Since football season is right around the corner,
I thought I’d re-post this entry from 2010 for today’s TBT post. 

The University of Texas/Oklahoma game is this weekend and while I am not brimming with confidence after the thrashing UT received from UCLA, I am hopeful. During my time at UT we won four straight games which I enjoyed immensely but we did not have the success that the current team enjoys. While at UT we held Oklahoma in very low regard. One of my favorite jokes from that time was, “What do a tornado and an Oklahoma divorce have in common?” In either situation, someone is very likely to lose a trailer. There were many other mean things said and done and I am sure Oklahoma graduates feel similarly about UT. The point of this reminiscing is that over time my feelings have softened toward the state of Oklahoma and its residents. I actually have grudging admiration for the accomplishments of their football team and most of the people I have met from the state are fairly nice. In fact, I have in-laws that currently reside in Oklahoma. I have learned to put aside my resentments and bias to cooperate with others despite their educational background or choice of residence. If only some companies could follow my noble lead and work cooperatively with their peers. This blog will discuss the merits of open versus closed systems and how the market will ultimately dictate which technology ends up on top regardless of attempts to restrict access or utilize legal action to try and preserve customers.

The merits of technology should dictate whether a product is purchased. If the product meets the need of the client and performs best it will be selected. Period. Attempting to lock customers into your technology by restricting access to your system or pursuing legal action is only delaying the inevitable. If your solution is the best and meets your client's needs, you shouldn't need to resort to these types of tactics. Based on familiarity alone, any CAD vendor should be able to offer more robust solutions for managing their CAD data and most should be able to parlay this into a business advantage when attempting to sell PLM to their customer base. Where this starts to breakdown is when the PLM solutions offered by the CAD vendors don't meet the needs of the rest of the enterprise. The proper response to this situation is to improve the capabilities of the PLM solution in case the client wants to expand the use of the solution throughout the enterprise. The wrong course of action would be to dissuade any other PLM solution from being able to manage the CAD data either through technical or legal restrictions. This approach saddles a company with inferior technology, and if I were a customer of a company that used tactics like this, I would be seriously evaluating my options. The beauty of unfettered capitalism is that the best product offered and the lowest price wins the day and this drives innovation and competition. When companies resort to lawsuits and technical restrictions, everyone suffers, especially their customers. I understand in the world we live in companies will resort to pretty much whatever they can to preserve market share, but as consumers, we should not reward these tactics. We should demand a level playing field and reward companies that pursue open approaches with their technology that allows the best solutions to persevere.

This discussion reminds me of a blog article I wrote titled "Free PLM Software Tomorrow". The idea behind the article was that PLM thrives when it is widely adopted but that most of the cost models today discourage wide adoption. The named user model propagated by Oracle and SAP and several other major vendors requires companies to purchase access for every person at a significant premium. I was having discussions with one of our clients recently and they were going to have to change their quality process — which currently allows all employees to log quality issues — because they did not have enough PLM and quality licenses to support the approach. Unfortunately, the value they would derive from having all employees having full access to the PLM system was not equal to the cost. PLM vendors respond to these types of situations by trying to drive more value thru wider adoption of PLM which is a legitimate way to address this issue. Recently, I have seen another approach which is to leverage third party solutions to expand access to PLM information. A press release last week by Razorleaf, Actify and Aras tout a Microsoft funded project that allows SharePoint users to access and view content for the Aras PLM solution. This is a pretty interesting approach. The logic behind this approach is that SharePoint can aggregate content from many sources so adding PLM to the stream just enhances the value of the PLM solution. I am pretty sure Aras has a per user charge for their client so this potentially could cost them software revenue but my guess is they are willing to sacrifice the potential revenue by adding overall value to their solution through increased access. There is a good chance they really aren't losing any potential revenue since most companies would balk at buying clients for those users anyway. I think other larger PLM vendors ought to take a hard look at this approach and allow connectors that would pull content from the base PLM solution into platforms like SharePoint or consider offering read only and viewing platforms that can be more widely distributed. The wrong approach would be to try and restrict this type of solution to try and drive more revenue through seat purchases. Again, the value is if their companies will buy the technology otherwise you are artificially inflating the cost of ownership.

Ultimately, the market will sort out these types of issues and the best solutions will prevail. Most product development organizations are extremely complex entities with multiple CAD systems, external partners, multiple sites and end users that vary greatly. Traditional PLM and CAD solutions that try to restrict access to data or limit users will eventually be replaced with more open solutions that better represent how these companies work. PLM and CAD vendors should be looking for ways to better leverage the technology that is available to improve their client's experience and drive more value. PLM should serve as a central hub for numerous systems and organizations inside a product development company. The more open and flexible the PLM solution the more benefit it delivers. PLM vendors should be looking for ways to cooperate with each other to provide their customers with a better experience, and, if this happens, maybe UT and Oklahoma fans can put aside their animosity and sit side by side in the Cotton Bowl Saturday and appreciate the talent and effort on the playing field. Okay, it's probably not going to happen in Dallas but it would be in everyone's best interest in the PLM market space if they worked together.