9.4 Summary

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The PDM system scene has changed significantly within a period of a few years First, many companies have merged or large companies have acquired smaller ones and merged their tools. Second, the focus has moved from pure PDM functionality to a spectrum of different services for managing information and different processes. Third, the technology used has dramatically changed from proprietary solutions to standard Web and Internet technologies. All of these changes have had an important influence on the improvement of tools and customer support. Unfortunately, it cannot be said that all of the changes have had a positive impact. As a consequence of many mergers of companies and tools, the purposes and the business advantages of using these tools have became more diffuse. In many cases, it is not clear which tools and options should be used for a particular type of business. Also, as the tools become more general, the focus on particular support has been decreased. On the other hand, their usability and flexibility has enormously improved. PDM and similar tools have been known as tools difficult to acquire, use, update, or replace. They have also had problems with scalability and compatibility. The newest trend of using middleware and component-based technologies such as J2EE, .NET, or CORBA, and associated distributed architectures, solves many of these problems. The applications are built in a standard way, and they are easier to integrate, more flexible and scalable, and most importantly significantly more user friendly.

Integration with SCM tools is still not a primary focus for PDM systems vendors. Even if we do find certain integrations, the awareness of software development in the PDM world is still low. We can, however, expect that the use of standard technologies will make it simpler to integrate these tools and in this way favor their use in combination.

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