Novedge Pulse™ of Oleg Shilovitsky

Delete is a special function. In the system dealing with the live data, the meaning of delete is interesting. My first lesson about <delete> function in PDM was 25 years ago. In one of very first data management systems I implemented we used a special flag to mark deleted parts. Later on, I was discussing [… [more...]

Enterprise software implementations are usually not a simple task. Compared to selection of your next mobile device and RSS reader, it is an organizational effort. Enterprise software gets really complicated when it comes to the point implementation requires involvement of people. Product lifecycle management (PLM) is one of these systems. Implementation of PLM is deeply [more...]

Technological predictions are tough and nobody wants to make them. Back in 2010, I came with the following post - Who Can Generate 3D/PLM Content For Apple iPad? Back that time, the value of iPad was questioned by many people. Speaking about manufacturing companies, people were very skeptical by the ability of iPad to bring meaningful functionality [more...]

Face it, even cloud is trending and growing fast, on enterprise premise systems are representing a major part of engineering and manufacturing systems in organizations. It includes ERP, CRM, PDM, PLM systems as well as zillions of Excels and CAD files. I’ve been thinking how to optimize cloud/on-premise data co-existance. My attention was caught by [more...]

Process management is an important elements of PLM implementations. PLM systems usually offer a variety of solutions for process management – from simple message routing to complex workflow management systems. However, regardless of process and workflow complexity, all customers are interested how to integrate processes and workflows with their email system. Email is fascinating topic, [… [more...]

PLM and ERP integration is not a new topic. Step in the discussion about any PLM implementation and you will come to the topic of PLM+ERP integration in less than 5 minutes. Integration between two enterprise software suites is usually a complicated tasks which involves lots of planning, adjustments and hard-wiring from both sides. Cloud [… [more...]

Enterprise software is a fascinating place these days. It comes in a different angles and perspective. The disruption of consumer technologies, cloud, BYOD and many other factors. We can see the influence coming from both technological and business factors. Few months ago, I posted – PLM, Viral Sales and Enterprise Old Schoolers. While enterprise sales [… [more...]

The discussion around Google Glass is heating up. Google was very transparent by rolling out Google Glasses and providing lots of information about what Google Glass experience will look like. You cannot get Google Glasses now- applications are closed now. However, you can leave your email and Google will contact you. The reviews are going [… [more...]

Manufacturing businesses are getting more dynamic these days. It is all about how to change and change fast. The days where manufacturing companies allowed months and even years to respond to business changes are gone. Competition is getting more aggressive. Cost pressure is getting tight. Companies need to have a way to analyze what they [… [more...]

Mobile is hyping, trending, skyrocketing… You name it. Everything goes mobile these days. Many developers of enterprise apps are asking these days – what does it mean for me? PLM developers are one of them. How mobile apps are important for users of CAD, PDM, PLM and other engineering applications? In the past, I posted [more...]

Microsoft Excel. What is lovely topic to finish the weekend? It was a long time, since I didn’t blog about Excel and its potential influence to product development and manufacturing. At the time my friendly blogging buddies are warning about increasing danger coming from different cloud initiatives here and there, the real danger is coming [more...]

In my yesterday post, I’ve been talking about PDM software, obvious value proposition behind PDM implementation, the fact a substantial amount of manufacturing companies are afraid of implementation PDM software as well as about how cloud software startup are trying to crack the idea of PDM and may be implement it differently. I wanted to [more...]

Engineers hate PDM. It is an axiom known to all people touching engineering and manufacturing software. Nobody gets up in the morning and looking for PDM software. Most of product development people are considering PDM as an evil that they need pay taxes to get right revision and don’t overwrite changes made by his colleagues [more...]

Recent tragic event in Boston, raised again the question about critical role of real time information integration. You may think, it is not something that related to engineering and manufacturing software. Until recent time, I’ve seen it exactly in the same way. However, with the latest trends in the developing of data and information systems [more...]

APIs. Just to eliminate any possible confusion, API stands for Application Programming Interface. Wikipedia provides very straightforward definition of API here. For many years, API was an important element of PDM, PLM and other enterprise software business. APIs enabled the possibility of any system to be expanded, customized and tailored to any customer needs. For [more...]

Are you familiar with term “silo”. When it comes to enterprises and large organizations, we often can hear about different silos of information. Here is the definition of information silo as it appears in Wikipedia. An information silo is a management system incapable of reciprocal operation with other, related information systems. For example, a bank’s [more...]

Do you think Big Data and noSQL are the last and coolest trend in data world? No way. Software architects and geeks are sleepless to find new and unknown trends and opportunities. Last week I attended COFES 2013 in sunny Arizona. The following buzzword caught my attention during one of the presentations. Here is a [more...]

