A blog by Oleg Shilovitsky
Information & Comments about Engineering and Manufacturing Software

Win8, metro and the future of PLM client apps

Win8, metro and the future of PLM client apps
Oleg
Oleg
23 September, 2011 | 2 min for reading

I wanted to talk about Windows 8 today. Despite lots of talks we had about Macs, iPads and web during last months, most of the manufacturing companies are running their business on Windows. Thinking about this, I took a look on a news stream coming from Micorosft these days about new look and feel of Windows 8 called Metro UI. Microsoft just released a new developer build of Windows 8. You can take a look on the following video preview.

For those of you thinking about development of different applications, I recommend to go a bit deeper and read more about some architectural technological transformations that happen behind the scene of new Windows 8. I was reading ZDNet article – Microsoft Metro Proves the PC is dead. Take your few minutes and read this article. Now, take a look on the following picture.

If you are a developer, you can note that everything “blue” on this picture represents the “old school Windows” and all new stuff is coming with Metro UI and WinRT API.

CAD, PDM, PLM and platform architecture

A big number of CAD, PDM and PLM applications, products and platforms written during the last decades are relied on existing Windows architecture, including a significant portion of backward compatibilities. Windows 8 wiil enforce vendors to start thinking about next client applications. It will be the time vendors can decide to re-build their products on Win8 or they can move out and think about other platforms.

What is my conclusion? In the beginning of the year, I was talking about the end of Microsoft dominance in one of my blogs. It becomes clear that Microsoft itself is taking steps that will end the mainstream Windows architecture used by multiple vendors. It is still long time before Windows 8 will be released. However, it will be interesting to see vendors’ reaction and steps to align future CAD, PDM and PLM client applications. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
2 December, 2008

I’d like to figure out several trends – CAD Data Management, Globalization and Cloud Storage Services.   Trend: CAD vendors...

5 June, 2018

One of PLM projects I’ve been following for long time is Siemens PLM Active Workspace. It was first introduced 6...

30 January, 2014

The buzz about Big Data is everywhere these days. From 2011 and up today, we can clearly see skyrocketing interest in...

29 May, 2017

Data is a new oil. Slowly, but surely manufacturing companies and PLM software vendors are getting to the point when...

23 April, 2019

My next story from ACE 2019 is about Aras product update. It was presented by John Sperling, Aras VP of...

2 October, 2009

My new post on DS 3D Perspective Blog today. I’m sure you already had chance to see the new 3DVIA...

8 August, 2019

Marketplace is an interesting concept and it seems to be progressing well in a modern cloud-based and internet aware economy....

7 November, 2013

Budget and cost. These are important elements of every IT solution. PLM is not an exclusion from this list. There...

11 July, 2012

Let’s talk today about databases and database technologies. Everybody these days understands what is that… Database technology became an essential...

Blogroll

To the top