual Tao. Earlier Autodesk made several statements about their vision towards better leveraging cloud computing. During 2010, Autodesk demonstrated few projects focused on cloud-based applications, such as Project Butterfly, Project Twitch and few others. I can see Autodesk put an effort and significant thinking behind the “cloud theme” and how to make it practically useful for type of customers Autodesk has.

Arena

This company can be for sure qualified as a pioneer of “cloud computing” in PLM. Back to the origins (bom.com) was the first company that said the word SaaS / OnDemand / Cloud (?). My personal opinion – Arena was much ahead of time. The post-dot-com weather of 2000s was very destructive for Arena’s business. Today, I can see Arena is producing a decent set of cloud based application, mature and ready to use if functionality of them is good for you. However, it is easy to check – Arena is providing Free 10-Days Arena Trial.

Dassault

Since V6 release, Dassault is speaking about cloud as part of their strategy. It takes too much time, but it is okay for such a big company like DS. The beginning of 2010 was signed by very loud messages coming out DS SolidWorks annual customer event – SolidWorks World 2010. You can take a look on the following article – SolidWorks Takes off in the cloud. Very recently, Jeff Ray, SolidWorks CEO blogged with some updates about SolidWorks cloud strategy.

PTC

During the last 6 months, PTC heated atmosphere and blogosphere with messages about PTC Project Lightning. It ended with Creo launch last week. However, Creo launch didn’t put any lights on what PTC plans doing with cloud. Even more, during the exec press conference, PTC’s new CEO, Jim Heppelman mentioned that word “cloud” wasn’t mentioned. In fact, PTC had early cloud exposure with their Windchill solution hosted by IBM. This is probably explains PTC’s current strategy with regards to the cloud. Probably, PTC learned their own lessons working with IBM on the cloud and we’ll know about that later.

Siemens PLM

I can provide a definition related to Siemens PLM cloud strategy using one word – NAH… Siemens doesn’t care. At least, in a visible way. In the past, I had a chance to track some cloud-recommendations related to TeamCenter. Siemens PLM has some software products exposed to the cloud. However, no messages are coming with regards to this.

There are other vendors that exposing themselves to the “cloud story”.

Vuuch, company planning to bring the power of social to product development is actually SaaS / Cloud company. You can subscribe to their service online, and you don’t need to install it.

PLM+, Israeli startup focusing on PLM for SMB claims the availability of their product on a service base. However, they are in a long time Beta version since last year.

What is my conclusion? I think, engineering and manufacturing software vendors learned a lot from their “cloud” stories during 2010. Almost all vendors got to the point of “trying the cloud water”. In my view, 2011 companies will shift more towards delivery. It will be interesting to see what PLM and other companies will put on the market to satisfy needs of growing cloud presences? This is the time to watch. Important and interesting, in my view…

Best, Oleg

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How To Reset PLM Collaboration?

October 28, 2010

Almost 2 weeks ago, I wrote about De-confusing of PLM Collaboration. Today, I want to suggest a different angle and talk about how we can re-think PLM collaboration concept. Why I think it can be interesting? In my view, the enterprise software industry is coming through the process of consumerization. It means that lot of technologies well-established in the consumer space will be coming to the enterprise. PLM will not be excluded from this process. Collaboration could be a good starting point for such type of re-thinking. To put some lights I created the following diagram.

I think about 3 fundamental activities: Communication, Collaboration and Process Management. I’d like to discuss them separately.

Communication

This is the most straightforward part. In my view, it represents fundamental activities in an organization today. I heard from people that organization is practically “driven by emails”. New technologies and the web are bringing alternative ways to communicate (i.e. IM, Blogs, Forums…). However, email is very strong and all ambitious plans about how to replace emails became a failure.

Collaboration

I used “collaboration” word to identify tools helping people to share data. I can see “synchronous” and “asynchronous” tools that can be used by people to collaborate. In the past, enterprise product developed the whole world of various “workspaces”, “whiteboards” and other solutions to share information between users. New web tools (i.e. Wiki) are coming to this space from the internet. In my view, it represents interesting perspectives on how to share data.

Process Management

Fundamentally organization is driven by processes. Various business processes can drive and formalize people’s activities, define goals and measurement system. The important aspect of process management is “people’s adoption”. Very often, company is spending a significant amount of resources to formalize and establish a process management system. However, next day, the system abused by people running emails and by doing so, voting against complicated process management procedures.

