Looking out for the art of the possible

Sometimes even those on the inside track of IT are surprised by its pace of change - technical and commercial. For example, who would have dreamed three years ago that Infor, with Swan just under its belt, would become the world's third largest enterprise software vendor? Who would have predicted the rise of IT giant Microsoft in enterprise applications not only in ERP but BI (business intelligence) and CRM (customer relationship management)? Consolidation has consumed not just many of the smaller IT companies but also much larger ones - some going willingly, others after a fight. Some were clearly struggling financially while others appeared to be doing well enough but, under the cosh of relentless commercial pressure for cost reductions yet performance and technology updates, succumbed to the knock on the door and the language of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. That epidemic continues unabated in virtually every walk of mainstream IT. While hardware went through the gasps of its big-tin consolidation a while ago (remember HP and Compaq), there's still more to come in the ERP world, the engineering data PLM (product lifecycle management) arena, the CAD/CAM space and so on. No-one is saying all the familiar names will go: there will always be companies serving specific industries and/or geographies, start-ups with new ideas trading on developing technology, and consultancies and system integrators. But this is a very dynamic market. And then there's the underlying technology itself. We're all familiar with IT obsolescence and the fact that incremental improvements in IT are actually anything but incremental. But some developments can still shock even the die hard IT establishment. Microsoft's launch in June of Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003, for example, heralded the impending transformation of what was the rarefied world of high performance computing (HPC) for simulation, crash testing and the like, into the mass market - with all the accoutrements and familiarity of the supporting Microsoft environment. Love it or loathe it, Microsoft is providing backbone technologies that will see 'time to insight' in business, and innovation across whole disciplines, collapse - and thus another new era of what's possible. Similar comments could be made about Cisco's AON (Application Orientated Network), introduced just a few months ago, which embeds extra intelligence in network nodes with agents that scan data packets for type and then apply business logic. Observers predict a revolution in networking here, likely to cut costs by 60-75%, while business policies are automatically executed allowing, for example, intelligent message routing, variable security provision and automatic business activity monitoring via the network itself. Got to keep up So how are managers in manufacturing businesses supposed to keep up? 'With difficulty,' is one answer. Another might be 'You don't have to: your IT department, IT suppliers, hired consultants and so forth can do all that for you'. At MCS we understand that, whether you're the managing director, operations director, engineering director, or anyone in middle management with responsibility for making your manufacturing company efficient and successful, you don't have time for the IT detail. However, we also believe you absolutely do need to have at least a broad grasp of what's now possible. Hence indicative round-ups like this. Hence the entire Manufacturing Computer Solutions regular management and IT journal, providing commentary, information and update on every aspect of IT as it matters to manufacturing businesses and their operational departments. And hence also our brand new online web resource www.mcsolutions.co.uk - see page 16. Taking the commercial world first, the Infor revolution provides without doubt the most stunning example of how quickly some IT suppliers' and users' worlds are changing. There's always been M&A (mergers and acquisitions) activity but post-2000 and the Y2k bug, IT firms that had staffed up for seriously hyped business have had to down-size, look for new avenues and the rest - and when that wasn't enough, go under or be bought. Recently that has been accelerating, as well-funded and managed buyers seek the widest possible coverage of ERP, BI, CRM and supply chain management - and the cross-selling, up-selling, technology, customer base coverage and one-stop-shop status that leads to. Changing commercial landscape Infor's latest acquisition was of rival ERP software firm SSA Global, now due to complete at the end of this month. That's Infor's 20th in just four years; others in recent months included asset management IT firm Datastream and ERP developer Geac - adding to Mapics, Frontstep, Lilly Software, Brain, Mercia... With SSA under its belt, Infor becomes the undisputed global Number Three for extended ERP, with some 37,000 customers, 6,800 employees and combined revenues of $1.6bn. Oracle's rampant acquisition trail notwithstanding (PeopleSoft and thus also JD Edwards in ERP, and Siebel in CRM are just the tip of its iceberg), Infor's has been an incredible story, with ramifications for employees, the whole software industry and manufacturing users. But beyond ERP, the other big change, also now gathering pace, concerns some manufacturers' changing perception of the importance of PLM systems (or more accurately, subsets of the software) - and their boards' willingness to buy it to improve their companies' ability to manage the development, maintenance and service of products. UGS, arguably the largest of the pure PLM vendors (having more than 