Swearch and the Future Applification of PLM

I spent my yesterday on Dassault Systems Customer conference (DSCC 2010). I had a chance to talk with DS executives and learned a lot of things about DS vision. When I’m still digesting this information, I’d like to share some of my thoughts about what I call – Applification of PLM. I used this term once, when I wrote about PTC Creo Launchlast week.

Swearch – Dumb Simple?

Before talking about PLM, I want talk give you an idea of what I called a dumb simple application. Navigate your iPhone on the following link – swearch.me. What you can see is a very elegant and dumb simple user interface that allows you to swipe search option between Google, Twitter, Wikipedia and Flikr. You can tell me – so what? It is simple…

However, I think there is one thing that Swearch is doing right is supporting the simplicity of switching between different search options without going to a complex word of choice.

DS Exalead and Search Based Application

Dassault is talking a lot about the power of Exalead these days. Exalead was a search company DS acquired few months ago. Navigate your browser on this link to read about my view on DS/Exalead acquisition. The technology behind Exalead had some Alta-Vista historical roots and, according to DS, it is powerful and can change a lot, from the standpoint of delivery of so called “Search Based Application” to the enterprise. Where the idea of Enterprise Search is not new and company like Autonomy, Endeca and FAST are in this market for the long time, DS demoed few examples of public websites (i.e. Yakaz) that can be used as a prototype of future search applications.

PLM Apps Store Miracle

One of the things I learned yesterday is that DS folks are working on their App Store. The foundation of this App Store is future DS 3D SWYM collaborative platform. 3DSWYM is a website / application DS is experimenting for a quite long period of time. DS was doing doggy-food process of 3DSWYM internally. You can register and get access to 3DSWYM current online version using this link.

What is my conclusion? I think PLM companies got the point of Apps. The idea is simple. I can see the first signs of movement into this direction. Autodesk and DS made some initial apps available of iOS App Store. PTC is talking about Creo Applications, DS is creating 3DSWYM platform of their future App store. I can see a silence moment from Siemens PLM (maybe I’m just not aware?). However, I don’t think a simple copycat of App Store can be applied. The application is the most important thing in this story.  In my view, App store is not about PLM Apps department store. I’d be thinking about Swearch as an example of how to execute “dumb simple” things that work.

Best, Oleg