Moving from Spaces to Channels

In my view, enterprises are moving from a database world to networks. I touched this point earlier in my post PLM Network Effect and Single Point of Truth few days ago. Slowly, companies are starting to understand that database-centralizing has the limit and will not scale up. The Internet experience shows clearly that “network organization” can be much more powerful. Thinking about this abstraction, I came to the conclusion about significant movement from the concept of “spaces” that was dominant in PLM collaboration for the last 10-15 years to the concept of “Channels”. The way to organize channels can present an innovation in streamlining communication and processes in enterprise organizations. I can see existing and new companies are innovating in this space. Just to bring few examples – Cisco Quad, Salesforce.com Chatter, Yammer, Vuuch. This is my short list of innovators in this domain.

What is my conclusion? Customer demand to re-think collaboration in enterprise will provide a significant impact on how PLM collaboration will be developed in this the next 3-5 years. Intersection of Process management, communication and old-fashion collaborative tools is a good starting point to reset everything we knew about PLM collaboration. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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PLM, Emails and Social Links

September 16, 2010

Email is playing a significant role in the way every organization is management today. Organizations are run by emails these days. I’ve heard from many people. So, emails are a life blood organizes most of the company activities. Now, let’s think about product development organization. Email is the main application that helping you to organize working activities. Companies are innovating and trying to find a "next big thing" around the organization of people’s activities, communication and collaboration. Today I want to share with you two examples that, in my view, represents two potential directions to improve people communication and collaboration.

Email Content Navigation

The following application coughs my attention. Meshin presents a way to structure emails and discover a connection between your emails and other related content such as people, organizations, topics, etc. The idea of Meshin came from the analyzes of information that located in Outook or email. Take a look on the following interesting video presenting Meshin sidebar allowing you to get relevant information. Meshin allows you to find an information contextually connected to your communication stream.

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Social Product Development

In one of my previous emails, I touched a new trend – social product development that emerged today. Yesterday, I attended a webinar presented a new version of Vuuch. You can take a look on the press release announcing Vuuch 3.0 navigating to the following link. As it states in the press release, Vuuch a new ESS (Enterprise Social System) for PLM and CAD users that enables to team to work together in new ways using familiar tools. What I liked in Vuuch is the ability to enable connections between people’s activities and so called "deliverables". Vuuch allows you to keep track of people’s communication and decision making. Also Vuuch supports offline communication by delivering messages to your Outlook account and integrating Vuuch environment with Outlook.

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There is a reason why I decided to talk about these two approaches together. The goal both products are trying to achieve is a very similar to improve personal productivity and help people to get the job done. Meshin is analyzing your email stream and getting you an access to a relevant content connected to your email activities. If you think about product development organization run by emails, this can be a very interesting approach. As opposite, Vuuch approach is very interesting, in my view. Vuuch provides a tool to create a social connection already during people’s work. It is interesting to see both approaches and compare them together.

What is my conclusion? People are starting to focus on personal productivity. To get the job done is an important objective. These two applications represented different approaches to solve this problem. In my view, we wll see more examples of tools focusing on how to help individuals in an organization to make their work more efficiently. It should happen without taking "a grandiose plan" to re-engineer organizational processes. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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PLM Collaboration and “New Socials”

September 8, 2010

How to make people to work more efficiently? I think this is an important question. This is a challenge for every product development organization. You have a team of people working on a specific project (or projects). How you can get things done in this team?

Collaborative Software

For a long period of time, the ultimate answer on this question was – you need a collaborative software. What is that? In my view, collaborative software is the most vague terms that possible can be applied to a computer system. Just as an exercise, I tried to find an answer about what is collaborative software in Wikipedia. The root article – Collaborative Software, provides lots of information about possible collaborative software, collaborative management tools, collaborative project management, etc. In addition, it points on three separate categories: collaborative working environment, collaborative working systemsand computer supported cooperative work. I don’t know how about you, but I found myself lost in these definitions. My best definition of collaborative software is following – a computer system that helps to people working together.

Web 2.0 and “New Socials”

Last decade of internet software created a new hype of “new social” tools. Also known as Web 2.0, these tools provide a better way to work together in the internet. Messengers, Wiki, Blogs, Chats, Forums, and lately social networks created a new conglomerate of applications widely adopted by Digital Natives (Gen-Y) and proliferating fast into groups of “digital emigrants”.

