Starting a Dialog

Over the years, I’ve been privileged to share my thoughts on the CAD industry with you through a number of Web sites and publications. Some of you have followed my career from my very first editorial post at Cadence (now defunct). Believe it or not, you have been a big part of my professional development. You kept me honest with your vocal responses and public comments to my articles and blog posts. You emailed me when news was about to break. You let me subject you to hour-long phone interviews. Without your participation, I couldn’t have done my job. So I invite you to join me as I embark on this new venture.

For the most part, I’ll focus on what vendors and analysts usually refer to as Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). But I’ve never been a fan of acronyms. Sometimes, the time and effort required to nail down the meanings of set of acronyms cut deeply into the precious word count allotted to the article, depriving me of the opportunity to adequately discuss a project or a product.

So here’s my plan. I’ll leave the ongoing debate about the scope of PLM to other interested parties. Instead, I’ll seek out companies and technologies that play a critical role in bridging people, processes, and products. If I can help it, I won’t even bother putting something into a predefined bucket. Who cares if an application is ERP (Enterprise Resource Management), PDM (Product Data Management), or SCM (Supply Chain Management)? We’ll concentrate instead on what works and what doesn’t.

Let the dialog begin!