Data is a fascinating topic these days. The amount of data is growing and it raises lots of concerns on both – consumers and business sides of the world. Last week I’ve been blogging about web data common project. Openness is another interesting issue that debates by many people today. Semantic web blog posted about session discussing open data on the web at the Semantic Tech and Business conference last week made by W3C eGov consultant Phil Archer. Navigate here to read more. Most of us is associating open data with linked data. One of the most interesting discovery mentioned by the article was the fact of Excel data dominance on the web. Here is an interesting passage:
“JSON and CSVs are the kings,” he said. “If you look at open data portals, CSVs [which get converted to JSON files] outweigh Linked Data by a mile,”
He brings an interesting story about Open Knowledge Foundation describing CKAN platform enabling publishing CSV files in a semantic way to the net.
The OKF is responsible for the CKAN platform that the U.S. open government data portal, data.gov, now incorporates. “CKAN,” Archer said during his presentation, “is a really important platform and basically it’s about publishing CSVs, and it spits out a bit of RDF data.” He also noted that Dr. Rufus Pollock, founder and co-director of the Open Knowledge Foundation, has proposed a new standard for a data package that includes CSV and JSON. Frictionless Data, now in alpha, includes as principles using web-native formats like JSON. It defines a data package for delivery, installation and management of datasets, with a Simple Data Format (SDF) at heart whose key features are CSV for data, single JSON file (datapackage.json) to describe the dataset including a schema for data files, and the reuse wherever possible of existing work including other Data Protocols specifications.
The story of CSV dominance on the web made me think about the future of open data in manufacturing and enterprise organizations. Organizations have zillons of Excel files located everywhere. Packaging of data in a semantic way makes a lot of sense and it increases the openness of enterprise software platforms including PLM.
What is my conclusion? Openness is important. Companies of all sizes are struggling with the amount of data located in Excel files. It is not reliable and actually not open. To access data from Excel files and make it available across the organization can be interesting imperative forcing company to be more open. PLM original intent was to drive companies stop poisoning organizations with Excel infusions. However, the implementation is far from the ideal. PLM technology providers should make a note. Just my thoughts…
Sunday is a good day to dream and think about something completely crazy and impossible. More than four years ago I started to explore the potential of cloud PLM on my blog. If you are long time readers you can probably remember my Where is PLM on industry cloud map? or PLMosaur, Traditional PLM and SaaS Newbies. Cloud PLM is a real thing these days. PLM vendors are approaching cloud PLM is a different ways. Nevertheless, cloud PLM is here and real manufacturing companies are using cloud PLM every day.
However, here is the thing – you can solve technical issues related to configuration of cloud-based software, you can improve security and certification. However, even if it sounds strange, the connection to internet is something that really hard to get in some places in our planet today.
I’ve been reading about Google Project Loon during the weekend. Navigate to Google’s blog to read more. Google has an ambitious plans to bring internet to places in the planet that today are disconnected. It also means that cost of internet connection will be going down. Take a look on the video explaining Google tech in details.
What is my conclusion? Yes, Google Loon is still a dream. However, think about some tech that we keep in our hands these days. Even 5-10 year ago we didn’t think it would be impossible to run video calls from mobile phone and use cloud based software on tablets to solve engineering simulation tasks. Maybe in 5 years, Google Loon will solve internet connectivity problem and open an additional opportunities for engineering and manufacturing? Just my thoughts…
We love word “disruptive”. It is so nice and tasty. However, very often, we use it without thinking twice what does it mean. Read materials from many startups and large companies – you found lots of statements about “disruptive technology” or “disruptive innovation”. Wikipedia article provides a very decent definition of what disruptive innovation and technology mean.