90% of the world's 1,000-plus user companies as clients), demonstrates the growth trend well: vice president of marketing Henry Seddon points to an 11% increase in revenues year-on-year, and an increasing emphasis on the mid-market. So apparent is this long-expected and hitherto unrealised development that PLM is increasingly attracting the attention of the ERP software companies, and notably big boys like SAP and Oracle. Citing Oracle's acquisition of collaborative forecasting software firm Demantra (rather to one side of PLM!), Seddon says: "Oracle is trying to close a gap in its applications infrastructure by moving more into PLM." Why? "Because the back office has been done so they're going for growth in PLM to offer cost benefits in product creation." We're into M&A again, and most commentators see those likely to be here in the long term as the vendors most experienced in the growth markets' needs - and that's large and small manufacturers alike across the engineering functions - and those most able to scale with open, easy to implement and use systems. It's also those able to offer collaboration tools that enable design, production and maintenance chains to work as concurrently and efficiently as possible - and there are several of them. UGS is one, and certainly not just at the oft-cited Boeing end of the spectrum. "We have a history and ongoing strategy of openness in our systems and to enable collaboration through our JT Open platform," says Seddon. "We're also catering for all companies that need to participate in global supply chains - and that's increasingly smaller manufacturers who are probably being forced down tight delivery schedules. They can use a subset of our systems, if that's what they need, through TeamCenter Express PLM, for example." And it's a similar story with UGS' CAM products, and notably the firm's recent addition of NX CAM Express and enhancements to Solid Edge and Femap Applications with its Velocity suite. Worth revisiting what UGS has to offer to improve your front end engineering development - and also Dassault/IBM, PTC, Autodesk, SAP and Oracle. High performance computing Back to Microsoft and its HPC for the masses. It's important to note that it's not just that the company is, for the first time, offering software to run parallel, high-performance computing applications. It's the fact that it all works seamlessly with the whole familiar Microsoft environment. Suddenly, the notion of a supercomputer on the desktop has become a reality. "Until now [HPC] has been too expensive and too difficult for many people to use," observes Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft. "We want HPC technology to become a pervasive resource - something that's as easy to locate and use as printers are today." And that's what this is about. Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 integrates out of the box with the Windows infrastructure, and enables users to harness their existing development skills using Visual Studio 2005 and the rest. Beyond that, Microsoft has been working with the HPC community - particularly in the UK - and with partners, to meet their requirements in terms of look and feel, interoperability, scaling and compatible applications. In fact, Microsoft has spent millions in joint projects at academic institutions like the University of Southampton, which has become one of 10 Microsoft HPC Institutes around the world, to help guide its R&D. So the system has already proven itself among early-adopter users for vehicle design and safety improvements in the automotive sector, for oil and gas reservoir simulation and seismic processing, and for simulations of enzyme catalysis and protein folding with life sciences users. Defence and aerospace firm BAE Systems, for example, says it migrated key engineering work to the new Microsoft platform, along with Windows Workflow Foundation and SQL Server, and is now speeding up the design process and improving product performance, while also significantly cutting the cost of running all its HPC. "Simplifying our fluid dynamics engineering platform will increase our ability to bring solutions to market and reduce risk and cost to both BAE Systems and its customers," says Jamil Appa, BAE Systems group leader for Technology and Engineering. Some predictions Beyond the above, we could pick on any one of tens if not hundreds of trends, technologies and applications to watch - network convergence and management, supply chain IT, SOA (service orientated architecture), MES (manufacturing execution systems) and so on. All of these will be covered in upcoming issues of the journal and on our website. For this piece we'll close on some observations from analyst OTR Group and its 2006 study, 'What ICT technologies are likely to have an impact during the next three years?' Its top five observations:
First, the growth of hand-helds will mean that information presentation and input technology will evolve to meet changing requirements.
Second, convergence of fixed, mobile and multi-media technologies will come.
Third, peer-to-peer technologies will proliferate as organisations seek to distribute ever greater quantities of information.
Fourth, BI tools and search engines will increasingly be adopted for the same reasons.
And fifth, 'location-based technologies' - meaning wireless-enabled phones and the like - will evolve and work alongside individuals' Piconets (ad hoc micro-networks) within three years. They'll be driven by the growth of RFID but this will emerge as the direct communications medium. And RFID: there's another one to track: key it into www.mcsolutions.co.uk Site Search and see what it serves up.