One-to-One: PTC and Microsoft on Point Together for PLM

I had the chance to talk with …
PTC and Microsoft about PTC’s new
ProductPoint
offering. ProductPoint is effectively a “PLM Light”
application build on top of Microsoft’s SharePoint
solution. There is more to the story than a
Microsoft-based PLM system - although that is big news in and of
itself. The solution also provides a lot of new social
networking capabilities from SharePoint that can be used
both in
standalone ProductPoint installations or within PTC’s Windchill
solution (via the Windchill browser). This announcement
covers - two significant bases - an easy to implement, low TCO
PLM (although with limited capabilities) and enhanced social
networking in product development. 

PLM “Light”
The first aspect of the
announcement is compelling enough. PTC is offering a PLM solution
that offers a subset of the capabilities of their Windchill
PLM offering. Windchill, based on a Java architecture, is a mature
PLM solution with proven capabilities and scalability. It may also
be overkill for some companies that don’t want a full-blown PLM
system and the associated infrastructure. Who would be
interested in this? The first two answers are: 

• Small to Midsize Businesses (SMB) - these
  companies often can’t afford to support a more robust PLM
  infrastructure, and would prefer to work on Microsoft-based
  technologies that are easier to implement and easier to find
  qualified consultants
• Larger Businesses with Simpler Needs - these
  companies may not need everything a PLM system can
  offer. These could be smaller entities within a large company,
  or perhaps a supplier’s implementation to support a larger customer
  running Windchill. 

The solution is designed to support both of these environments,
including the capability to synchronize between
ProductPoint and Windchill implementations. What is more
compelling to me as an answer, though, is the third group that
would be interested:

• Everyone! - why wouldn’t everyone want the low
  TCO and ease of support that a Microsoft-based solution will offer?
  If we are honest with ourselves, we could all love something like a
  PLM system that ran purely on top of an architecture like
  SharePoint. As some are saying, “SharePoint is the new Windows” on
  which applications will be built.

There are two things holding this back: 

1. SharePoint isn’t mature enough (to my
   knowledge) to handle a full-scale PLM implementation. Data
   volumes in PLM can be enormous, with large requirements for
   security and synchronization. I am not an expert, but I also expect
   that there are a lot of infrastructure needs that SharePoint does
   not fully address (again, not my area of expertise).
2. ProductPoint doesn’t have the needed capabilities
   yet. PTC is early on in building PLM capabilities in
   ProductPoint. It will take some time for ProductPoint to match the
   capabilities of Windchill, but that development time frame is in
   the hands of PTC and their product strategy.

PTC is clearly placing a strong bet on Microsoft and
SharePoint in PLM, but they are by no means abandoning their bet on
the current Windchill platform. The key point is,
according to PTC’s CTO Jim Heppelmann, is
that when (and if) SharePoint is ready for a full-fledged PLM
implementation, PTC will be ahead of their
competition. When I asked Jim where ProductPoint would
stop in regards to capability (functionality) and scalability, he
surprised me and said he would be happy to see SharePoint mature to
the level that it became the new infrastructure behind Windchill.
In other words, PTC will not limit how capable ProductPoint becomes
in the future (to the point that it could become the new
Windchill).

Social Networking and Product
Development 
This is turning into a long post, I will cover the social
networking aspects of ProductPoint (based on underlying SharePoint)
next week to give it full justice. Stay tuned.

So that’s what I hear from PTC, I hope you found it useful. What do
you think? What else should I have asked them?