PLM Wave In a Box?

Google Wave Dead. Long live Wave In a Box (WIAB). Navigate your browser to the following link and you will learn that despite terrible things that happened to Google Wave and the Google’s team in charge of this product, it is still alive and even have some interesting turns ahead.

Google Wave and Apache Incubator

According to publications, a new Apache-incubator proposal would see an open source version of Google Wave technology. Initially, community expects to rely on the support of vendors like Novel, SAP and some others. If you read the following article in PCWorld, you can learn Wave has many supporters, such as US Navy and some others. Take a look on a Wiki page of Apache Incubator Proposal.

“Apache Wave is the project where wave technology is developed at Apache. Wave in a Box (WIAB) is the name of the main product at the moment, which is a server that hosts and federates waves, supports extensive APIs, and provides a rich web client. This project also includes an implementation of the Wave Federation protocol, to enable federated collaboration systems (such as multiple interoperable Wave In a Box instances).”

Catch PLM Waves?

I can see a good chance PLM companies can rely on WIAB to improve their collaborative capabilities. The technology is there and hopefully will be developed by a community. This can be an interesting turn, especially for companies with Open Source mindset. Almost year and half ago, I wrote 6 reasons why Google Wave can change PLM Collaboration. I think, the need is still here. If I’m thinking about companies like Vuuch innovating around new forms of collaboration or Aras Enterprise Open Source model, I can see some benefits for them to leverage Wave technology. It can be an interesting to compare a possibility of Vuuch/Wave vs. PTC/SharePoint from the standpoint of functionality and cost.

What is my conclusion? Open Source projects are trending nowadays. Here and there, I can see examples of Open Source innovation. In my view, Google Wave can be a good platform to boost collaboration. Time will show if companies in PLM domain will recognize the opportunity behind WIAB. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg