Live from Las Vegas
The kickoff to Siemens PLM Connection started with the usual parade of dignitaries, executives and partners. After a very nice opening from Jon Jarrett, PLM World Chairman, and partner presentations from both Microsoft and IBM, Tony Affuso started the Siemens executive slate of speakers.
Tony focused on Siemens PLM Software, which has been summed up for as long as I’ve know him as “we never let a customer fail”. If you ever get a chance to talk to Tony for just a few minutes, you’ll realize this is way more than just a catch phrase – it’s the actual way we make decisions and do business. This is because more than anything Tony loves our customers. This was apparent when he walked through some of our recent wins. Tony mentioned that in 2010 we added more than 4,800 new customers and that 24 of the top 25 auto manufacturers use our software.
All of this positive momentum has resulted in our 5 straight quarters of growth and the strongest sales pipeline in our history. Tony concluded with a review of the commitments we made over the past 10 years at customer events like PLM Connection – and how we have delivered on each and every one of them. It was really a very interesting stroll down memory lane and really made me realize how far we have come in a relatively short amount of time. It also made me realize how many times we changes slide templates in the last 10 years.
Next up was Klaus Oesterschulze, the CIO for the Industry Automation division at Siemens. While Klaus’ business card reads Siemens just like Tony’s, it was clear from the beginning of his presentation that Klaus considers Siemens PLM Software a key provider and expects us to consider him a key customer. Klaus discussed the ICE project (Integrate Enable Collaborate) at Siemens which has the “simple” objective of managing all the technology that goes into over 90 factories and design centers worldwide. Klaus was very direct in his description of their requirements of flexibility, capability and ease of use and also very clear in his statement that Teamcenter met them all head on.
The ICE project is in the process of getting a legacy document management solution replaced with Teamcenter for 6,500 users in 3 key development locations in Germany, China and India. Next it will focus on PDM capabilities when the user count will go up to 12,000 and ultimately include ECAD integrations when the user count will go to 20,000. Klaus concluded with the motivation behind the ICE project: reducing complexity. A message I am sure I will hear a lot in the next few days.
The Siemens executive sessions ended with a typically engaging presentation from Chuck Grindstaff. Chuck started with a mention of the recently released study jointly commissioned with HBR on the use of IT within manufacturing. Chuck then dove headlong into his discussion about the investments we are making to support our vision to help customers make smarter decisions and better products. The first investment area is Intelligently integrated information. Here Chuck talked about the rich data model we have developed and how we are using the power of semantics to make that data useful for decision making, rather than just adding complexity to the process.
The second investment area is a future proof architecture, which is focused on making sure that, as we add new technologies, our customers can come along with us with minimal disruption. The third investment area for smarter decisions and better products is the HD user experience. As an example of this investment area, Chuck highlighted Active Workspace a user interface that understand who you are, what the data is and can suggest things you might want to do with it. Really something you have to see. The fourth and final investment area is HD PLM which is the collaborative decision support platform. HD PLM was announced a year ago and as an example of delivering against this investment, Chuck gave a live demo of Teamcenter Mobility which was announced just a month ago at Hannover Fair. Overall it was a pretty clear case for the investments we are making and how they will deliver customer value.
Day 1 is still going strong with lots happening, relationships forming and capabilities being learned. To stay up to date on all that’s going on make sure to follow #plmconx on twitter, take a look at the photo streams on Flickr from Siemens PLM Software and PLM World, and of course keep your feed reader updated with our blog feed.
