Adoption of Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions, present a challenging and often overlooked decision point for the modernization of enterprise applications, a last chance conundrum after which there is no turning back. The point of contention: software updates and upgrades. As discussed previously in They’ve Gone to Upgrade, the common SaaS philosophy of incremental and continuous updates, so popular in the consumer landscape, is presumptively thrust upon an unsuspecting enterprise. The traditional model of infrequent, monolithic updates is fittingly viewed as the work of dinosaurs, to be supplanted by the clear superiority of evolved just-in-time software delivery. The question of software upgradeability is too often a choice between absolutes. Choose the blue pill and the story ends, you wake up next to your old on-premise server instance and believe whatever you want to believe. Or you take the red pill, you stay in SaaS wonderland, and fall right into a rabbit hole of continuous updates. It’s probably time to stop all this enthusiastic pill-popping. Continue reading
Monthly Archives: October 2014
These Aren’t the PLM Search Engines You’re Looking For…
Image courtesy JD Hancock
One of the central axioms of Product Lifecycle Management is information re-use. Re-use prevents re-invented wheels by capitalizing on product knowledge that predates your particular problem. Provided you find what you’re looking for, of course. That’s where the trouble starts. Most of us know that PLM search is often about as fun as a late afternoon dip in a Sarlac pit. It’s never long before someone begins to lament about the Googlization (that is so not a word) of PLM search, a passing thought usually birthed in the throes of an intense thirty-minute session unearthing the latest funny cat videos from the depths of the interwebs. Why can’t uncovering part information be as easy as finding your favorite quotes from Firefly? There have been many attempts to emulate just that, but they may be missing the point. These aren’t the search engines you’re looking for.