A disruptive innovation is an innovation that helps create a new market and value network, and eventually goes on to disrupt an existing market and value network (over a few years or decades), displacing an earlier technology. The term is used in business and technology literature to describe innovations that improve a product or service in ways that the market does not expect, typically first by designing for a different set of consumers in the new market and later by lowering prices in the existing market. The term “disruptive technology” has been widely used as a synonym of “disruptive innovation”, but the latter is now preferred, because market disruption has been found to be a function usually not of technology itself but rather of its changing application. Sustaining innovations are typically innovations intechnology, whereas disruptive innovations change entire markets.
Navigate here if you want to read a full report. I also found the following passage notable.
In its latest report, MGI set out to answer an even more unanswerable question: What will be the economic impact of the dozen most “disruptive” technologies, including utility devices that talk to each other, cars that drive themselves, and printers that can print printers? Their summary graph is the image that kicks off this post. In a sentence: There’s mobile Internet, and then there’s everything else.
What is my conclusion? To predict a future is one of the most risky things. McKinsey ranked cloud as #4 by a potential economic impact. In my view, cloud can make a difference. Will cloud drive future difference of enterprise software and PLM systems? Pure speculations… Nevertheless, I like McKensey’s numeric approach. PLM vendors must take note – the time of fluffy marketing is about to end. Data first. I’m looking forward to see numbers presenting an economic impact of cloud enterprise systems and to compare with a traditional enterprise software stack. Interesting time. Just my thoughts…
Dear Mr. Manufacturing CIO. I have good news for you – engineers in your your organization are already using cloud services. However, let me point on bad news too – people in your organization are using cloud services. Navigate to my previous blog – PLM cloud concerns and Dropbox reality for engineers. You can learn [...]
Recently, I’ve been talking a lot of search paradigm and findability in PLM. In many aspects, web search changed our life. Search remains one of the fundamental user experience in consumer space and web. We search for tasks, locations, emails, friends, events and many other things. Search is different when we speak about business. Enterprise search as [...]
Big data is one of the biggest hyped buzzwords of the last two years. With all hype around, it is very hard to find a good definition when it comes to a simple question about what “big data” means for every specific case in your industry and your applications. The following definition is how wikipedia [...]
CAD and PLM vendors have a long history of development product for automotive industry. Major OEMs and their suppliers were one of the first customers long time ago in the history of the computer systems for design and manufacturing. The days when car development was mostly about mechanical design with a small amount of electric [...]
Disclosure: As a co-founder of Inforbix and responsible of PLM 360 and Autodesk Vault product development at at Autodesk, I understand that my opinion about PLM Search can be unintentionally biased. Nevertheless, I believe the topic itself is very important, so I decided to share the information and my opinion anyway. Search is a fascinating [...]
IaaS, PaaS, SaaS… Most probably you are familiar with this abbreviations. These are fundamental layers in cloud computing these days. IaaS stands for Infrastructure as a service. PaaS stands for Platform as a Service and, finally, SaaS stands for Software as a Service. These concepts were around for some time. SaaS is probably one of the earliest and [...]
Enterprise systems for long time are well-known as a place where IT plays the role of the king on the road. ERP, CRM and many other enterprise systems and implementations proved that. If you want to sell to enterprise organization, you need to focus on key IT people, preferable on CIO, Chief of Engineering, Manufacturing [...]
Data is a fascinating topic these days. The amount of data is growing and it raises lots of concerns on both – consumers and business sides of the world. Last week I’ve been blogging about web data common project. Openness is another interesting issue that debates by many people today. Semantic web blog posted about session discussing open data on the web at the Semantic Tech and Business conference last week made by W3C eGov consultant Phil Archer. Navigate here to read more. Most of us is associating open data with linked data. One of the most interesting discovery mentioned by the article was the fact of Excel data dominance on the web. Here is an interesting passage:
Sunday is a good day to dream and think about something completely crazy and impossible. More than four years ago I started to explore the potential of cloud PLM on my blog. If you are long time readers you can probably remember my 
We love word “disruptive”. It is so nice and tasty. However, very often, we use it without thinking twice what does it mean. Read materials from many startups and large companies – you found lots of statements about “disruptive technology” or “disruptive innovation”. Wikipedia 
