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Aras PLM, Microsoft Azure and cloud competition

by Oleg on May 7, 2012 · View Comments

BAM…BAM…BAM… My cloud is better than your cloud. Aras PLM made a step into cloud game with a new product called – Aras Spectrum. PLM cloud ecosystem was boring place until last week. Autodesk PLM 360 was practically playing solo “PLM Cloud” game with some additional voices coming from DS made by SolidWorks n!Fuze and n!Volve. DS products are more extension to existing design environments – CATIA and SolidWorks. So, what happened last week?

Aras Spectrum

Last week, during ACE 2012, Aras presented a new cloud PLM strategy and new product – Aras Spectrum. So, what is behind this name? In a nutshell, Aras is partnering with Microsoft Azure team to deliver Aras Cloud PLM solution to mega-customers with high level of scalability and unique Aras cloud strategy. The main point Aras made is related to the reality of the PLM deployment requiring on-site integration between “multiple-clouds”. You can see this point presented on the following slide:

Aras introduces the three-way strategy to deploy Aras PLM on cloud with some mirroring functions on-premises. They called it 1/cloud mirror; 2/failsafe mirror; 3/dual deployment. You can see slides bellow. However, it is still hard to me to understand the difference between these options. What I understood from short conversation with Aras people, these options represent a different mirroring strategy.

Aras strategy is to leverage massive scale of Microsoft Azure platform to reach significant performance and scalability achievements. It includes the ability of Aras PLM to run across the world – wide network on Microsoft Azure data centers, 50,000+ users load test and more…

Which Cloud Better?

Aras is the first PLM vendors that introduce the question of “which cloud better?” to us. Until now, the main message we’ve heard from cloud providers was about how to eliminate the complexity of deployment and IT by using cloud PLM. That was the main message provided by Autodesk PLM 360 – instant on. The difference introduced by Aras is taking us to the reality of on-site customization, which unavoidable as was stated during Aras cloud presentation.

Another point of potential differentiation is cloud infrastructure. Aras is strategically positioned with Microsoft Azure. Autodesk didn’t provide any information so far about data centers and cloud infrastructure they provided. From a very brief public message provided by Autodesk publicly, PLM 360 is a true cloud application:

Autodesk PLM 360 is a true multi-tenant cloud application. Users and managers will never again have to worry about upgrades and broken customization; the application is always up-to-date and compatible with any customer-specific configuration.

Opposite to that, Aras Spectrum is by definition cloud/on-premises solution with some elements of mirroring. Aras is using additional services provided by 3rd party vendors to support so called “Aras Connected Cloud strategy:

What is my conclusion? Autodesk was a first major PLM broadly available on the cloud. However, cloud cannot be ignored these days. Aras Spectrum just confirmed that. Aras Spectrum is not released yet. I’ve heard Aras is talking about July-August 2012 timeframe (still need to be confirmed). However, it is interesting to see different views on how PLM cloud strategy can be implemented. I think, there are enough space to innovate with the cloud solutions, and I’m looking for more news.

Best, Oleg

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First Look of 3DS SolidWorks e-Drawings for iPad

by Oleg on May 1, 2012 · View Comments

For the last couple of years, I’ve been following iPad application appearance in the space of engineering and manufacturing. I expected this application to come much earlier. So, I wanted to say the same word Ricky Jordan said in his blog. Finally! SolidWorks (or how it is named now 3DS SolidWorks) just made a release of e-Drawing iPAD application. It is available on the App Store. I installed it on my iPad just few hours ago. It looks very nice. Email integration is supported. In addition, it is capable of viewing other formats (you may note licensing terms going to TechSoft3D, Open Design Alliance and few others) in about section.

Home screen, menus, controls – everything looks familiar to somebody who is using iPad. Side bar is nice and allows you to navigate inside of assembly. I didn’t find support for views, measurement, and other useful functions. I believe SolidWorks keeps it for future versions.

Below you can see a video SolidWorks released with a short demo.

How to buy?

The price is $1.99. The Apple iTunes policy is complicated when it comes to corporate purchasing. Does e-Drawing iPad app worth $1.99? My answer is yes. Will engineers buy e-Drawing iPad for $1.99? A good question. I’d be very interested to see the number of uploads within few weeks and months.

What is my conclusion? Later is better than never. I think, many of SolidWorks users will appreciate e-Drawing iPad app. I’m going to experiment how easy to use e-Drawing as a viewer on my iPad in addition to other mobile apps I already have from Autodesk and other vendors. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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PLM: Data, Search and Future User Experience

by Oleg on April 3, 2012 · View Comments

Disclosure: As a co-founder of Inforbix, I understand that my opinion about PLM Data and Search can be unintentionally biased. Nevertheless, I believe the topic itself is very important, so I decided to share my thoughts anyway.

PLM Data. A lot of data. You are probably familiar with that. The amount of data is growing. I can say the same about the complexity of the products and product development processes. It creates significant challenges for everybody in the company – designers, engineers, manufacturing, marketing, sales and support. How to overcome the level of complexity and provide customers with easy and intuitive tools? This is one of the challenges I mentioned in my presentation few months ago during AU 2011.

In this article which is going to be unusually long, I’d like to explore trends and show examples of applications specifically focusing on user experience.

TeamCenter Active Workspace

Siemens just released videos and information about so-called TeamCenter Active Workspace. Per my understanding Active Workspace is a first module to implement so-called HD-PLM vision Siemens PLM presented last year. I caught the initial info about Active Workspace was in October 2011. I captured it in my Inforbix blog. The discussion was started on twitter by @dorasmith. In addition, you might be interested to read an early review done by Kenneth Wong of Desktop Engineering. The short definition of Active Workspace was like this “Active Workspace is like Internet search, simplifying PLM complexity”. I was listening to the following video by Chuck Grindstaff of Siemens PLM talking about Active Workspace.

