Everyone wants to be free

Today was Teamcenter Mobility launch day at Hannover Fair 2011. We started the morning with a press briefing that was really well attended. It was a good indication that interest in our new iPad app would be high. I sat next to a journalist who happened to bring his iPad to the briefing. He searched for the app, found it in the AppStore, installed it, registered for access to the demo site, got his login info and was using one of the demo models before we got to the third slide of the press briefing. How’s that for hands on?



The first public demo hit the stage in hall 17 a little after 11 o’clock CET. Thorsten Elsen of Siemens PLM very eloquently described how this new app will set Teamcenter users free to work wherever they need or want, whether on a factory floor or 35,000 feet in the air on a way to a meeting. I was able to catch up with Thorsten later on in one of his many follow-up demos and captured this video. The audio is a little rough, but I think the pictures speak for themselves.



After the demos and some hands on time, I got a chance to talk with a few of the fair attendees to get their impressions. Everyone immediately saw the value of being able to work where they are and having the data come to them, rather than they go to the data. A few attendees I talked to where already imaging their own applications for Teamcenter Mobility – putting an app in the hands of sales people to run configurations live with customers, giving a way for front line personnel to collect feedback and requirements from customers in retail environments and delivering work instructions straight from engineering to the plant. I love it when users take your basic idea and come up with 10 of their own!

Here’s what a few other folks had to say today about the app:

• Randall Newton of GraphicSpeak: “Five million Teamcenter PLM users are today adding the Apple iPad to their requisition lists. This is PLM app that is more than a sketch tool or a catalog… Teamcenter on the iPad is a game-changer. This is the first PLM app for the iPad that is more than a sketch tool or a catalog. Siemens PLM has raised the bar for what users should expect from their PLM technology.”


• Beth Stackpole of Design News: “Mobile executives are one such target audience as they may need access to data while traveling or at remote locations. Field personnel working inside a partially assembled airplane fuselage or walking the shop floor of an assembly line are another example of where the Teamcenter Mobility solution can deliver benefit.”

A number of other customers share additional use cases over Twitter, such as eliminating 2D drawings and delivering 3D engineering to the shop floor.

Hannover Fair was a blast and sharing the news about our newest app was a lot of fun, especially since I got to see immediate customer reaction.  I can’t wait until more of you give it a try, either with our demo server to experiment a bit or with your own data to go straight to work.  No telling what uses you’ll come up with – but be sure to let us know in the comments.