PLM and 25 years of Internet

It has been 25 years of Internet anniversary yesterday. Lots of article covering this event were flown around earlier this week. The Independent article – 25 years of the World Wide Web: Tim Berners-Lee explains how it all began covers the story together with world wide web inventor Tim Berners-Lee. Even we all know about how Internet influence data sharing and communication, I found the following passage absolutely important:

The decades since have seen dotcom fortunes made and lost, and the rise of social media sites. There are now more than 600 million websites worldwide, and the web has changed things forever for people who are able to access information and share things in a way not possible to a previous generation. It has provided a new dimension through which to communicate. The scale is vast, with billions online, and hundreds of millions of messages and 20 million pictures exchanged every single minute – not to mention billions spent.

Watch the following video with Sir. Berners-Lee to get more inspiration:

Another interesting piece of information you might explore is actually a proposal article from Cern institute where the Tim Berners-Lee created the idea of internet. Navigate here to explore that. The original proposal link is here. I’m sure you had a chance to see the following diagram before. But if not, take another look.

It made me think again about the power of internet and future development of enterprise collaboration systems. The fundamental concept of interlinked distributed information system is so powerful. After 25 years, we have an absolute confirmation of how powerful this idea. The similarity with business organizations today amazed when I had a second look on the picture.

Most of today’s PDM and PLM systems were created 10-15 years ago. Back that time, the ideas of enterprise system  organization were  first about how to centralize and control data. Second was how to share information and collaborate. However,  the second one was screwed many times. Engineering and manufacturing companies are getting more and more global these days. These days, we need to find new concepts how to create and maintain a scalable global collaboration system to support global manufacturing.

What is my conclusion? Internet made a huge dent in the way to share information and collaborate globally. We see what happened for the last 25 years. We need to protect internet ideas and develop future enterprise systems with vision of openness and collaboration. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg