PLM: from EGOsystem to ECOsystem

I just came back AU2012 in Las Vegas. Among many meetings, I had during AU, I attended Innovation Forum – The Reality of the cloud. The reality of events these days that you can attend actively by participating in social networking via Twitter. One of the tweets during the cloud presentation was Chad Jackson’s: – Think about data as an eco-system.

“Think about data as an ecosystem” from the #Cloud #Innovation forum at #AU2012 twitter.com/ChadKJackson/s…

— Chad Jackson (@ChadKJackson) November 29, 2012

It made me think about PLM as data eco-system. Watch Gerd Leonhard presentation- The future of the internet (SoLoMo) futuristic presentation with strange title – Big Data, Big Mobile, Big Social. I found it is interesting. Navigate here to take a look.

Few slides caught my special attention in the context of PLM and Data Ecosystem discussion. One of them is related to Paul Baran research back in 1960 (way before the internet and even early PLM systems). He was pioneering some of early work related to computer networks. Navigate to the following link to read more. Here is an interesting passage:

The pioneering research of Paul Baran in the 1960s, who envisioned a communications network that would survive a major enemy attacked. The sketch shows three different network topologies described in his RAND Memorandum. The distributed network structure offered the best survivability.

Another slide that sticks in my memory was the comparison of Egosystem and Ecosystem. That slide made me laugh. Especially when I put it next to one of my previous post about PLM Egoism. Think about PLM system transformation. A year ago, during AU2011, I was talking about transformation from Database to Networks. This slide is representing the way how ego-centric PLMs need to be transformed into reliable and modern PLM eco systems.

What is my conclusion? Today’s PLM EGOsystems are not sustainable. The centralized approach made PLM implementation weak and not able to survive long term lifecycle, evolution and business changes. The result is heavy PLM systems that require propriety maintenance. Change management of these systems is either expensive or impossible. It is a time to think about data networks and networked system models. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

pictures courtesy of gleonhard presentation