Protected: A New Face for SharePoint Online
March 13, 2012
PLM Providers Catching Up with Technology
March 13, 2012
During 2011 PLM transformed itself as the newest industry to adopt cloud technology. This shift to the cloud has created a new race within PLM providers. A recent article, PLM: Changing with Technology to Stay Relevant, on Formtek Blog, explains the newest developments within the PLM community as it struggles to keep up with a world immersed in social media and the cloud.
As far as PLM providers’ challenges in the twenty first century marketplace the article explained,
“PLM, for example, is no different than any other business application in that it could benefit from capabilities that are enabled from the cloud which include:
- On-demand self-service
- Ubiquitous network access == Access from anywhere
- Resource pooling
- High Availability
- Rapid elasticity
- Measured service
Large PLM platform providers may be the recipients of a slew of media attention having just recently discovered cloud technology for the simplification of services, but other, smaller, providers have been quietly meeting the needs of clients across engineering and manufacturing industries for years with that same technology. Inforbix, a provider of PLM platform technology has clearly defined themselves as leaders in data management services and specialize in aiding their customers in finding, sharing and reusing data across departments.
Catherine Lamsfuss, March 12, 2012
The Risks of an E-Hoarder
March 13, 2012
Hoarding shows are popular these days, with TV giving attention to a once ignored psychological disorder, and causing the rest of us to wonder if we are hoarders of one sort or another. It turns out that hoarding may also be an IT phenomenon. Jeff Vance for NetworkWorld addresses the topic in, “Warning: You May Be an E-hoarder.”
Vance explains that cheap storage has lead to the e-hoarding phenomenon but just because the hardware is cheap does not mean the overall process of storage is also cheap:
While the cost of storing data has dropped significantly, ancillary costs haven’t, including data management costs and even costs associated with adding space in data centers and paying for escalating HVAC bills. Retrieval is another problem, since even the best search tool won’t necessarily find data buried in an arcane application. Take SharePoint, for instance. As more people within an organization collaborate through it, the number of documents within SharePoint can spiral out of control.
Gartner predicts that overall enterprise data will grow 650% in the next five years. With the majority of organizations choosing SharePoint for their enterprise needs, one can see SharePoint as both part of the problem and part of the solution. Third party solutions like Fabasoft Mindbreeze can help make enterprise search more efficient and meaningful, helping to avoid mindless e-hoarding.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise is the center of excellence for your company’s knowledge. Highly efficient enterprise search and specific connectors link together data sources in companies and organizations. They integrate the knowledge of different sections of a company into a uniform, linked whole. The award-winning high-tech product is your personal assistant. 24/7, 365 days a year. Regardless of which data you are looking for and with which system you are working with – Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise answers your questions with pinpoint accuracy.
So as the IT world continues to deal with changing standards in content management, third party solutions may help deal with the immediate issue. Explore the solutions offered by Fabasoft Mindbreeze to see if their solutions are a good fit for your organization.
Emily Rae Aldridge, March 13, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: Tune in for the Exciting Adventures of SharePoint
March 12, 2012
Inteltrax: Top Stories, March 5 to March 9
March 12, 2012
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, specifically, trends in big data.
Our biggest trend spotting article was undoubtedly “Big Predictions for 2012 Big Data” in which we laid out the upcoming months and how they will be even bigger than 2011’s massive data year.
“Safety and Security Prompt Analytic Trend” took a closer look at new trends, specifically how to keep folks safe via analytic technology.
Finally, “Consumer Thinking Becomes a Big Analytic Focus” is undoubtedly the hottest topic in big data and we toss our two cents into the hat.
Big data and analytics are an evolving being. The landscape today is nothing like it was twelve months ago. Thankfully, we are watching every blip on the radar to give readers a comprehensive feel for the past, present and future of analytics.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting www.inteltrax.com
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax.
March 12, 2012
Autodesk PLM 360 Takes to the Cloud
March 12, 2012
The hottest topic in technology these days is definitely ‘the cloud’. It is revolutionizing everything from social media to business dealings. Product lifecycle management (PLM) companies are also getting into the act. Rachael King of ZDNet reports that Autodesk PLM 360 Launches as ‘Cloud-Based Alternative’.
Autodesk PLM 360 designs PLM solutions which help companies manage and improve their products. With the steady rise of the PLM software market:
“Autodesk is getting in at the ground floor quickly with hopes of ‘shaking up the very small population of legacy PLM solution providers’ with new cloud-based products being released at a ‘fraction of the cost’ made available from competitors.”
They are also boosting “to be the ‘first cloud-based PLM solution focused on business applications beyond engineering and bill of material management.’”
It is good to see Autodesk making advancements, but we’re not sure we are that impressed. Smaller tech companies like Inforbix have already taken to the cloud, have mobile capabilities and have changed the way companies access their product data. They have already turned legacy PLM solutions on their head by being innovative. So it looks like the bigger PLM providers are playing catch up with their small, but mighty competitors!
