#PLM > The art of marketing or how to screw up a good idea

After a post on Oleg's Beyond PLM blog about PTC, I was thrilled by the "Applification" of their product. It's something I believe the PLM market should look at very closely in order to relaunch the innovation process in this industry. So I was thrilled.

So I tryed to get more information and watched that video:

http://creo.ptc.com/2010/10/28/replay-unveiling-of-creo/

I loved the assessment made by Jim Heppelmann. He's right in not believing that the PLM market is mature enough that there is no innovation possible. But his answers do not adress the issues he is trying to fix.

Application could be a good way to generate innovation in the PLM world. Give the backbone, people will develop not customizations but applications isolated from the core. Applications could call each other (have a look on what WP7 does, this is what a PLM should do: consolidate information the way you want).

Creo is what? a single database? That's not new. Role base application? That's not new either. Multi CAD support? Come on! MatrixOne was doing that 10 years ago! The attention on the user interface is good (I personally love their configurator), but it's still a thick client!

How does the architecture will adapt to specific needs? There is not a word on that. But that's the key to the future. The PLM vendors have to understand that they no longer sell only software. They have to enable services. Like the iPhone or Windows Phone 7, like Google or Amazon. By enabling service you will unleach the creativity but your fondation have to be solid (like iOS). The customers will be more happy to find more solutions on the market, they will be pleased to look at best practices from other industries, their implementation will not depend of the R&D of a single vendor, and so forth...

PTC has formulated well the issue the industry is facing, but is yet to overcome the PLM legacy to have a real breakthrough in the technology.

Is cloud computing really green?

Energy saving issue is in all IT managers nowadays. ISO 14001 takes a greater place in all companies and "cloud companies" (almost all of them) advertise that cloud will be a key element of the green strategy of any company.
But will clouds really allow that?

It seems logical when presented this way:
You have 5 servers that you need to cool down used at 80%, if you have 4 servers at 100% you will save the cooling of one server. That seems correct isn't it?

But what is cloud computing but the commoditization of computing resources? What happened when electricity became a commodity? It resulted into an increase of its consumption. Why? because it became cheap and easy. Why would that be any different for clouds?

What's your thoughts on that? What would you answer if one of your customer challenges you on that?

#Cloud > A "green" software certification for software company?

Some company push their software into the clouds without proper thinking of the impact for their customers. Once in the cloud they use an incredible amount of computing resources that are too expensive for their customers. Because it's too expensive that delay the port of classical desktop/server applications on the cloud (want names? look at SAP cloud strategy for instance - not now, but a few years back) and the adoption by the customer.
The customer wants to know how much his infrastructure in the cloud will cost him and that may become a criteria of choice in the future.

What I propose is that each software company advertise (and are certified) on their computing needs. Of course some standard would be required but it could be shown as well as a competitive advantage if it shows the ecological side of it.

An example: I want my company to have office apps in the clouds. I can chose either Office live or Google docs. let's assume they have equivalent features, I want to pick the one who will consume the least.

People pick already their cars based on the same criteria... what do you think? Would that be a decision criteria for you?

#PLM > The mysteries of the ETO industry

Have you ever wondered how an elevator was made? There is no standardization for an elevator. They all have different size, serve building of different heights, have different speed and design...

In a world that ask for more standardization how can a company reduce their engineering cost on some products that are never the same? When maintenance is done, how can you manage the history of changes that happened on a elevator?

This is the problem of all Engineering To Order Industry. You can tell me that Aerospace is an ETO industry, that Ship Building is too, but they manufacture too little to know exactly the same problematic (for the moment).

They are three main processes that I propose to look at in the future posts.

• Management of standard products and their "standard options" (What models of elevator the company offers and what are the "catalog options"?)
• Management of Orders and their specifics requirements (When I have an order, what are my customer "specific requirements" that I will need to take in account?)
• Management of the on site services (How do I manage changes on a existing installation whether I did it or someone else did it)

We will look closely at those three processes through the glass of the largest PLM approach possible. How to manage data, schedules, design definition, configuration definition... we will the see where are the differences with other industries where PLM is well implemented (High Tech, Aerospace,...) and what are the challenges (technical but not only) that the implementation of a PLM implies for such industries.

So talk to you soon.

