Dassault V6, 3D Experience and “After PLM” Party

You are probably familiar with the following statements “beavers do what beavers do“. I’ve got the confirmation of that last month when visited PTC HQ in Waltham, MA. It was amazing to see how PTC is focused on moving PLM story to the higher level of maturity. At the same time, one of the PTC main competitors- Dassault Systems is actually preparing to the world after PLM. Yes… after PLM – you’ve heard this right!

Earlier this month during SolidWorks World 2012, Bernard Charles, President and CEO of Dassault Systems presented his vision of 3D Experience. Bernard, again, made it very clear -  Dassault is a “vision” type company. In my view, Dassault is following Apple’s and Henry Ford’s paradigm not to ask customers what they actually need, but invent it in their new products. Dassault is coming to the world “after PLM”. What does it mean? Josh Mings of SolidSmack made his usual sharp catch – Dassault launches strange new 3D experience platform. Navigate to this link to read more.

Dassault new 3D Experience vision

Dassault put a new website providing more information about 3D Experience platform. Here are some updated explanations about what 3D experience means for Dassault:

DS considers ?3D Experience? as the ?after-PLM? stage. The more complex the underlying software is, the simpler the user experience should be. It’s all about optimizing products and designs in the virtual, 3D world to enable better product delivery. Some DS brands make the 3D, some enrich the experience. The image is meant as a description of the key components of 3D Experience as DS sees it: 3D modeling, content and simulation, search, social innovation, real time 3D experience.

You can get an information about Dassault’s vision by watching the following video.

But, this video was contained too much marketing and I was looking for some additional information about DS future plans. I found some interesting writeups available on UpFrontezine by Ralph Grabowski. Navigate to the following link to read more – Bernard Charles talks strategy. I found it very interesting. You can see important keywords used to explain where Dassault is going – 3D, Digital Mockup, Data reuse, Open Architecture and Affordable. This is pretty cool set of buzzwords. However, the last passage in Ralph’s post is my favorite:

“The reason why high tech is adopting V6 is because they never leave the data alone. They can ask the suppliers to connect to the system and go and access to the data where they are without moving them.”

What is my conclusion? The story of 3D Experience is inspiring. I think, Bernard got inspired by Apple story. Experience is what getting more importance these days. I’m sure you know Apple example. But anyway… MP3 players were around quite few years, but only iPod/iTunes experience turned it into what we see now. It was about “music”, and Steve Jobs created closed eco-system of “music experience”. So, Bernard Charles is probably thinking about “future design experience eco-system”. It is cool! However, here is the problem I can see. The consumer audience is different from business one. When it comes to business of the companies, IP assets, IT and many other things, companies are getting concerned about “closed eco-systems”. The last passage about V6 and data got me concerned about future Dassault openness strategy too. In the past, V6 was criticized because it locked CATIA and Enovia behaviors. Dassault “after PLM” party seems to me as a story how to create an ecosystem supporting full cycle of innovation. Very visionary… Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Tagged as: 3D Experience, After PLM, Dassault, Data lock, Future