Solid Edge University Boston and data management strategy

I attended Solid Edge University Boston event earlier this week. Magnificent Boston Marriott Long Wharf hotel with meeting room exposed to Boston Harbor was a great place to get latest updates about Solid Edge and Siemens strategy and what Siemens PLM called “mainstream engineering”.

John Miller, Senior VP of Mainstream engineering kicked the even with few opening slides. The slide that caught my special attention was about related to disappearance of boundaries between traditional systems.

It also connected to my earlier blog this week – Rethinking silos and future focus on integration, collaboration and communication.

The following slide shows Solid Edge Data Management Solutions. It comes in 2.5 tiers. First tier is Solid Edge embedded data management. The solution is using Windows indexing technology and no dedicated relational database. If you think about other systems in the market, Solidworks Workgroup PDM is probably the best match. The interesting part of this slide is actually the number <10 seats. Everything above that level goes to Teamceneter – Rapid Start (RS) and comprehensive PLM solution – Teamcenter.

10 Solid Edge seats is actually not so small company. So, mid-market strategy for Solid Edge is to sell Data Management as much as possible as a friction-less solution. In my view, the open question is solution and function richness. Company with 10 seats of Solid Edge will have lot of engineering and manufacturing data management issues that will be hard to solve without proper PLM solution or its replacement.

Solid Edge is also made Collaboration Portal available for everyone. I was writing about Solid Edge portal earlier this year. Check my earlier publications here. This is not all – many additional services where introduced as a result of Siemens acquisitions – PCB design, Requirement management and many others.

What is my conclusion? Siemens PLM is enhancing their Solid Edge mainstream portfolio by adding new products and services. It is less about formal software boundaries (eg. CAD, PDM, PLM…) and more about connecting these services and products in a meaningful chain of services to focus on user experience. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Disclaimer: I’m co-founder and CEO of OpenBOM developing cloud based bill of materials and inventory management tool for manufacturing companies, hardware startups and supply chain. My opinion can be unintentionally biased.