PLM Online Data Sharing: From Spreadsheets to Databases?

by Oleg on July 17, 2011 · View Comments

What is the most popular PDM/PLM system in the world? My bet it is probably MS Excel. The flexibility and ease of availability, made Excel so popular between engineers. Managers probably don’t care… in the beginning. Later, companies started to hire CExO (Chief Excel Officers) to manage the complexity of Excel files. I’ve been reading Dropbox for File Sharing by Robert Green of Cadalyst. It made me think if a situation similar to Excel will happen with PDM/PLM on the cloud. I can see few CAD/PLM vendors are thinking “cloudy”. However, at the same time, the majority is not thinking about how to innovate on the cloud and still discussing a potential cloud adoption.

So, what cloud products will become the future Excel on the cloud. Rober Green is talking about Dropbox and sharing of CAD files. However, I want to raise a different point. CAD files can stay in the company. What if we will be able to share our fancy Excel spreadsheets. It sounds like a good alternative to our old friend MS Excel? We can add CAD files too. Dropbox is a good service. However,  are there any visible alternatives? I made a small research and want to present you few solutions, I found interesting.

SpreadsheetLIVE

This service is still completely free. It creates a very interesting “spreadsheet oriented” environment. You can think about multiple scenarios and implementations you can make. Services such as API is supported as well.

Google Docs

I don’t need to talk much about these services. This service is “really free” and “really unlimited”. You, of course, limited by your 2GB quota. At the same time, there is a nice feature that allows you to provide an access to the spreadsheet (view only or read/write).

Microsoft Live (Office 365)

Office Live is a similar environment as Google Docs, but made by Microsoft. It is free, but limited to 50MB. You can access spreadsheet for editing. However, if you have no account, you will be in a read-only mode.

Longjump

Longjump is a full-fledged cloud database service. You can import spreadsheet by passing via CSV file. The service contains database, reports, pivots, etc .. However, it is not free, and you’re supposed to pay $500 depends on the plan. This is something that can remind you a bit your favorite PLM environment.

Intuit Quickbase

This one is the most expensive and the most polished solution I found. Your data will be imported and converted to a real database. Data cannot be converted from Excel and requires to pass via CSV format. On another side, Intuit has a very good reputation of trusted online service provider. You will be paying around $300/user/mo and will be limited to 1GB of data for an initial plan.

What is my conclusion? Online data business is growing faster than you probably expected. Very soon, engineers will have lots of opportunities to dump local excel files and move to something smarter. Will PLM providers catch them on this way and propose an alternative solution? A good question. The number of “PLM Excels” is huge. To catch some of them, can be a valuable business. Just my thoughts..

Best, Oleg

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Tagged as: CAD, Cloud, Data Share, Dropbox, Intuit, Longjump, Office365, PLM, SpreadsheetLive, Spreadsheets

  • David Cole

    I have to disagree that Excel by itself could be considered a PDM/PLM system. 
    How is Excel by itself managing product data or product lifecycles? It can be used to create product or document structures in tabular formats, but what about
     - version control of documents , metadata objects, and their relationships
     - workflow enabling collaboration

    I think that you need to indicate a storage mechanism ( cloud, Sharepoint, LAN folders, etc. ) and how Excel can be used within that mechanisim to enable control before you can take the 'next step' toward a full PDM/PLM system.

  • beyondplm

    David, you are right - storage mechanism is required. But it is an obvious thing - most of the companies today are using a file server for such purposes. Cloud is possible as soon as you consider one of the services (or similar) I mentioned in my post. Thanks for the comment! Best, Oleg

  • Charlie Hess

    Oleg,

    Good points!  Internally, we have started to use Google Docs, and it is growing fast.  Their spreadsheet is totally compatible with Excel, so no need to have  MS Office.  The bigger advantage is total freedom of device...your laptop, an associate's laptop, your phone or iPad.  Whatever the app used, it is the 'cloud' that is pushing this revolution.  No doubt, great cloud PLM solutions are on the way to manage all these spreadsheets.  The value proposition for PLM in the cloud  just got bigger because 1) the cloud is accelerating file creation and sharing instances and 2) file revision and management infrastructure inside the cloud is basic.  This demand will spawn innovative solutions from existing and new PLM software developers.  Personally, I like CAD file management locally, but see that too going to the cloud.  Just look at what college students are doing with cloud technology...a good barometer of what they will expect once in the workforce.

    Charlie

  • beyondplm

    Charlie, Thanks for your comment and insight! I agree with your thoughts related to adoption of cloud, CAD and revision management. At the same time, to push CAD files on the cloud can be not efficient, especially for local scenarios. The real show-stoppers for cloud deployments are networking, availability and speed. Best, Oleg

  • Hi Oleg,

    You usually think about very advanced technology but in this post you mainly take Excel on the cloud with version management. That's not filling the gap between Excel and PLM. I won't say more... will get back to you soon on that!

    BR,

    Yoann

  • beyondplm

    Yoann, the question is not how to fill the gap between Excel and PLM. The question what will come first after Excel? - sophisticated PLM or simple "spreadsheet on the cloud". I will be waiting for you coming back... Thanks for comments, as usual! Best, Oleg

  • yes, you're right and that wasn't what i meant. I think between Excel and PLM there is a very big step. And we are looking for an intermediate step. And i think moving spreadsheets to the cloud is not enough. We need to introduce people to more structure data.

    BR,
    Yoann

  • beyondplm

    Yoann, absolutely. I think, you are right. However, the flexibility of this solution will be a key for success. Best, Oleg

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