Finally it came to the release. In the following video, you can see a first review of the product.

I find user experience quite comprehensive. In my view, it is clear simplification compared to a traditional PLM environment. According to my understanding Active Workspace is running on top of TeamCenter platform (as a module). So, where it provides a clear user experience simplification, customers still needs to take care of IT, installation and implementation cost.

Dassault System 3DExperience and Exalead SBA

DS has a concern about user experience too. DS started 3DLive product about 5 years ago as an innovative way to collaborate, visualize and navigate through product information. These days, DS is presenting something they call 3D Experience platform that allows people to experience real product in a virtual environment. According to Dassault, it will change the way innovators innovate with consumers. You can see a visionary video below. This is still a vision, in my view.

3D Experience platform contains many elements supported by other DS products. One of them, Exalead is a platform for Search Based Applications. DS acquired Exalead two years ago. Since that time, I’ve heard lots of talks about Exalead as a platform. According to Dassault, Exalead platform and applications can be embedded into other applications or used a platform for building new apps. Known as “French Google”, Exalead was a company founded back in the beginning of 2000 with some core roots in Alta Vista search platform. In my view, Exalead is a powerful toolkit. With all power it comes with, Exalead is a very generic and not related to PLM. In the video below, I found an application developed by DS partner – NovaQuest, which can be positioned as much as close as possible to PLM.

Autodesk PLM 360

The story of Autodesk PLM 360 is just in a very early beginning. Autodesk is presenting PLM 360 as a major breakthrough into changing the way people work in PLM including delivery and implementation (Instant On the cloud) and ending up with a user experience. I presented some of my thoughts about PLM 360 on my blog before. Navigate to the following link to read more. From the standpoint of user experience, PLM 360 is completely browser-based (except of Workflow designer)

It also provides some interesting capabilities for product information navigation.

Opposite to Siemens PLM and Dassault, PLM 360 is running in the cloud. User interface is a strong point of PLM360. It is also very flexible and customizable. At the same time, because of the cloud, connection with the data in the company, remains one of the weak points and the gap that Autodesk needs to cover.

PTC, Windchill and SharePoint

The last version of Windchill product put a lot of focus on the user experience. PTC mentioned it many times in their presentations. You can see a video of Windchill 10 demonstrating all usability enhancements. The core concept of Windchill UI is to combine the best desktop experience with the best web experience. How successful is that? Take a look on the video and tell me, please.

On the side of search, PTC relies on SharePoint infrastructure heavily. In the following video, you can see how PTC mixing SharePoint search with Windchill products.

Inforbix Product Data Applications

The big idea of Inforbix is to change the way how people in manufacturing company can access product data located in disparate locations (file vaults, local computer drives, database, PDM/PLM applications and other sources). Inforbix doesn’t require you to migrate data into a single database. Inforbix runs from the cloud (private or public), scans product data and helps you to search, find connected elements and create different reports and visualization. Learn more here. User experience plays one of the central roles in Inforbix. The following video shows Inforbix Search user experience that helps you navigate and discover product data.

This video presents Inforbix Tables user experience helping you to slice and dice data in virtual reports.

What is my conclusion? User experience is very important these days. What we learned from the internet and mobile space, one “extra click” can kill your product. The new motto – “don’t make me think” can be easy applied as the most important requirements nowadays. The idea of user experience started to proliferate to enterprise space. PLM companies are clearly interested how to make improvements and create new generation of tools, which will not look like ’95 anymore. Just my thoughts….

Best, Oleg

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ENOVIA V6 Multi-CAD: Do Everything!

April 1, 2012

Note, this is NOT 1st April post . Multi-CAD and PLM. Endless story… Few weeks ago, I published my post The Anatomy of MultiCAD-PDM integrations. I recommend you to have a read before you continue with this article. Another blog, you probably want to review is the story about Autodesk Vault and Multi-CAD. This blog is [...]

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Autodesk, Vault and Multi-CAD

February 20, 2012

I’d like to continue my “multi-CAD and PDM” story. If you had no chance to read my yesterday post The Anatomy of MultiCAD-PDM integrations, please do it before continue. I want you to take some initial context from there. I’ve been talking with Brain Roepke, director of PLM and “father of Autodesk Vault”. My interest [...]

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The anatomy of MultiCAD-PDM Integrations

February 19, 2012

After posting my last blog multi CAD and PDM- dead lock?, I’ve got quite many emails and calls. It again proved to me that the topic is painful and require clarification. I’ll be setting up few follow up conversations following weeks. Today, I want to provide some background and clarify few basic things related to [...]

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Part numbers and External Classification Schemas

February 7, 2012

I want to talk about Part Numbers. Yes, Part Numbers, again… My previous blog – Part Numbering and the future of identification raised few interesting conversations. So, I decided to open a Pandora box of part numbering. The formal trigger for this conversation was Arena Solutions blog – Three consideration when choosing Part Numbering schema [...]

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Autodesk, Aras and Integrated PDM / PLM story

December 7, 2011

Back to the beginning of this year, I came with the post – Integrating PLM and PDM. Wrong question? My initial thoughts about integrating PDM and PLM was driven by growing interest to integrate existing software assets in the companies. However, thinking more I can see some additional aspects of PDM / PLM integration in [...]

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