#Cloud Just read on a French website

"Beaucoup essaient de conserver leurs pratiques commerciales : licences chères, qui verrouillent les clients. Ou alors, ils proposent des offres hybrides de cloud privé. Mais ce n’est pas du cloud, ça donne juste l’illusion d’un plus grand contrôle, mais c’est le contraire qui se passe"

Werner Vogels, Amazon CTO

(http://www.ecrans.fr/Amazon-et-le-business-dans-les,10886.html)

Translation...

"Many try to keep their commercial approach: expensive licences, which lock their customer. Or they are offering hybrid private cloud. But it's not cloud, it just give an illusion of a greater control, but that's the opposite that happens"

#PLM > Social Engineering, ok but for what?

I was reviewing Oleg's presentation at the COFES 2010 and he finishes his post by this comment:

Not much was done beyond that. Consumer software, the Internet and specially Web 2.0 applications will provide a significant impact on the future of technologies and products in Engineering and Manufacturing Software

That inspires me two thoughts:

1- I hardly see any reason to build "social architecture" and what it brings to the classical "collaboration interface". Because companies do not need it.

The social network has a reality in everybody's everyday life but that culture is not pervasive now to the professional world (there are exceptions, that's true). PLM vendors glorify themselves to do social engineering, but that has no tangible reality in the enterprise.

The reason for that is the speed at the 2.0 changes our usages of the information. In the industry does not keep the pace. Before people actually take time to socialize about what they do, they will have to do their job first. The organization do not allow the time for social experience because the value of it is not quantifiable on the short term (and maybe because they do it wrong...)

2- PLM vendors promote PLM 2.0, Social PLM, but that is nothing but words. Their tools do not allow to do it! And they will never be able to do it!

Why? Because whatever they say PLM vendors are still seeing their products as "web 1.0" products, and the way they implement it is still "web 1.0" as well. It is closed, silo'ed and rigid.

If the PLM industry wants to go 2.0, use standards, allow third party applications (and remove pressure from your R&D to deliver new functionalities), go in the cloud (and take advantage to reshape your application's infrastructure!), adopt a model where deployment of new versions are banished, but where new functionalities are deployed seamlessly. Then you will have the foundation for social interaction coming slowly without even you noticing it.

Do not give, but teach to build, your accomplishment will be greater

#Cloud > Some idea for the clouds related to PLM

Taking the idea to focus on the computing rather than the clouds, here are some similar ideas...

1. FMP Analysis (or any simulation): Use the power of a server to do the calculations from a weak computer. You could have a session dedicated to a company, with simulation workflow associated.
2. CAD Data Cleansing: More and more automatic tools can cleans CAD data, what about a service that would do it for you online?
3. CAD Data Translation: Want to translate from a format to another? Ease the migration from system to another? Migration is a pain in term of resources. That could be done online with, of course appropriate validation workflows
4. 3D reviews. 3D reviews are fun and marketable. But they consume a significant amount of computing resources...

No go and create your company! :)

#Cloud > What is the next generation of CAD?

Commodotisation

Let's talk first of the commoditisation process. The commodotisation is the process from which an innovation (Computer Aided Design), becomes a Bespoke product to a Product (CATIA, NX, Pro/E,...). It predicts as well that the product will be considered a commodity. Like electricity.

Electricity, I like this analogy... who still buys its own engine to produce their own electricity? When you need electricity, what do you do? Do you go to the grocery store and buy some? Or do you plug your computer on the network?

I firmly believe that this is what is going to happen with CAD and eventually 3D design. It is just a matter of time. Some PLM companies have started their "Cloud Computing Strategy"... Dassault Systemes has launched 3Dvia shape. You can design 3D models and save it directly on the website servers. Is that cloud computing? Only partially because most of the computing is done on your own computer. It' s not even SaaS, because the only service proposed is the storage, not the all software (I hope one day I'll be able to explain why SaaS and cloud computing are not the same thing). So what would be the next steps?

The Technology

Let's take the view of the customer. As an big industrial, I have thousands of machines that I have used for CAD along the years... and I do not know how to leverage all that "dead" material. CAD becomes more and more complex and require more and more resources, therefore more powerful desktops for designers. As an IT manager, I am tired of plan for upgrade of my material and of software on each computer.

What would be life if instead of using computing resources from one computer, I would leverage computing resources of my data center?

Today, the technology is here, and surprisingly simple.

