Cisco EOS or How to Make Manufacturing Companies Social?

For the long period of time CAD/CAE/PDM/PLM were recognized as tools for product development and manufacturing. However, modern trends, moving PLM to the space where the ability to be exposed to consumers, building communities and have social interaction becomes extremely important.  If you are in the business of product development, like every manufacturer does, you need to have a tool that allows you to interact with your users visually, provide right content at the right period of time that allows to get customer feedback or build a community for the future product launch.

Looking on Cisco EOS solution, I got an impression that such or similar product can be used very well in combination with PLM tools that allows to expose product development content to end-user.

What is Cisco Eos?
Cisco Eos is a hosted software platform that enables Media & Entertainment companies to more effectively and economically deliver compelling social entertainment experiences around branded content. Built to scale, Eos can support multiple customers, thousands of customized sites, and millions of users. The platform brings together social networking, site administration, content management and audience analytics features on a robust and secure hosting infrastructure. Eos offers everything media companies need to create, manage and monetize online communities. Eos-powered sites combine high-quality professional content with user generated interactions to create unique and engaging entertainment experiences built around the media companies’ brands.

I found the following article as a compact set of of very useful explanation about what CISCO EOS is.

Few days ago, I wrote about online internet graphic, CAD and publishing here. For me products like Cisco EOS can provide an interesting bundle and opportunity to expand PLM adoption and build an excellent interaction with end-user. PLM providers are working on their consumer-oriented strategies, but it seems to me too slow or too closed for mainstream adoption.

We need to watch this space closer in 2010. I’m expecting some very interesting experiments in this area following broad adoption of social tools in the consumer space. Businesses are just starting to think about broad development of “fan pages” on the Facebook. When they will come closer to this space, they will discover the need to have these systems tightly connected to product development environments.

Just my thoughts. Let me know what do you think?

Best, Oleg

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  • Satish Kumar

    Web 2.0 technologies have no doubt become an integral part of our social network, and we have seen a flurry of interest and activity by investors and enterprises. Does that mean that all business applications should have a web 2.0 flavor to it? I don’t believe that all technology apps should simply jump on the web 2.0 bandwagon simply because it is the “in-thing” – PLM vendors in particular should be more concerned on business productivity and less about web2.0.

  • Satish, I understand you point. However, the basic assumption is that Web 2.0 like tools can bring productivity.. Don’t you think so? Best, Oleg

  • Hi Oleg,

    I’d share Satish’s point of view. Besides, I do not think I will be joining a fan site of a toaster or TV-set. Car – maybe, but only if it is not vendor sponsored. I am brainwashed enough through radio and television, I really want my social part of the internet monetization free zone. And I sense the rat right away, not because I’ve been in MRM for years, but because marketing efforts are rather obvious, especially in US.

    What I’d like to see is unbiased review sites and user forums (mostly to see type of problems people have with the product). It is rather obvious that vendor-sponsored sites are the last place where I would go for this. The only thing I’d like to see from a vendor is a promo-site (show me your cool stuff, give me coupons)/support site (stackoverflow.com style). This is where EOS might come handy in a certain way.

    I see social experience in PLM as B2B at best, not B2C. I remember few months ago we were talking about REST architecture for working on CAD models – this is where PLM could rule over EOS or SharePoint – just because it is industry-specific and does the right thing.

    It is great that you keep track of these things, though. Thanks for the post.

  • Daniil, Thanks for sharing your view. In my view, fan sites are a definition that came out of original social network environment, but within the time we’ll see changes towards something more balanced and information -oriented. Vendors will find a way to transform their sites to be social to 1/provide more information about products before they will be coming (I really want my future customer’s feedback as early as possible); 2/to identify/measure market; 3/to attract potential buyers. Such trends will be, of course, different for different industries. What will be acceptable for cell phones is not necessarily worked for jet fighters :)… On the other side, I think B2B vs. B2C difference will be diminished in the end. Just my thoughts… Best, Oleg

  • Daniil Barvitsky

    Oleg, I’d love to see that coming in future, along with household supply chains (order milk from Joe’s farm directly and cut Shaws) 😉 Perhaps some day I can get on the carmaker’s web site, describe what car do I want and actually get it in next model year, who knows 😉

  • Daniil, what you just explained is so called – customization trend. It was in the past for luxury stuff. However, these days it becomes more popular for more and more manufacturers… So, you might be able to impact on how things are going to be manufactured in the future. Thanks for your comments and discussion! Best, Oleg

  • When will Cisco IOS will obsolete?

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