Social Aided Product Development

I had a chance to read a blog article – Social Media Aided CAD by SolidWorks Legion. One of the topics, Matthew Lorono is discussing related to a newest Social Product Development tool coming out of PTC. The following video represents a promotional video showing how various “social features” used during the design process. Some of them seems to me interesting – the concept of wiki page for CAD model, “facebook-like” pages and collaborative workspaces for task management. PTC is leveraging Microsoft SharePoint infrastructure platform to develop this functionality. Broad adoption of SharePoint as well as marketing power of Microsoft can create a momentum for wide adoption of social product development tools from PTC. Take a look on the following video below and make your opinion.

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Another company that, in my view, belongs to “new socials” is Vuuch. Chris Williams explained me how you can “vuuch different things” – CAD models, products, Bill of Materials and other things in your product development environment to help people working together. In my view, the good translation of Vuuch is “stitching together”. Some of the ideas presented by Vuuch seems to me very powerful – ability to link people with their deliveries, contextual activity presentations. I see these small things as important differentiation factors in your decision to use this tool. In the following video, you can see how Vuuch can be used in design together with SolidWorks.

So, what is my conclusion? Engineers are not a simplest category of people. To create tools for engineers is a very tough job. To make them happy is a challenging task. “New socials” is new kind of tools that use power of “social connections” to help people working together. In my view, PTC is more focusing on leveraging SharePoint platform. At the same time, Vuuch is more dedicated to a new concept of “social links” and precise feature’s definitions. Both companies are trying to make engineers more productive during a design time. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Freebie. PTC and Vuuch didn’t pay me to write this post. However, I paid for my salad during the talk with Chris Williams.

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PLM and Social Connections

August 25, 2010

I’m continuing to explore various aspects of relations between PLM and social systems and tools in my blog. The social topic becomes interesting. However, I think social hype contains lots of misunderstandings and misconception. Few days ago, I had healthy debates with Chris Williams of Vuuch about PLM Social Detours. Chris is saying ”PLM tools cannot be social. PLM targets structure, control and is only embraced by a small number of users”. This is the exact point I want to discuss today. The additional trigger to this conversation was the information about Cisco Pulse – a new tool developed by Cisco to empower people in an organization.

How To Connect People in Organization?

One of the latest innovations in Cisco related to adoption of social systems to empower people connection @work. Take a look on the following Cisco Pulse presentation.

Cisco Pulse Media Analytics: Connecting The Human Network @ Work

View more presentations from Tony Frazier.

Cisco Pulse presentation made me think about missing “social link” in the way PLM systems drive their enterprise adoption. For the moment, PLM relies completely on process management practices to expand usage of PLM tools in the enterprise. This is what drive people involvement into a product-related processes. However, this approach is absolutely ignoring the reality of communication between people in the manufacturing organization. The formal way to organize processes is probably not the best way to organize your work. There is a need to find a new way to build more efficient communication and collaboration in product development, manufacturing, support and maintenance.

Need for PLM Mainstream Adoption

The core idea of PLM is to provide a business strategy and tools to manage processes related to product development. One of the people concerns about PLM is “mainstream adoption”. PLM tools considered as too expensive and complicated to be adopted and used by all people involved into a relevant business process. There are multiple reasons why PLM got the status of “a privileged system”, and I covered and discussed it before on PLM Think Tank. As an example, take a look on one of my previous posts -  3 Main Factors of Mainstream PLM adoptions. It seems to me by bringing a “social connection” factor into PLM game can become one of the possible ways to expand PLM influence and level of adoption in organizations.

Social Connection vs. Follow a Friend

We are very familiar with “follow a friend” concept that drives mainstream adoption of social networks in consumer space. However, the very valid question when it comes to implementation of social systems in the enterprise organization is simple – who are my “friends”? Collaboration is not about friendship. Collaboration is about how to work with right people in the organization. They will become your “social connections”. And they are not constant. Your connections change all the time depends on work you are currently involved in.

What is my conclusion? I’m thinking about last 10 years of the internet and Web 2.0 innovation. It can bring some fresh air in the way people can collaborate and communicate in the enterprise manufacturing organization. PLM spent significant amount of time trying to formalize business processes and collaboration. It comes as a set of business process tools and industry and best practices. However, the complexity of the implementation is still very high. By bringing “a social connection” to PLM we can introduce a new way for people to collaborate. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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

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