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

How Many Enterprise Backbones Organization Needs?

How Many Enterprise Backbones Organization Needs?
olegshilovitsky
olegshilovitsky
13 November, 2009 | 2 min for reading

Picture 51Interesting post drove my attention yesterday. Reading about the role of PLM as enterprise backbone, I wanted to raise a question – how many of such “e-bones” do we need? My experience shows that in every enterprise implementation, discussion magically came to the point of “what will serve as a company/organization/product/enterprise or whatever else backbone. And I have to say, that I always got mixed feeling about that. I will try to put my pros and cons in the way enterprise systems can be organized to serve product lifecycle and enterprise resource planning needs.

1. One vs. Many
Thinking about a dream situation when all systems in enterprise will be magically synchronized around a single system (or bone), I came to the conclusion that we need to keep it as a dream. However, practical approach, in my view shows that enterprise organization will continue to have multiple systems serving their needs.

2. Enterprise Platforms
The interoperability between enterprise systems is killing enterprise organizations. Company’s IT is normally trying to develop their strategies around various platforms, but even so, they can rarely reduce the amount of systems and functional needs drive to additional system deployment.

3. Master Data Record
This is another place where “discussion” between enterprise systems becomes critical. Who is controling data and serve as a master? The data synchronization is an expensive. However, decision about master data control comes again and again with each next step of enterprise system development on the functional level.

4. Role of SaaS
In my view, cloud services (or SaaS, if you will) is playing disruptive, but positive role in discussion related to enterprise architecture and various “enterprise bones”. The disruptive role of SaaS is to show to the organization, the reality of no-single system controlling all data and processes in enterprise.

I’m interested to discuss and listen about your experience? What is your opinion on that?
Best, Oleg

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
22 July, 2014

Data is an essential part of every PLM implementation. It all starts from data – design, engineering, manufacturing, supply chain,...

28 June, 2016

For many years, customization was one of the key elements of PLM system implementation. It was a step when PLM...

10 December, 2023

The credit for the picture above goes to Martin Eigner book about System Lifecycle Management. I’d like to continue the...

30 March, 2012

It is hard to find somebody in PDM/PLM business that is not familiar with the idea of a “single point...

5 May, 2024

I wrote an article about 5 Opportunities and 5 Obstacles in Engineering Digital Transformation. In the article I shared my...

12 April, 2019

I continue sharing my thoughts and comments from SuiteWorld 2019 from last week in Las Vegas. PLM industry is full...

14 May, 2009

I read two posts this week took me that led me back to the cloud theme. One was NIST’s first...

31 March, 2010

I was reading Arcweb SAP Insider 2010 related to the manufacturing, sustainability and product lifecycle management domains. The tag line...

17 August, 2009

I’d like to follow few very interesting discussions that happened last week. Few blog posts you probably want to read...

Blogroll

To the top