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Cloud

Cloud PLM and the Old Enterprise Trap

by Oleg on May 16, 2013 · 0 comments

Enterprise software is a fascinating place these days. It comes in a different angles and perspective. The disruption of consumer technologies, cloud, BYOD and many other factors. We can see the influence coming from both technological and business factors. Few months ago, I posted – PLM, Viral Sales and Enterprise Old Schoolers. While enterprise sales is still a tricky game, lots of thing are going to change, in my view. The following webinar invitation just landed in my email box this morning – Cloud ERP, Myths, Reality and the Old ERP trap. Jim Brown is well known as an analyst in engineering, manufacturing and enterprise domains. He is also my long time blogging buddy and co-starring at Tech4PD Show. I hope to attend webinar tomorrow (sponsored by Plex system). I found the following passage from webinar introduction interesting:

“…how cloud ERP helps overcome financial and IT resource constraints that keep companies stuck on outdated ERP systems that don’t provide the information they need to make good, timely business decisions…”

Moving on, I found the following part of webinar promotion resonating with the way any cloud enterprise system (PLM included) can be introduced and adopted in enterprise organization. In general, I can see companies are trapped in existing enterprise systems. On average, any company invested millions of dollars implementing ERP, CRP and PLM systems. The following steps clearly can show a path how to get out of this “enterprise trap”.  Read the following bullets and let me know if it makes sense to me.

  • Understand cloud myths and realities.
  • Overcome real and imagined financial obstacles to better systems.
  • Break IT resource barriers.
  • Rely on agile, speedy, flexible solutions that are accessible from anywhere 24/7.
  • Improve visibility across your entire enterprise.
  • Hear real-life success stories from manufacturers who made the move to cloud ERP.

Enterprise systems are complex and required time and effort to understand and implement. This is true for enterprise CRP, ERP, PLM and other systems. At the same time, enterprises and manufacturing companies are asking these how to break the limit of existing software models and barriers. Many companies are looking for alternative models. Helping them to understand cloud technology better, can be beneficial from both sides.

What is my conclusion? Slowly, but surely, enterprise companies are coming to understanding of what role cloud systems can play in the future enterprise software eco-system. To bring unlimited resources, cut implementation cost, improve level of visibility and collaboration – this is only a short list and starting point IT will use on the way out of old enterprise trap. It will take time and resources, but we will come there. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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GrabCAD Workbench: First Experiments

by Oleg on May 3, 2013 · 2 comments

(Updated with some modification. May 3, 2013 @9:42a)

In my yesterday post, I’ve been talking about PDM software, obvious value proposition behind PDM implementation, the fact a substantial amount of manufacturing companies are afraid of implementation PDM software as well as about how cloud software startup are trying to crack the idea of PDM and may be implement it differently. I wanted to have some hands on done and experiment with new apps on the cloud. Hardi Meybaum of GrabCAD was kind to grant me an access to Beta preview of GrabCAD Workbench.

After some confusion around multiple GrabCAD accounts (actually I have two accounts now), I succeeded to login and get to the project page (below). You can see project browser and area dedicated for file viewing. Nothing special, you can see it in many engineering software – CAD, viewers, etc.

I experimented with GrabCAD viewer. The “explode” feature is nice. So far, I get an access to SolidWorks assembly Hardi shared with me and was able to play with navigation between parts and sub assemblies.

Next thing – you can collaborate by sharing files with other users (which I did by sharing with my another gmail account – as a result a new GrabCAD account was created). The new user (account) provided me access to SolidWorks assembly with all parts and not only to a specific part I shared. This is probably a hint to GrabCAD engineers to think about security model, which will be absolutely must if you want to get your software closer to PDM functions of secured collaboration.

Another collaborative feature – pins and comments. I can put a pin in the viewer, put comments, screenshot and share it with other people. Nice collaborative feature. Also, you can put comments alongside with viewer file.

The last step in my experiments was to make a change or to upload pseudo “new version” of the assembly. The original file shared by Hardi was labeled as V1. So, I downloaded the file and change its name to something different in hope to have V2. I succeeded to upload the file, but didn’t get a preview (that was my fault of file renaming – see update below). Instead of preview I’ve got a nice feature allowing me to request a preview feature for this type of file. That was true for dwg and dwf files I tried to upload.

I’ve been working on viewer problem I faced. That was actually my fault by renaming file with wrong extension. I’ve been re-do it again and… voila, GrabCAD viewer captured it with nice message about queueing file for 3D viewing preparation, which ended with absolutely correct preview after 5-8 seconds processing.

Another interesting observation was “switch to old look” button, which gave me an access to traditional GrabCAD profile page with file access, properties and comments. Project was marked as private project – good sign of thinking about security. On the other side, it means GrabCAD workbench is a natural extension to GrabCAD website with the ability to access other projects as well.

What is my conclusion? GrabCAD Workbench is focusing on providing engineers with the tool to share CAD models and collaborate around CAD design. Because of cloud/hosted nature, it is easy to start. I found user experience nice and soft. I’ve been disappointed by absences of basic security implementation between parts and assemblies. I’m looking forward to talk to GrabCAD fellows and learn more. This is just my first impression… More to come.

Best, Oleg

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How Amazon helps cloud PLM to connect to enterprise data?

by Oleg on April 16, 2013 · 0 comments

Face it, even cloud is trending and growing fast, on enterprise premise systems are representing a major part of engineering and manufacturing systems in organizations. It includes ERP, CRM, PDM, PLM systems as well as zillions of Excels and CAD files. I’ve been thinking how to optimize cloud/on-premise data co-existance. My attention was caught by the news about Amazon Storage Gateway. Amazon, in its push to draw more enterprise customers, had to make sure the Amazon Storage Gateway will  run in Microsoft Hyper-v virtualized shops. Which expands the ability of Amazon to synchronize data between cloud and on premise environment.

For those of you not familiar with ASG (Amazon Storage Gateway), navigate to the following link to learn more. The AWS Storage Gateway supports two configurations:

1/ Gateway-Cached Volumes: You can store your primary data in Amazon S3, and retain your frequently accessed data locally. Gateway-Cached volumes provide substantial cost savings on primary storage, minimize the need to scale your storage on-premises, and retain low-latency access to your frequently accessed data.

2/ Gateway-Stored Volumes: In the event you need low-latency access to your entire data set, you can configure your on-premises gateway to store your primary data locally, and asynchronously back up point-in-time snapshots of this data to Amazon S3. Gateway-Stored volumes provide durable and inexpensive off-site backups that you can recover locally or from Amazon EC2 if, for example, you need replacement capacity for disaster recovery.

The two options are representing an interesting option on how enterprise data can co-exist between cloud and on-premise environments. I can see mid-size companies are doing it to optimize their file storages. Larger companies can use it for extended value chain communication.

What is my conclusion? As cloud systems will expand in organizations, the demand for hybrid environment will grow as well. Companies won’t be able to migrate enterprise data assets outside of organizations fast, therefore cloud PLM solutions that will be able to communicate and co-exist in hybrid deployments will grow. The ability to connect existing enterprise data assets and cloud apps is a key to make future cloud expansion. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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CAD, PLM and Future Cloud File Systems

April 7, 2013

Cloud is everywhere these days. It becomes a mainstream in our everyday life and it is coming to businesses and enterprises. Emails, photos, social networks, mobile apps… Cloud services and applications are destroying old paradigms and create new ones. One of the most powerful paradigm we developed for the last 20-30 years is folders and [...]

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PLM Cloud and Open Source Coopetition

March 25, 2013

I want to continue the theme of disruption started in my post last week. I can see two major forces that will disrupt traditional PLM approach nowadays - cloud and open source. Both have some strong position points and some weaknesses. I put some of my thoughts about cloud and open source disruption last year – PLM [...]

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PLM: Business Transformation vs. Business Pain Solving?

March 8, 2013

I’d like to provoke the discussion about PLM implementations today. I assume most of your had a chance to hear the term “business transformation”. That was the way majority of PLM vendors, consulting and service companies approached PLM implementation for the last decade. In a nutshell, it means to transform business processes in a company [...]

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Will PLM take an advantage of DBaaS?

February 25, 2013

Bam! New acronym to learn today. Enterprise software already created tons of them for last 2 decades. However, I will ask to excuse me today and speak about DBaaS. I’m sure you’ve heard about IaaS, SaaS, PaaS… So, what is DBaaS and why I think it we need to discuss it in the context of [...]

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Will enterprise PLM embrace hybrid cloud?

February 15, 2013

Cloud is trending and we can see more examples of how cloud technologies applies in business. PLM vendors are not standing aside from the cloud. You may see different ways PLM companies are developing their cloud PLM strategies. It starts from public cloud offering coming from Autodesk PLM 360 and Arena and ends up with [...]

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What Cloud CAD-PDM Hybrid Means for PLM?

February 10, 2013

To predict future is tough. Not many people are trying to do so. Especially in tech. Companies are juggling with buzzwords, powerpoints and software. At the same time, analysts are trying to swim into the social information stream of provocations, facts and opinions. There are two terms in manufacturing and product development software that created [...]

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PLM, Fun and Innovation

February 4, 2013

Fun and coolness are trending topics these days. Are you doing boring business or having fun? Fun is much better and, speaking seriously, much more productive. That’s why the most efficient ways to educate kids are usually involving some elements of fun and games. Enterprise IT and business software are probably one of the most [...]

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