Last week Aras was launched in Greater China. The interest level in the Microsoft open approach for PLM and Quality management solutions is particularly high throughout the region. Businesses in Asia are increasingly recognizing the need for PLM solutions as they move up the value chain and concentrate on developing innovative new products and compete on quality as opposed to price.
Slide Pictures >> Check pictures from the launch event at Microsoft Taiwan
Microsoft Taiwan hosted the launch event held by our strategic partner for the region Broadway Consulting Services. Attendance was strong with companies coming to learn about how they can take advantage of the Aras solutions to improve product development collaboration. There was a lot of focus on competing globally and how businesses across Asia are going to continue to grow their business in the years to come… Innovative, High Quality New Products!
This is an area that I believe is inescapable. The more people that understand the methodologies and intricacies of new product development, the more great products we are all going to enjoy in the futur
e. The flip side of that equation of course is increasingly intense global competition.
The use of PLM systems for collaborative product development and control over product information is now a ‘must have’ to compete effectively, and companies in Asia recognize that struggling with complicated old conventional PLM systems is not the answer moving forward.
That’s why so many businesses in the region are interested in the advanced enterprise SOA for PLM from Aras on Microsoft. They already prefer the Microsoft platform and now they can take advantage of next generation enterprise open solutions for PLM.
That’s what people repeatedly told me during my travels, but you can find out for your self with Aras Innovator… or post your opinion and let me know; would love to hear your thoughts!
Check out the press coverage in DigiTimes IT!
http://app.digitimes.com.tw/ShowNews.aspx?zCatId=85A&zNotesDocId=0000083144_B9N2X12IQC34P4H5XROYK
Recently, I was asked by the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA) to present on our innovation and corporate transition to an open model. The PDMA was interested in hearing about our transition:
-
What were the motivating factors?
-
How did we address strategic planning?
-
What management considerations were necessary?
-
How can other companies incorporate open innovation into their company’s offers?
These questions and many more were covered at the event along with an engaging discussion.
At Aras we have kept our focus on providing the optimal environment for corporate community innovation. Our calculation was that by doing so we would accelerate the profitable growth of our own business. To date, our results indicate that we under estimated our assumptions. Innovation exceeds our most optimistic expectations and our business is benefiting significantly.
The effect represents a true win-win situation. Thousands of companies are taking advantage of the Aras software to improve their businesses, and are realizing considerable advantages though collaborative participation that would have been unattainable without the open model.
The network effect results in better software solutions with more advanced capabilities than any conventional systems provider can produce; the process itself increases market share and sales for Aras. The principles at work are pretty straightforward and undeniably powerful.
For more details on our transition and the innovation of the open model, check back and I’ll include a link to the PDMA site when they post.
If you’d like to check out further coverage in the mean time, here’s a post by Paula Rooney at ZDNet:
Pure Play Open Source Microsoft ISV Details Transformation from Proprietary World
Graham Bell at MCADCafé recently conducted a podcast interview with Aras president Peter Schroer to cover the market impact that the Aras Microsoft enterprise open source approach is having and how it works.
Listen as Peter explains how companies are taking advantage of the Aras solutions’ open source format to extend existing PDM systems for better innovation and collaboration and delivering business results in the process.
Listen Now [10 mins] >> Click Here
http://www10.mcadcafe.com/link/display_detail.php?link_id=20732
The traditional Open Source projects are collaborations on infrastructure software (e.g. Linux operating system, JBOSS middleware, MySQL database), while the software applications needed to run a business are still tightly controlled, proprietary systems that offer no vehicle for collaboration and are sold by companies like Oracle, PTC, UGS, Infor, SAP and Dassault.
Aras is tackling this business application software problem. We don’t have all the answers... but we’re trying to keep this Simple and Open for the largest possible community of contributors. Instead of infrastructure programmers, the participants are the IT Systems Analysts, Business Process Consultants, Architects, and Power Users.
The highest priority for this community is tackling the enterprise business application problem where the basis of collaboration is at the business data and process model level, not the infrastructure software layer.
Here’s what we are doing:
For companies deploying business applications on the Microsoft stack, the operating system, middleware and database source code is not available. That’s something neither you nor I can change. This is the reason we developed Innovator; to create an environment where open source can flourish on Microsoft’s closed platform.
The Aras Innovator model-based SOA framework is a business solution development and run-time environment, distributed as a free, easy to install, binary that binds into .NET and Sql Server, creating an environment where open source business applications can be developed, tailored and run.
100% of the source code for the business applications is included in the standard distribution. But don’t look for C++ source code and header files in the distribution. Aras Innovator is a model-based development and run-time environment. XML models with embedded CLR-based method code and service extensions are the source code for complete, robust, Open business applications. OK, it’s different, but that’s the point, it needs to be.
I’m looking forward to a time when we can talk about “Open Source” without causing something akin to a religious war. When open source projects embrace the millions of people who want to collaborate, but don’t spend their day buried in complex programming exercises.