Jennifer Wensink, March 12, 2012
To Cloud or Not to Cloud, That is the Question
March 12, 2012
Less than a year ago Microsoft launched Office 365, allowing Cloud access to a comprehensive set of software, including SharePoint Online. And while many businesses saw migrating Exchange email services to the Cloud as a no-brainer, the same positive perception has not be given to SharePoint Online. Chris McNulty gets into the details in, “The SharePoint Decision: Do We Choose Cloud or On-Premises?”
When examining the cold hard facts about SharePoint Cloud functionality, McNulty has the following to say:
People would be blown away by the depth of functionality Microsoft made available in the cloud. I mean it – there would be wild celebrations and stampedes in the street! But that’s not the perception of Office 365-based SharePoint. Instead, there’s a lot of needless focus on what’s left out.’ (SharePoint Online does lack a few features relative to on-premises SharePoint.)
While SharePoint Online shows a lot of promise and continued improvement, it is noted that it still lags behind the full functionality of an on-site SharePoint installation. However, some third-party solutions are available that are much more agile, and therefore already display greater Cloud functionality.
Check out Fabasoft Mindbreeze and their enterprise solution, which is fully functional as an on-site installation or on the Cloud.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise and the Cloud fit together perfectly. The Cloud makes your business mobile; Mindbreeze finds its way in the Cloud. This intelligent search is available as a Cloud service. This means that, if you so desire, Fabasoft Mindbreeze can run without any installation whatsoever – we operate the search engine for you. All the data that you manage in the Cloud is made searchable by Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
While SharePoint gets better with each new release, third-party solutions have the advantage of being more agile and being updated more frequently. See if Fabasoft Mindbreeze can replace or supplement your current enterprise infrastructure, improving its performance in the Cloud.
Emily Rae Aldridge, March 12, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: SharePoint Is Adopted Worldwide
March 9, 2012
The Missing Skills of Young SharePoint Developers
March 9, 2012
In a lighthearted blog entry, Jussi on SharePoint addresses the often forgotten fact that for all of our complaining, IT is well optimized and performs quite well in our current day. So what’s the problem with high performance you might ask? In, “The missing skillsets of future SharePoint rock stars,” Jussi argues that this has created a younger generation of developers, specifically SharePoint developers who neglect the basic IT skills of former days.
Jussi writes:
The problem is that mostly everything you use just works. You don’t need to worry whether or not the operating system is about to crash. You’ll have enough RAM most of the time, so forget about spending any time optimizing how your applications use memory. Your laptop? It boots in <30 seconds, or resumes from sleep in less than 2 seconds. Gone are they days when we had to write memos on a piece paper as a backup, ‘because the computer might crash sooner rather than later’.
This relative ease of use leads the author to propose that SharePoint developers need to make an effort to cultivate certain forgotten skills:
Any proper SharePoint specialist worth their salt should be fairly serene doing basic stuff like configuring Active Directory, debugging network and authentication issues, reading through code and Powershell scripts and troubleshooting weird errors.
While these are not glamorous jobs, they are necessary. There may also be another option for SharePoint developers wanting to maximize their time and energy. Many third-party enterprise solutions can improve performance and user experience without a great investment in time and training. A smart solution like Fabasoft Mindbreeze can brings a suite of solutions together to make everyone happy, users and developers alike. Check into Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise and see if their offerings can increase your organization’s efficiency and performance.
Emily Rae Aldridge, March 9, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Cloud-Based PLM a Growing Trend World Wide
March 9, 2012
Across the globe companies are looking for ways to encourage growth while simultaneously reduce spending. This is a tall order for every industry but there is one area where it can be accomplished – PLM. A recent article on Manufacturing.Net, The Rise Of Cloud Computing Extends To PLM, explains how PLM solutions employed with cloud technology not only is the wave of the future but helps reduce expenses and has a proven ROI.
By adding the cloud to traditional PLM platforms companies are able to reduce their dependency on physical storage facilities for data. As the article explains of the trend toward combining cloud and PLM services,
“Most industry analysts (Forrester, Gartner, Frost & Sullivan, ARC and The Yankee Group) covering IT agree that the power and potential of cloud computing, properly leveraged and deployed, can have a significant impact on the PLM industry. PLM customers are giving serious consideration and evaluating their PLM business processes in regard to how to run them seamlessly and securely connect them to cloud-based data sets. This is to say that today still few are fully deployed. It is still in the infancy stages of use even if the technology has matured. It is still curing.”
Despite the many benefits cloud computing offers traditional PLM solutions there is a concern regarding accessibility and security, and rightly so. Companies taking the time to convert operations and data to the cloud need the assurance that the right employees will be able to access the right files easily and securely. By choosing platform providers well-versed in cloud computation and how it relates to PLM companies can rest assured that employees will be able to find, re-use and share data without threats to security.
Catherine Lamsfuss, March 9, 2012