Protected: Kill the SharePoint Bugs Before They Can Gestate
February 27, 2012
PLM Report Expresses Need for Industry Changes
February 27, 2012
A recent report published by PLM leader, CIMdata, titled, “The Next Industrial Revolution”, focuses on the industrial machine industry and their desperate need for PLM solutions. The press release announcing the report explains why PLM is an urgent need for this particular industry. They estimated in the report that with over $400 billion invested in this industry companies and investors stand to lose a lot as global economies worsen and costs rise.
The press release explains,
“While the end use of an industrial machine may vary, the companies in this market share some common problems. Suppliers of these products are under constant pressure to innovate as well as hold to high quality/performance standards and competitive costs…The manufacture of these products involves complex bills of materials, and a combination of in-house and contracted manufacturing of parts and assemblies…Because of the global nature of the industrial machinery business, this sharing and collaboration needs to flexibly support global collaboration.”
This is a perfect example of how cohesion between departments within a large company must be present for success to occur and the business stay afloat. All PLM solutions aim to streamline processes and eliminate waste yet solutions not focusing on the data, at the heart of every corporation, are not worth the money spent on it. Data is growing in size and complexity and a PLM solution must take that into account as well as address all departments’ ability to find and share information efficiently. Only those PLM products with product data access at the center of its solutions will stand the test of time.
Catherine Lamsfuss, February 27, 2012
Social Business: Collaboration Trends for 2012
February 27, 2012
Leigh Jasper’s blog series, Collaboration for Grown-ups, reflects a focus on the benefits of enterprise collaboration across supply chains. Jasper, of the ComputerWorld.com Blog, looks at collaboration challenges with big data and the social and mobile forces arriving to the enterprise search world in the first post, “Collaboration Trends for 2012: Part One.”
And as big data becomes a key basis of competition, it will also necessarily become the foundation for new forms of collaboration. In 2012, I believe that more companies will recognize that along with having to deal with storing and analyzing big data, they will need to adopt collaboration platforms capable of capturing, sharing and analyzing it.
With growing data, it is no wonder SharePoint adoption is growing, as well. Of course, 2012 trends could not be discussed without mentioning social and mobile media in the enterprise. With consumer demand for social networking and personal mobile devices driving trends, enterprises are looking to search and analyze this data, such as the conversation between brands and their customers. But the supply chain is also feeling the impact. Jasper suggests that 2012 will see collaboration in the supply chain go beyond email and file sharing and businesses will look to solutions for capturing the many-to-many flow of content.
Business-to-business collaboration development is inevitable as business gets social. To tap into the new possibilities, consider a third party solution to complete your enterprise search system. We like Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
Managing director Michael Hadrian explains the Mindbreeze solution,
Fabasoft Folio Cloud enables quick, secure and mobile collaboration both internally and between international companies. Business processes with customers and partners cannot be realized any quicker or more cost effectively…This enables worldwide connected collaboration and secure data exchange in protected team rooms.
For a complete search solution with the power of information pairing, check out the full suite of solutions at Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
Philip West, February 27, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: The Fellowship of the SharePoint Professionals
February 24, 2012
A Preview of SolidWorks World 2012
February 24, 2012
The New Year has brought with it a whole new season of conventions and exhibitions. Thousands of people are flocking to San Diegothis February to attend SolidWorks World (SWW) 2012. Oleg Shilovitsky of Beyond PLM is one of those attendees and he took to his blog to discuss SolidWorks and PLM Story.
Exhibitors and partners at SWWare classified into four categories: Data Management, PDM, PLM, Data Interoperability. The PLMcategory is a bit thin with only two partners listed – Dassault System and Kenesto. They are also listed in the PDM category along with seven other companies, including MechWorks, SofTech, Inc. and SolidPartners, Inc.. As for the data management category, there are six exhibitors listed. Shilovitsky says:
“Separately, you need to take a look on companies providing consulting and implementation services in the manufacturing domain. At the same time, these companies are selling software they develop. In many cases, it is hard to differentiate between software and services they sell. Here is the list of companies from the list of presenters associated with PLM: Datafrond, Infotech Enterprises, Razorleaf Corporation, Zero Wait-State.”
It seems that there are a lot of strong companies at SWWthis year. Shilovitsky mentions his company, Inforbix, that has revolutionized the way companies find, share and re-use data. Though not listed as a data management exhibitor this year, we would not be surprised if they show up on the list in 2013. We also look forward to Shilovitsky review ofSWW in the upcoming weeks.
Jennifer Wensink, February 24, 2012
SharePoint, Training Not Required?
February 24, 2012
Lorette S. J. Weldon, a librarian, offers a unique approach to conquering SharePoint in her piece, “SharePoint, Training Not Required.” Weldon argues that many of the skills and tools used by information professionals transfer well to the SharePoint environment, therefore, intense training is not required if some analogies are made.
