What does it take to deliver easy PLM?

We’re improving the ease of use of PLM, from a user perspective … developing Active Workspace to encourage widespread adoption of Teamcenter. When PLM is easy to use, you can reach more people beyond functional boundaries and across business processes.

But what is easy PLM from an administrator’s point of view? We’ve also been investing in new technologies and applications to make PLM easier for you … to help you reach higher levels of efficiency. You may have seen my last blog, “Speeding Up Software Updates for Shorter Downtimes.” Today I want to take a closer look at the updates to our new Deployment Center to see how we’re making PLM easier to administer, which will save your business time and money.

The Deployment Center is a web based installer that will enable you to easily install, patch, and upgrade Teamcenter software. The first releases of the Deployment Center are already available and support an Active Workspace install.

The Deployment Center is capable of the following:

• Install Active Workspace 3.1, 3.2, 3.3


• Upgrade Active Workspace 3.1 to 3.2, or to 3.3


• Patch Active Workspace


• Deploy a custom BMIDE template


• Perform maintenance on an Active Workspace environment

Manage multiple environments from one powerful client

The Deployment Center can support an unlimited number of environments. This means that all of your Teamcenter environments from Development to Production can be managed within a single Deployment Center client.

The Deployment Center is powerful. Each environment tracked by the Deployment Center can be a different version of Teamcenter. For example, your production environment may be at Teamcenter 10.1.5 with Active Workspace 3.1. However, you may still have other environments set up through the Deployment Center looking at the next generation of Teamcenter software. Your Development environment could be a Teamcenter 11.2.3 with Active Workspace 3.2 and your Test environment could be another release such as Teamcenter 11.2.1 with Active Workspace 3.1. The Deployment Center helps you manage all of these environments from a single web client, which is much more efficient.

See the big picture across machines and configurations from a web browser

Information is right at your fingertips. Since a single Deployment Center client is managing all of your environments, you can get all of the information about how each of your environments and machines are configured from a web browser. You can get information such as environment names, machines where software is installed, and even the applications that are installed. The components where the architectural pieces, such as servers and databases, are installed. You can even select the software information about an environment to read more about what it does, or select a component to read about its business purpose and the parameters that are set on it.

Simplify installation with built-in business intelligence

Another key feature about the Deployment Center is the level of reduced complexity to get Teamcenter software installed. For example, when installing Active Workspace, many of the servers need to communicate with each other through URLs and ports. The Deployment Center ensures that the host and port information are configured on a component and are all shared with the other components that need to talk to each other. Thus, the business intelligence of how to install an Active Workspace environment is all contained within the Deployment Center. The Deployment Center guides you through the install to ensure you complete it safely.

Support single box and distributed environments

The Deployment Center also makes installing environments the way you want them easy. For example, let’s look at a single box environment versus a distributed environment. Single box environments are very typically used for development environments, test environments, and possibly even for training environments. This is where all components are installed onto one machine. In most cases, a very limited number of users are utilizing these environments so having everything on one machine will suffice.

Distributed environments are the components of the environment are distributed to various other machines to spread out the perform load. Each of the components are installed on their own machine. This is useful for production type environments where a large user base and distributed user base is supported through various servers.

Whether you are installing a single box or distributed environment, the Deployment Center makes it very easy. In fact, both are equally easy to install. You only need to enter the machines where the target software should be installed, and the Deployment Center takes care of the rest.

PLM made easy with simplified installs, upgrades and patches

The Deployment Center is aimed at simplifying installs, upgrades, and patching of Teamcenter products. The new installer is already available and is capable of installing Active Workspace with 90 percent more efficiency. It’s worth taking a closer look at Deployment Center, because it will help reduce costs and make your life as a PLM administrator easier.