In order to reduce my computing resource to a minimal, I could just be transfered the video flux from a server. You'd connect to the server via a seamless virtual instance that runs your CAD application. The server takes care of all the rest, the calculation, graphic acceleration,...

And for company that do not have data centers? Then they can go a a public one, provided that the data is secured and persistent.

For companies it would be a huge benefit to share their licences, optimize the existing material (if the only thing that is done by your computer is to read a video flux and interpret mouse click, a simple browser can do the job! Unix, Windows, HP... any computer with an Ethernet plug could do it).

Migrations and Upgrades will be simplified, or even become seamless on the public cloud controlled by the PLM vendor. You just have to do it in the data center and replicate the virtual machines...

The Business Model

But then, comes the money. How can one monetize this approach.

Think Amazon. Amazon sells computing resources. Dassault, Siemens, PTC could do the same... (or they could buy computing resources from Amazon and resell them). How does amazon bill their customers? by the resources used for computing, by the resources used for storage (and of course the CAD added value).

I honestly do not know if there is more or less money to make for the vendors (probably less), but the impact on the market will be huge for the first one who will make the jump. And if it is not a PLM vendor, it could possibly be one of their partners. What would prevent them to buy computing resources to Amazon, buy concurrent licences to PTC and leveraging them 24/7 with such an approach. Nothing.

The video game industry already started. Check OnLive.com. And OnLive is not a video game software company. This is not any different from what I am describing. And they have similar computer resource needs as CAD.

As I said, it is just a matter of time, and whoever makes the jump the first, the others better be ready because it will be a significant earthquake in the PLM industry.

#Cloud > What misses to Google Apps...

I was browsing through google apps market place and I was amazed by the ideas people were developing on the Google SDK platform. I really think that this swarm of ideas, concepts is beneficial to everybody. But when you address a company, then it becomes messy.

Why?

• Company are looking for reducing their TCO. A large part of the TCO of Information System is due to the integrations between legacy systems.
• Integrations are needed because applications do not speak the same language, do not manipulate the same concepts (Homework: ask an ERP consultant what a BOM is, then ask a PLM consultant, then make them agree on a common definition)
• In Google Apps Marketplace, there are several applications like process factory or myerp.com or Zoho CRM but they cannot talk to each other.
• They have their own notion of process, but in a company, all processes are related to each other (otherwise PLM and ERP footprint would not be so big!)

What is going to happen is that company will start to do the same mistakes. They might find myERP and ZohoCRM very interesting and develop web services to make them communicate... Integration.

I think there are two ways to prevent that to happened.

• Private process management API connected to Google API developed as by a third party. It must become the standard for workflow definition. It must be flexible, scalable and unified. The problem is how to make it a standard...
• This brings me to the second idea. Google has the power to prepare the standard of data and information exchange along the workflows.

The interest for Google would be double

• Increase significantly the number of compatible applications and insuring the transparency that is so hard to get from new cloud companies (at least you'll be certain that the API will be supported for a long time, if it's an financially unstable company, what happens when it bankrupts?). For this reason it has to be open sourced.
• Increase Google credibility in business software and allow the clouds to enter the industrial companies (because despite we all see on internet, the adoption of clouds is still low in the industry)

But maybe such a solution exist already

#PLM > Reboot

It has been a while since I have written there... I started this blog in a period where I had lot's of free time but now things have changed a lot.

I have been involved in the most passionating project I have took part in years. It's challenging everything I knew about product development, the tools I implement, the best practices I have tried to push my customers for years.

There is so much I have learned in the last 6 months, that I have to capitalize somehow. Rebooting that blog sounded the best idea.

My current customers has a Engineering To Order (ETO) business model with very complex products and large products. What does ETO mean?

It means that the product is ordered before it is engineered. A bit like a house you're buying. You know you will have a bathroom, a kitchen, a lobby, a heating system, maybe a garage for one car or two. The architect design its shape, and then you buy it. At this stage nobody knows which part will be used for heating, but you know you will have one.

I would like first to refer to the excellent article from Jos about BOM in ETO and list the topic I would like to discuss in the next posts.

• System Engineering design
• Transition from EBOM to MBOM in complex products
• Work schedule and resource allocation
• Role of configuration
• Design constrains for ETO Businesses
• ...

This will not come in order, but as I mature my thoughts about how to organize that.