PLM, Kenesto and Process Experience

Kenesto just did the first appearance at SolidWorks World 2012 in San Diego. It was a good opportunity, to see Kenesto product in public. So, I did. I’ve been posting about Kenesto before. Navigate to the following link to read my previous post – PLM and Process Tools: Opportunity or Complication? So, I sat down with Kenesto team for the demonstration (disclosure – I’m serving as an adviser to Kenesto).

The big idea – flexible processes

The  idea of Kensto is to move away from rigidity of process management and workflows – it called routes. You can push process flow to any person you want. It is fundamentally different from many BPM and PLM process tools that require you to define process flowchart before actually you are going to use it. From that standpoint, Kenesto just helping you “to document processes”. This is about flexibility and ease of use. Here is the process that was built during the presentation:

Kenesto and Cloud

Cloud is another differentiation of Kensto. You don’t need to have to installed and configure the system. The only thing you need is to access it via browser. Kenesto runs on AWS. You can see the following picture of Kenesto architecture (taken from Kenesto whitepaper)

What is interesting to notice is the diagram on the bottom – three information objects (processes, documents, structures). I can see them as potential data models for PDM or PLM system. However, nothing was mentioned about these plans.

Kenesto Challenges

The idea of Kenesto is simple and I like it. I can see some challenges related to the way Kenesto communicates with ‘on-premises’ solutions. What I’ve seen during the demo, was only related to uploading of files. However, I’d be interested to see how customers will use Kenesto in a real life. Currently, in a beta version, Kenesto definitely is going to learn more about it.

Kenesto People

To make the story social, here are few pictures of people behind the Kenesto team. Sorry for not capturing all of you, guys – will do it next time.

What is my conclusion? All components of Kenesto are not unique. But here is the deal. Similar to iPod assembled by Apple from components available to everybody, Kenesto uniqueness is in experience it provides to a user. This is in my view, a secret sauce behind what company is doing. Experience is important. Bernard Charles, CEO of Dassault Systems was talking about “3D experience” during SWW 2012. Will Kenesto invent new “process experience”? Time will show. It has a potential. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Disclosure: I’m serving as an external adviser to Kenesto.