Enterprise Search - PLM Challenge

Aras and Enterprise Search

Aras is following OSS strategy to solve their momentarily interest in search. Built on top of Microsoft technological stack, Aras made an experiment with Microsoft based Search solutions. Most of them are coming today from SharePoint space.

I found the SharePoint search story a bit controversial. The actual cost of SharePoint solution can grow significantly depends on the size data storage and system configuration. Navigate your browser to the following interesting blog article to read more about The Real Cost SharePoint Search. You can also learn more about SharePoint search using ArnoldIT Overflight Search system. Navigate to the followinglink to browse through information about SharePoint search.

PLM, Enterprise Search and Open Source

Alcove9 and NorthRidge presented their solutions and vision of enterprise search related to Aras and PLM. Take a look on the following slides and make your conclusion.

Aras Enterprise Search Strategy

I found Aras’ strategy in the space of search interesting. I can expect customers are interested in search these days. PLM vendors experience challenging position in this place. We have seen OEM agreements and acquisitions made by other PLM vendors. Aras is taking an alternative way and playing with Lucene/Solr enterprise search platform to bundle it with Aras using community partnerships. Here is what Peter Schroer said about Aras Search Strategy.

What is my conclusion? The amount of information in manufacturing companies is growing. PLM vendors clearly see the need to solve this problem. The solutions seem to be beyond the level of databases. The information is located in multiple applications, systems, files, databases. Search is one of the possible options to help people to solve the information problem. Aras’ choice to follow “open source” path is complementary to Aras’ vision of Enterprise Open Source. It seems to me a good balance to Dassault/Exaled and OEM agreements made by other PLM vendors. I expect this space to become more active in the future. Just my thoughts…

Courtesy - Oleg