I want to talk about PDM today. Product Data Management is not a new topic. Companies are using PDM many years. However, here is a deal – after many years of PDM deployment, customers are still trying to avoid to implement PDM. You may think it is mostly small and medium companies, but it is [more...]

The last decade was all about 2.0. To me, 2.0 trend was about how to re-think existing norms and behaviors, re-invent something well-known and to challenge existing axioms. Internet changed a lot in our life for the last decade. One of the places that remains very conservative is enterprise sales. If you are social web [more...]

I’ve been attended COFES 2013 earlier last week. For those of you not familiar with the even, navigate your browser to the following link. COFES stands for The Congress on the Future of Engineering Software.  Annual COFES is taking place in the same location every year in April. You can see a complete agenda of COFES [more...]

The world around us is changing much faster these days. It happens in many places. Business environment are much more dynamic. New technologies are disrupting existing industries and eco-systems. PLM systems were developed to help companies to manage and follow product development processes in the companies and extended eco-system. As businesses are going through the [more...]

Cloud is everywhere these days. It becomes a mainstream in our everyday life and it is coming to businesses and enterprises. Emails, photos, social networks, mobile apps… Cloud services and applications are destroying old paradigms and create new ones. One of the most powerful paradigm we developed for the last 20-30 years is folders and [more...]

Working with engineers is like herding cats. Try to put few engineers in a room and get an agreement. If you have 4 engineers in a room, you probably will have about 5-6 opinions about what is the right way. No surprise. That’s what happens when engineers are trying to agree about what is the [more...]

Native Apps vs. HTML5 enabled web user experience? This is a dilemma for many developers these days. People are spending more time using native apps comparing to mobile web optimized sites. However, enterprise software companies have an additional challenges to transform their product suites into set of native mobile apps. Multipleplatform development tax and application [more...]

PLM implementations are complex. How many times have you heard about that? I think a lot. Last 15-20 years of PDM/PLM business demonstrated that PLM and ease of implementations are not coming together. If, in addition to that, you ask for low cost, people might be thinking you are joking. I’ve been sharing my thoughts [more...]

Mobile is coming to enterprise. Blackberry was a first device who cracked mobile enterprise. Enterprise mobile email delivered by Blackberry was king of the road many years. Then came iPhone, iPad and many other devices. The development for different mobile platforms is skyrocketing. There are many questions here. Every PLM vendors did a first step [more...]

For many years the business model of CAD, PDM and later PLM vendors was structured as high upfront license combined with continues maintenance payments. The same is true for many other enterprise software vendors. PLM vendors built their businesses around expensive licenses sell covering significant sales cycle cost and even pilot implementations. The majority of [more...]

Are you reading whitepapers these days? Hmm… Not much you can say, probably. I’m reading blogs, twitter streams and use Flipboard app. I think, whitepapers are getting into a crisis similar to publishing industry. It is not as popular as IBM Redbooks 10 years ago. PLM whitepapers are interesting in particular. Very often, whitepapers are [more...]

The conversation about social software is getting more mature these days. Do you remember early period of "social software" talks. Navigate to the following link – We are not going to design an airplane on the Facebook! The discussion on Jim Brown’s blog is 3 years old. Jim brings his pros and cons of having [more...]

I want to continue the theme of disruption started in my post last week. I can see two major forces that will disrupt traditional PLM approach nowadays – cloud and open source. Both have some strong position points and some weaknesses. I put some of my thoughts about cloud and open source disruption last year [more...]

I learned a new buzzword yesterday. Have you heard about BaaS? Navigate to the following TechCrunch article – Kinvey Launches Enterprise Back-End Service For Building Mobile Apps That Move Data From Salesforce, Oracle And Other Sources. Kinvey is a startup that put a mission to scrap data from enterprise backend systems and make it available [more...]

Disruptive innovation, technologies, products, services… I think we like the word "disruption" these days. This is such a tasteful and colored word. It can provide a new look to anything that goes afterwards. So, let me see if I can put a disruptive color on PLM. I’ve been reading Jos Voskuil blog – PLM at [more...]

Social hype is getting down. I can say it about PLM industry too. We can see less “social startups” and less marketing hype about how next big social revolution will come and solve all existing problems in PLM technologies and systems. If you want to catch up with my previous thoughts about social PLM, I [more...]

Disruptive technologies and solutions. This is beloved topic by bloggers, analysts and vendors. We like to talk about how disruption will happen. For very long period of time, database technology was a stable element in the overall PDM/PLM technological architecture. The decision about usage of relational database was only about how to choose between Microsoft [more...]