Despite the fact “PLM 2.0” was first articulated by Dassault back in 2006, I think, the term itself has some rights for expanded live beyond DS V6 platform. In my blog last week I discussed some aspects of comparison between PLM 2.0 and Web 2.0. One of the most important conclusions, also mentioned in the comments, were about “openness”. Actually, the conversation about openness is always dangerous in CAD/PLM domain. The vendors’ walled gardens provide significant barriers to develop solutions for heterogeneous enterprise environment.
During the weekend, I had a chance to read Design News article – SpaceClaim Stakes Manufacturing Claim. Have a read and make your opinion. SpaceClaim is clearly one of the youngest representatives of CAD vendors. However, what specially caught my attention was a comment made by Blake Courter about JT Open:
Another core area Courter emphasized in this new release was interoperability — a critical requirement, he said, for making in roads in the manufacturing production space, particularly in the automotive sector. In this vein, SpaceClaim built on its backing of Siemens PLM Software’s JT Open technology with the new release’s support for semantic Product Manufacturing Information (PMI). This means SpaceClaim users can leverage JT data in a lightweight format, or they can work with richer, more associative information, including meta data and PMI.
Courter applauded Siemens PLM Software’s efforts around JT Open, particularly as far as the format has made inroads into the automotive sector. “Kudos to Siemens for creating a level playing field and making a neutral format for delivering the goods,” he said. “The JT Open guys have done the right thing going after ISO certification and paralleling other standards where they can.” SpaceClaim is putting its money where its mouth is, Courter said, by becoming a JTOpen and ProSTEP iViP member.
Blake’s comments made me think about future potential paths of JT Open as a potential enabling technology for PLM 2.0. As you remember from the history of Web, some key technological elements made a significant contribution to the development of Web 2.0. The famous LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) was one of the key elements. Bundle together with AJAX and development of the blogs and wiki platform it enabled live people involvement into the broader development of web content.
One of the biggest problems of PLM these days is the ability of PLM applications to proliferate inside of organizations upstream and downstream. PLM vendors developed multiple exchange formats, and as it seems to me, stack in their transition to the agreement. What can move things forward is some business innovation in this space? Open Source is one of them. What if the technological leader such as Siemens PLM will release JT Open formats and tools under one of the possible open source licenses? Does it sound crazy? I’m not sure. It will allow to remove all barriers to proliferate data and processes downstream in organizations and boost usage of JT Open by other CAD and PLM players.
What is my conclusion? For a long period of time, many ideas were considered as crazy of impossible for implementation. However, for the last decade, we’ve seen already some very interesting industry and technological moves. Will JT Open become another one? Time will show. What is your take? Speak your mind.
Best, Oleg
