PLM and BIM Interplay in Enterprise Data

February 17, 2010
BIM / Daily PLM Think Tank / Future Trends / Technology
olegshilovitsky
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Interesting news drove my attention yesterday. Bentley System made an acquisition of the company called Enterprise Informatics. When I was reading press release, my guess was that Bentley decided to expand their capabilities in data management. Especially, this expansion can be very interesting when working in construction and power process industry for asset management. So, that was the exact target for acquisition.

Bentley Systems, Incorporated, the leading company dedicated to providing comprehensive software solutions for the infrastructure that sustains our world, today announced that it has acquired Enterprise Informatics, Incorporated (www.enterpriseinformatics.com) and Exor Corporation (www.exorcorp.com). The Enterprise Informatics eB Insight software provides configuration and change management capabilities for mission-critical infrastructure asset operations for the energy, nuclear, rail, and government sectors.

I think, this is an interesting move.We are starting to see potential convergence of two initially separate segments – PLM and BIM. Each of them has different origins. PLM started in the large aerospace and defense companies. BIM came from need to manage complex construction processes. However, my hunch was that both need to use very similar underlined data management technologies. First, I wrote about that last year in my post – PLM and BIM: Common Roots or Common Future.

Looking on eB product from Enterprise Informatics, I figured out a significant similarity with core concepts between what was called Information Models for Enterprise and Product Lifecycle Business Processes. The marketing slogans are different. However, data management, change management, process orchestration are very similar. I put few slides from eB presentation (you can watch 5-minutes video on this link).

So, what is my conclusion? This is a very interesting potential interplay between construction industry and traditional PLM implementations. Technologies used on both sides are very similar. My assumption back that time was that PLM and BIM will come to the certain point of commonality in their ability to manage complex data models, changes and processes. And this is what happens now. I’d expect potential movement from both PLM and BIM towards interesting projects in industries where they have no sole proprietary ownership as leading solution providers.

Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg