This news article was originally written in Spanish. It has been automatically translated for your convenience. Reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate translation, however, no automated translation is perfect nor is it intended to replace a human translator. The original article in Spanish can be viewed at Entrevista a John Ellsworth, responsable del producto ‘n!Fuze’ de SolidWorks
“I do not know if n!Fuze is meeting all expectations. I could say, however, that it is meeting mine.”
Interview with John Ellsworth, Product Manager for SolidWorks’ ‘n!Fuze'
Joan Sánchez Sab21/03/2012
21 March 2012
The theme 'collaboration' has become the 'leitmotif' of SolidWorks World 2012. Talk to John Ellsworth, one of the Product Managers within the 'Online Data Management Products' division will allow us to get acquainted with the approach of SolidWorks with regard to one of the ways to collaborate: sharing data across the network. It does not sound weird, we're all sharing data across the network (you are probably reading or rereading this article on the web). What is not so common yet, and we believe that just for a short time, is to share 3D data across the network.
Tell us about your job at SolidWorks…
I have been at SolidWorks for fifteen months now. My specific area of responsibility is online data management products, within the data management group. At present, this means product management for SolidWorks n!Fuze, which is an online data sharing and collaboration tool. Prior to that I have been in software all my career. I have worked with cloud solutions, which is where my expertise comes to working with n!Fuze
Is there any other product besides n!Fuze for SolidWorks that belongs to the category online data management at present?
Not right now. For the foreseeable future we might have some online data management solutions. This will be part of some V6 stuff, which we don’t talk about much yet.
How is the status of n!Fuze right now?
We shipped n!Fuze during the AIS [Application Innovation Summit, held 26 June 2011] conference. It is available now on our store. It’s been on the market since first of July or so. We have had already a lot of feedback, both from the product and buying it from our store. We have shipped three (minor) releases. We are already starting to plan the first major revision. We’re moving to the point where we want to respond to some of the suggestions we have already had.
Which are the target customers? Which kinds of companies are using it?
N!Fuze is an online sharing and collaboration solution. It’s intended to help smaller organizations which don’t have a PDM [product data management] system work with other outside of the company. EPDM is more for large organizations, WorkGroup PDM is data management for smaller organizations, collaboration and n!Fuze deals with use cases underneath that. It’s for companies working with third parties, one-time collaboration with outside engineers and putting designs into the hands of people who are not CAD users. It could be really anybody, but they tend to be smaller organizations.
How does n!Fuze fit within the whole online strategy of DS?
We go after very specific use cases, but it is an online solution that helps people work together in an expanded way, just looking at the CAD data, for instance. You can use n!Fuze, not being a CAD user, and view, rotate the models. This extends the usage of 3D data to a new user community. This is part of our strategy as a company to widen the number of users who can participate in the 3D experience across the product life cycle.
Is n!Fuze using technologies such as 3DVia or others from Dassault Systèmes?
3DLive, actually. What’s really exciting for me as a Product Manager is that this product is built using components from across the whole DS [Dassault Systèmes] family. It is a V6-based product. It uses Enovia, the V6 platform underneath as the repository of the database. It’s integrated with 3DSwYm [social innovation platform] as the front-end for giving access to it. It uses the 3DStore, it uses the 3DLive viewers as the presentation layer of the web client. It is using the whole spectrum of Dassault Systèmes technologies. I am working with engineers across the whole company.
Would you call it the first company-wide effort?
I am not in a position to answer that. I have been only 15 months within the company. Certainly, it is the most visible. I’d say that it is a very different kind of project for SolidWorks. It is a project where the R&D efforts are going well beyond the scope of the SolidWorks team itself.
Is the product performing according to expectations?
I’d say we are still experimenting, learning. We want to take that learning to make sure we make the right product for the market and then pursue the opportunity that we believe is there. We are at a point where we’ve learnt a lot and can start to respond to that learning. I can’t get into details of specific sales figures, but I’d say that my expectations have certainly been met.
Are people still afraid of outsourcing their intellectual property?
It really depends. About half the customers that I’ve visited (as part of the procedures within SolidWorks) said they wouldn’t put their data “on the cloud”, whereas many others were completely open to that, and still some others already told me they were working with cloud-solutions, because they didn’t want to own hardware. A lot of it has to do with other experiences for those companies. People who are working with SalesForce.com, for instance, or Google Docs, are comfortable. n!Fuze is not a PDM. It does not represent the vault of any customer. You share the files (not necessarily the whole model) with the right people. It’s putting a toe in the water, just one project, or one part of the project.
Do you think people will end up putting the whole projects in the cloud, the same way they may put all their text in Google Docs?
That’s a great choice customers should have the opportunity to make. I think cloud technologies can be a real enabler. A customer that wants to have a data management solution but doesn’t want to have to manage a network right now cannot do it. For this kind of customer, having a cloud option would provide real value. Making it mandatory or making assumptions about what’s right for everybody is not right, but giving the option is. Things very processor intensive, but that are only rarely done, could be done on the cloud, by renting capacity. That’s within the company strategy.
Related Companies or Entities
Dassault Systèmes España, S.L. - SolidWorks
