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

Migrations and PLM World

Migrations and PLM World
olegshilovitsky
olegshilovitsky
31 August, 2010 | 2 min for reading

Microsoft announce SQL Server migration assistant for MySQL. It seems to me, Microsoft is thinking about how to expand their SQL tool’s market share. As a step towards this direction Microsoft is thinking how to provide an easy and smooth way to migrate from one data management system to another. I’m not an expert in database migrations. However, reading about Microsoft migration tools made me think about migration between different PLM and PDM systems in manufacturing world.

Reasons to Migrate

What if.. you want to migrate from one PLM system to another one? Such a situation is not completely rare and companies are moving between tools and product suites due to different things happens in PLM eco-system. Such a situation may happen as a consequence of M&A when companies are merging their IT stacks and PLM systems used by companies before or after acquisition. In addition, customers are deciding to move into a better tool – another "good" reason for migration. At the same time, there are multiple situations when customers need to migrate between PLM tools because vendors going out of business, software companies acquisitions and other reasons. What happens if you are migrating between systems, and you don’t have an appropriated tool? I decided to put few options that can give you some values in product migrations.

Migrate vs. Legacy

However, to migrate between systems is not a simple task. It takes time and requires a complex set of tasks to move data, change working processes and tools. In some situations, companies prefer to keep existing systems and use data inside as a legacy data. This cannot be considered as an excellent choice. However, in a business world, it can be a very reasonable compromise. Some PLM companies are providing federation systems that can help to maintain such situations.

Mashups

Another option to resolve the situation with outdated PLM/PDM system. You can decide to develop mashup applications. This is a very popular practice in the Web world. You can develop mashup applications to consume a data located in outdated or legacy PLM/PDM systems. The consumer (user) layer will be new and fancy. Behind the scene, the legacy system will be kept up and running.

ETL and Other Integration Tools

This is another way to handle a transition of data between your old PDM/PLM and a new one. ETL (extract-transform-load) tools can allow you to retrieve data in a variety of formats from databases and proprietary data sources, transform it and transmit into a target system.

What is my conclusion? I think, PLM migration topic is a very complicated one. Changes in multiple systems, different versions, customization and implementations made this space a bit messy. To put some lights into this space can be benficial for users and vendors.

Best, Oleg

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
26 October, 2024

Last week, I attended Autodesk University 2024 in San Diego. I came to share OpenBOM experience of building digital workflows and integrating Fusion data...

12 July, 2011

This blog is my thoughts following Semantic Technology Conference (SemTech 2011), which took place in San-Francisco last month. I attended...

26 March, 2012

I’ve been reading twitter stream during my short weekend at home. One of the tweets from Randal Newton caught my...

8 January, 2016

I learned a new term today – plug-and-produce. The Design News article – Industry 4.0 Will Mean ‘Plug-and-Produce’ and ‘Digital Twins’ by...

24 July, 2019

Have you heard about XaaS? Not yet.. You better catch up. Even if you’re not familiar with the buzzword, you...

19 June, 2011

I’m spending this weekend in Israel these days. My visit is mostly personal because of Bar Mitzvah of my older son,...

29 March, 2017

I’m heading to Ann Arbor later today to attend CIMdata PLM industry and market forum. The event is a first...

21 January, 2011

During last two days I’ve been busy attending PLM Innovation Congress 2011 in London. This is a short statistic of...

5 April, 2020

Over the course of the last few years, digital transformation was a topic of many discussions. While there is a...

Blogroll

To the top