A blog by Oleg Shilovitsky
Information & Comments about Engineering and Manufacturing Software

Why PLM Need to Learn about SharePoint 2010 Composites?

Why PLM Need to Learn about SharePoint 2010 Composites?
olegshilovitsky
olegshilovitsky
21 October, 2009 | 3 min for reading

Picture 5Some technology and infrastructure thinking today coming out of SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas, NV. Without going to more systematic analyzes what Microsoft presented in future coming SharePoint 2010 version (beta is planned in November and release is next year), I’d like to go straight ahead and talk about very interesting topic, in my view, called SharePoint Composites.

Picture 6
As you can see on the picture above SharePoint composites are fundamental part of overall SharePoint marketing architecture and pretty much focuses on rapid creation of no-code collaborative solution. Looking on that together with the ability to unlock enterprise data, I saidthis is something that sounds very PLMish? I think every PLM solution has a strategic need to collaborate and communicate with various pieces of enterprise data and systems. Bill of Materials in ERP, Customer information in CRM and endless list of various databases and homegrown solutionsthis is the only initial list of enterprise data that we face in every PLM implementation.

So, let’s dig inside and see what Microsoft is planning to offer as part of Composites. The major piece of SharePoint composites is evolution of SharePoint BDC (Business Data Catalog). Back in SharePoint 2007, BDC was created to be able to read data from multiple external sources (Microsoft presents it as LOBLine of Business Systems) and connects these multiple data sources into SharePoint Lists, Workspaces etc. BDC evolution path in SharePoint 2010 is what calledBCS (Business Connectivity Services). You can take a look on this picture bellow. What is important is that BCS is supporting full CRUD (for nonprogramming people
Create Read Update Delete) framework. So, the application will be able to make full manipulation of data in external systems. This is, of course, depends on technology systems will be connected (SQL or proprietary APIs / Web Services).

Picture 7
So, what is my short conclusion today from initial presentation and review of Microsoft composites and BCS? I think, this framework is an interesting approach SharePoint will use to acquire enterprise data and interplay with enterprise applications. There are two possible scenarios I can figure out for PLM applications with regards to SharePoint Composites:

1. Internal. This option assumes PLM application will be re-using elements of SharePoint composites to get broader system and enterprise data connectivity. This is something that I see logical and should be compliant, in my view, with how Microsoft Composites and BCS will be introduced for companies.

2. External. For this option SharePoint Composite and BCS specifically will assume PLM apps is one of the LOB. So, collaborative scenarios can be built on top of PLM data and interplay with enterprise data and collaborative processes that will come from other systems.

I’m sure, there are much more options and these are only major directions. Good place to see how BCS and Composites will be developed and implemented is to discover and learn everything happens between SharePoint and SAP applications. I’m sure we’ll see interesting scenarios and new types of applications coming out and based on new SharePoint technologies. However, it doesn’t mean it will introduce new conflicts between Microsoft technological frameworks and Enterprise Application vendors frameworks.

Stay tuned on next discussions about SharePoint and related technologies later this week.

Best, Oleg

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
6 May, 2013

Microsoft Excel. What is lovely topic to finish the weekend? It was a long time, since I didn’t blog about...

23 January, 2023

A digital thread is a concept in manufacturing and engineering that refers to the seamless flow of data throughout the...

28 January, 2019

Welcome to another weekly update about my video blog – Musings about Bill of Materials.. I spent last discussing various...

22 August, 2012

Migration. This is a word any IT and PDM/PLM manager is afraid to hear. In my view, it is one...

6 May, 2016

If you’ve been involved in the start-up development at least once during the last decade, you probably heard about YC...

30 November, 2010

Vendor Lock-In is painful. I think, customers in the space of CAD/PLM even more sensitive to this issue. Proprietary CAD...

2 November, 2011

I want to talk about Bill of Material and integration today. The reason why I’m coming to this topic is...

24 June, 2021

CAD and PLM companies are on the run towards the cloud. Each company has its own journey, stories, strategies, and...

5 December, 2011

Crowd-sourcing is a popular trend these days. For those of you out of sync, in a nutshell, crowd-sourcing is a...

Blogroll

To the top