Weldon observes:
Through my study last year, I found out that librarians were using SharePoint in the corporate, government, and non-profit sectors . . . Microsoft embedded social media tools within the SharePoint platform. World-wide librarians have been customizing SharePoint by using their social networking skills from MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. It is a ‘plug and play’ social media tool for the office. It has helped to embed the researching skills of the librarians within the normal business flow of their sectors.
Weldon makes a unique observation about the connection between librarians’ skills and their ability to navigate SharePoint. However, a chorus of opinion does exist amongst those who are not trained information professionals and cannot successfully navigate SharePoint. For those individuals who are muddling through, a smart third party solution like Fabasoft Mindbreeze may be worth a second look.
Read more about their quality, usability, and style:
The Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise user interface is based on Web 2.0 technology and combines simplicity with elegance. The operation is self-explanatory. Work just as you are used to. Access your data from anywhere. Also on smartphones and tablets. Elegant design, easy operation. With you wherever you are. Find and access your enterprise and cloud information straight away.
Until we are all trained information professionals, work with Fabasoft Mindbreeze to improve the quality of your SharePoint experience.
Emily Rae Aldridge, February 24, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Database Design Directions
February 23, 2012
We came across a quite useful checklist every database architect should keep on hand. Java Code Geeks give us “20 Database Design Best Practices.” The list covers everything from the commonsense:
“Use well defined and consistent names for tables and columns (e.g. School, StudentCourse, CourseID …).”
To the more advanced:
“Normalization must be used as required, to optimize the performance. Under-normalization will cause excessive repetition of data, over-normalization will cause excessive joins across too many tables. Both of them will get worse performance.”
With a little strong opinion mixed in:
“Lack of database documentation is evil.”
If you design (or oversee those who design) databases, do yourself a favor and check it out.
Most people think of search as providing access to unstructured information. Examples of unstructured information include email, Word documents, and Excel. Our extensive work in enterprise search has spanned structured data; that is, information in a database.
Search Technologies can handle difficult content acquisition tasks when needed information is held within Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2, Oracle, or a similar data management system. In addition, Search Technologies can set up automated processes to handle extraction, transformation, and loading of data or subsets of data.
For more information about our capabilities to make structured and unstructured data more findable, navigate to www.searchtechnologies.com.
Iain Fletcher, February 23, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
PolySpot Technology Makes Big Data Manageable
February 23, 2012
A recent white paper by Beyond Search’s own analyst, Stephen Arnold, “Cutting Big Data Down to Size: The PolySpot Solution,” tackles the issue of high-volume data flow by taking an in-depth look into PolySpot’s Information at Work Solution.
Arnold gives much credit to the France-based company for creating a revolutionary system that offers an easy-to-use solution to Big Data, making data available and thus valuable to companies. Information from ArnoldIT’s investigation is summarized on PolySpot’s website:
PolySpot has developed an innovative approach that makes it possible to deploy a robust frame-work over existing content repositories. The PolySpot technology allows licensees to access information from many different sources and deliver information that answers real-life business questions. Users access the content via applications or apps from mobile devices to desktop computers. The company delivers solutions+apps.
Our team at Beyond Search is glad to see PolySpot offering innovative enterprise search solutions that are much needed in the search enterprise search market place. This technology is necessary in ensuring that information of significant value is not lost in the petabytes of information that is growing daily.
Check out Apprapids for more insight from the ArnoldIT team or direct your browser to PolySpot to download a full-length copy of the analysis.
Andrea Hayden, February 23, 2012
Protected: How to Deal With SharePoint Database Transaction Logs
February 23, 2012
PLM Training Mandatory for Efficient Utilization
February 23, 2012
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is a rapidly growing practice among companies worldwide wishing to eliminatde wasteful practices throughout the entire design and production processes. Unfortunately, PLM works only as well as those implementing it are trained. For that very reason PLM leader CIMdata offers training programs. The recent article announcing an upcoming training, CIMdata Announces Date and Location for the Next North American CIMdata PLM Certificate Program, on PR.com, explains the importance of quality training for the execution of PLM practices.
“The CIMdata PLM Certificate Program prepares PLM professionals at several levels to successfully address the challenges inherent in PLM implementations. This assessment-based certificate program includes an intimate classroom experience, individual and team-based exercises, and individual evaluations of achievement. Additionally, the program provides participants with intensive and extensive exposure to a team of CIMdata experts. Upon successful completion of the program, each participant receives a CIMdata PLM Certificate and becomes a member of CIMdata’s global PLM Leadership community.”
PLM might seem like the answer to a thousand problems facing manufacturing companies daily, but without a total system overhaul it will do no good. Data must be addressed in order for PLM to work. PLM programs that fail to take into account the desperate need of every company to find, re-use and share data between departments will inevitably be a disaster. The best advice we can give is for companies exploring PLM options to focus on those PLM providers with product data access at the core of their development.
Catherine Lamsfuss, February 23, 2012
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