For most non-technology-savvy people, the title of this post can sound like a joke. Mobile apps are trending today. App store, Android stores, Microsoft is planning to re-born Windows phone with future versions of Windows and mobile app. How it can die? Looking on this following graph from article (Apps user overtakes web) on Mashable last year, you can hardly predict something wrong may happen to mobile apps.
However, among technology people the discussion about apps vs. web is not unusual. Those of use, who stays long enough in the business, still remember multi-platform discussions of Unix vs. Windows. You can catch up on my previous post on this topic - PLM and Multi-platform development. I did catch the following picture on on the web polls (unfortunately lost the link). The context of the audience was development people. This is indeed important to mention. You can clearly see people are focusing the development on mobile-oriented sites.
Mobile-Optimized Sites vs. Mobile Apps
The development side of this story is simple. Mobile Apps is our back to multi-platform development. It cost additional money and requires more complicated development organization compared to mobile-optimized websites that can provide some pain relief. You can take a look on a good comparison of two strategies on devbridge blog. I believe, the discussion is on the way, and it is far from a final word. You certainly need to remember the right keyword for the future – HTML 5. You can read more about this on one of my older posts.
What is my conclusion? I’m going to make my conclusion specifically talking about PLM mobile apps. PLM vendors followed technological and consumer trends to develop mobile applications. It sounds as a very important strategy these days, which cause huge interest from companies, users, analysts and industry watchers. Taking into account the long development cycle of enterprise applications and speed of adoption in manufacturing domain, I think software companies better have been not only short – term, but some longer-term development strategy that will allow them to jump to the next trend when it comes. For the moment, let’s rock available PLM mobile apps on iTunes app store and Android Market. I’m certainly interested to hear what do you think. And if you’re developing PLM apps, I like to know what is your opinion. Speak your mind.
Best, Oleg
Time is running fast, and 2011 is behind us. It is a moment to take a look in the past, make conclusions and draw plans for 2012. I wanted to share some information about Beyond PLM and PLM Think Tanks from 2011, made my conclusions and share some ideas about my plans for 2012.
Beyond PLM 2011 in Numbers.
Here is the short net-net of Beyond PLM and PLM Think Tank overall performance in 2011. I posted 337 blog articles. I’ve got a total of about 240,000 page views, which came to an average of 640 page view daily.
2011 New Year Resolution: Planned vs. Actual
I published my New Year resolution in the beginning of 2011. I never did it before. Frankly, I almost forgot about that. That’s why it was very interesting to me to Google my historical post and share with you what I think about the performance. Navigate to the following link to see the old post from January 2011 .
1. Keep a controversial informative discussion about Engineering and Manufacturing software. I hope I did well with that by feeding you with topics to discuss. However, I’m really interested to hear your opinion. So, speak up and tell me what do you think.
2. Discover new trends and opportunities related to Product Lifecycle Management. If you ask me about trendy words in 2011, I’d clearly say it was about the cloud and mobile. A year ago, I posted – PLM Reset 2011. The topics I wrote about were – cloud, mobile, social and end of Microsoft’s dominance. Autodesk made a final accord in 2011 by introducing “cloud PLM” and I think the overall you’d agree that these 4 trends had a significant role in what we did in 2011.
3. Publish Beyond PLM think tank posts daily. I posted 337 posts during 2011, which can be calculated as an average of 6.48 posts per week. My usual commitment was to publish every working day, so I’m doing well with the number.
4. Develop 140-char message oriented discussion on Beyond PLM. I wanted to learn more how to use Twitter to improve conversation related to PLM Think Tank. I hope, I was doing well, especially during conferences. In general, I’m satisfied with my twitter performance. Sometimes it was hard to keep up with the speed. I hope to make it better next year.
5. Get at least 5 hours sleep regularly (this is probably won’t happen). Well, it was a complete failure. Beyond PLM as well as my new baby Inforbix asked for my special attention.
Beyond PLM in 2012
I wanted to share some of my plans for 2012. My vision is to continue providing you with the best place to discuss various topics about engineering and manufacturing software with a most focus on Product Lifecycle Management. At the same time, I’m looking forward to expanding range of topics from mostly technological to some special topics related to configuration management, product development processes and standards. Here are three projects I’m thinking about in 2012.
PLM Think Tank e-book. The number of posts and content is growing. It is hard even for me to remember the list of topics, discussions and materials. I’ll be publishing PLM Think Tank annual e-book. It will be available soon for free download on the blog website. Stay tuned.
Guest blogging. I want to expand blogging expertize and invite guest bloggers to Beyond PLM. I will be making blog design adjustment and hope to allow guest blogging in February-March 2012. Contact me if you have special interests – I want to discuss it more.
Website unification. I want finally to unify my blogging platforms. For the moment, I’m sharing content via my old website. If somebody had an experience in unification and merging of websites, I appreciate if you share it with me.
Advertising. I’m getting a significant amount of requests to allow advertizing on Beyond PLM. I didn’t make my final conclusion about that. My vision of Beyond PLM and PLM Think Tank was always to keep an absolutely vendor-neutral position, and I hope you acknowledge that. So, advertizing is an open ticket for me. I will decide later this year.
What is my conclusion? No conclusion. 2:30am in Boston. Time to think about tomorrow’s New Year party. I’m sure, some of my friends in Europe and Far East already making very close preparation to celebrate coming 2012. However, I still can catch some sleep. I wish you to enjoy the rest of your Holidays Break! I’m looking forward to talking to you about various topics beyond PLM in coming 2012.
Happy New Year!
Oleg
I’m sure, you are familiar with highway 101 crossing Silicon Valley. However, you probably never heard about PLM Highway in Boston. After last week Autodesk PLM announcement and Dassault System move to a new campus in Waltham, I think we can officially suggest to rename Massachusetts Route 128 (also known as Yankee Division Highway) to PLM Highway. The map below prove it. PTC, Dassault, Autodesk, Siemens, SAP, Oracle. These are top six providers of PLM software with offices located along Rt 128.
As a blogger, I was invited by DS to visit their new office and to attend ribbon cut ceremony. Bernard Charles, DS President and CEO and Al Bunshaft hosted this event for media and journalists. After short briefing and visiting virtual reality presentation room, we’ve been taken to the campus tour. I’ve honored by having Jeff Ray walking together with our group and providing explanations about the building. Below you can see few pictures I made during this event.
You can find more pictures on DS Campus Tumblr page.
Best, Oleg
Freebie. Dassault didn’t pay me to post about Ribbon cut ceremony.