What impresses me the most about open source is the change in relationship between the software developer and the end users. Without a sales-person in the middle, this is a healthier relationship built on collaboration, not on cash extraction. End-users continue to pay for the things they value, and developers provide just the features that create value. With the well publicized advantages of this model, there has been a growing problem with the existing enterprise software business models. Customers are increasingly reluctant to pay upfront for business application software that has not been deployed and has not produced any value.
The existing open source community is well covered by blog and print media, but what we need to be watching is the very large demographic of business IT professionals and end-users who are currently neither participating in nor benefiting from the open source model… and these are primarily Microsoft customers and partners. Microsoft business computing infrastructure [Office, Windows Server, IIS and SqlServer] is the standard in thousands of businesses from midsized companies to the largest corporate enterprises. Companies have made a huge investment in and commitment to Microsoft-based infrastructure and skill sets. This represents a very large community of end users and business software professionals that have been left out of open source to date. The business computing community’s more conservative needs and interests, however, are different from the early adopters of open source, but the value of open source to them is still very compelling. As they join and expand the community, the characteristics of open source will certainly change.
I believe that we are on the leading edge of a second wave of open source that includes new offerings, different practices, and a rapid expansion of the open source community. The business IT professionals and end users joining the community do not want to participate in Operating System, Database, and Middleware layer technology programming projects. They are however ready, willing, and able to collaborate at the business application level.
The second wave of open source will be about business applications as companies supplement and replace the applications they currently run from vendors such as Oracle, SAP, Infor, PTC, Dassault, and UGS.
The second wave of open source will remove the requirement to contribute modified source code. At the business application level, developers will be modeling both common best practices and proprietary, competitive business process models, data structures and business rules. Contributions will be optional and some members of the community will act purely as a consumers.
I believe the second wave will expand the community to include the participation of the Microsoft customers and partners, and with Microsoft’s cooperation, will create a compelling value proposition for all. From my perspective, the second wave has already started to swell and we intend to help build it. I’d like to hear. What do you think the future of open source will bring?
A significant problem facing corporate IT today is the vast numbers of power-user and end-user developed business applications written in Notes, ColdFusion, MS-Access or Excel. Why do the end-users continue to build these micro-applications? Because the high costs and effort required to customize the IT supported major systems such as ERP, PDM and CRM, prevent IT from helping the users cope with the rapidly changing requirements for business process and data automation at the divisional or departmental level. The proliferation of micro-applications however is in direct conflict with IT’s goal of consolidating applications and reducing the number of software vendors, and is creating an ever increasing support and security problem.
Walk into any typical corporate setting and you will find that end-users and departmental IT groups have developed hundreds of “micro-applications”, each mission critical to that department, that are used to run the day to day business. The micro-applications are not well supported (i.e. backups, security, future customizations, and upgrades) and eventually all these applications fall back to corporate IT to support, creating a support nightmare. In a recent discussion with a corporate IT executive ($100B company) the current policy is to forbid development of the micro-applications. He admits though that many hundreds of department-level applications are running rogue throughout the organization outside of IT control and consequently not kept current with security best practices. When the SQL Slammer virus hit the Internet, numerous unsupported and un-patched micro-application databases at the company were impacted. These types of IT issues are repeatedly identified in articles and blogs like the ITtoolbox blog posting Is IT aware of the SAP users problems?
Because of the necessity to use enterprise software to achieve business goals, it is no longer possible (or perhaps even advisable) for Corp IT to prevent the development of these micro-applications. A change in strategy is needed. Corporate IT should provide a manageable, low cost framework for the local IT groups and power users to use to deploy the solutions they need, that achieves the supportability of a common platform, single logon, a consistent development style, and common SOA interface with the major corporate IT systems. While it is not possible to prevent the development of these micro-applications, it is advisable to provide a productive, supportable environment for these programmers.
I believe that you can’t stop the development of micro-applications, but with the right approach, you can control and channel it. The power and proliferation of the Microsoft technologies gives companies a common platform and Microsoft enterprise open source can provide a common SOA based option for micro-applications that is easy to work with while maintaining Corp IT standards for supportability.
Something to think about… what do you think?
Welcome to the Aras Corporate Blog. We started this blog to share our thoughts, get your insights, and have some fun with the topic of enterprise software solutions. We all know a change has been needed for some time, yet no one has clearly identified the issues and been willing to put forth the alternative. Sometimes I find that it takes a little irreverence and humor to get to the true answers.
I founded Aras with the intent of providing companies with enterprise software solutions that change the rules. Businesses need software that works. Software that solves real business problems. Software that gets results.
It’s been clear for quite a while that people want enterprise solutions that are easy to use, easy to deploy, and easy to manage. And I knew that an alternative to the existing legacy systems on the market was required to achieve the necessary changes. I've seen too many projects by too many vendors that didn't meet customer needs and at the end of the day everyone suffers. The existing enterprise software vendors just don't have the motivation to make a fundamentally better product.
Aras is in business to provide customers with powerful enterprise software that's easy for the people that rely on it. Software that delivers results. We pride ourselves on being committed to our customers and on delivering results for you and your business.
Now, let's get going.
Peter Schroer
President & Founder, Aras Corporation