Shashlik with Oleg Shilovitsky

Today, in Raanana, Israel, I met Oleg Shilovitsky. We ate several types of shashliks/kebabs and discussed some issues of mutual interest. Among them (the issues, not shashliks): semantic methods in data management, prospects of PTC, Autodesk, DS, ASCON, TopSystems, what are chances of SolidEdge, business of Inforbix, business of LEDAS, iPhone-4, Twitter, COFES, isicad, and many other.  

Our conclusion: life is hard but very interesting. 

Just our thoughts:) 

Inforbix Demonstrates Product Data Application to Deal with Diverse Data Sources and Formats

First announced in Nov 2010, Inforbix, a new player in the product data management field, recently entered into new phase of its business. The company ran Beta testing program, refreshed website and published new videos. isicad.net contacted Oleg Shilovitsky, Inforbix CEO and founder, who kindly agreed to answer our questions. Here are some of them:

• You have a strong PDM background: previous ten years you worked at SmarTeam. What advantages gave it to your new business?
• Inforbix develops a cloud-based product data search, right? Do you plan to extend your technology with other PDM functions - data management, collaboration, CAD integration, revision management?
• Your technology is based on automatic gathering of meta-data from product data files. What CAD file formats do you support?
• Do you plan to retrieve product data from PDM systems or only from file system?
• Do you plan to be a SaaS provider - or you will provide only software? What sales channels do you use?

See a full interview with 11 Q&A illustrated by 4 nice videos. 

Inforbix to Integrate Tech Skills of DS and Sales Experience of Autodesk

Inforbix has just announced that Vic Sanchez joined the company management team as COO. From April 2000 to Oct 2004 Vic was the Managing Director and VP Sales of Autodesk EMEA. This probably means that Inforbix is approaching the stage of unveiling and active distribution its products and solutions.

An US based company, Inforbix was quite recently established by Oleg Shilovitsky (CEO) together with Anatoly Savin (CIO). To characterize what is Inforbix, I use an extended version of the title of my post presenting the new company "Oleg Shilovitsky unveils his Inforbix to technologically arrange and maintain efficiently operable mixtures of chaotic product data"(this formulae is my own interpretation of what Inforbix is doing!).

As the Inforbix web site says, Oleg has spent his last 11 years working for Smart Solutions, SmarTeam, Enovia, Dassault Systems. Over these years, Oleg held various positions in R&D group and company management. Most recently he was ENOVIA SmarTeam Chief Technology Officer. Earlier, Oleg has been involved in distribution and development of Autodesk-based software in Israel.

Oleg is also well-known as a popular blogger and PLM guru, see his blog Beyond PLM.

For several recent years, Oleg has been an active participant of the COFES conferences in Arizona, in Moscow, and in Tel-Aviv. As you can see from the picture above (presenting a section of the COFES 2011 sponsors), Oleg's personal activeness will at COFES 2011 be drastically combined with the involvement of his company.

Oleg Shilovitsky unveils his Inforbix to arrange and maintain mixtures of chaotic product data

Thanks to my Siberian time difference I have an unusual chance to publish this news before Deelip Menezes:). And probably - before Oleg himself.

The new company is Inforbix.

Note that

- Oleg have been working for 10+ as a key technological specialist at DS/Smarteam,

- approximately the same competence has Vadik Vaksin - the chief developer of a new company,

- Oleg's co-founder is Anatoly Savin - a very experienced expert and businessman,

- among the advisors we can see Brad Holtz.

Therefore probably we will not wait 20 years:) to see a revolution in processing of product data.

Well, I invested all available early morning resources into my more or less detailed Russian post. here I just want to congratulate Oleg, his partners, and (future) customers.

This is a summary Oleg gave to me:

"1. Product data are located in many "data sources" in an organization (CAD files, Excel, databases, enterprise systems-PLM, ERP,CRM...)

2. Product data belongs to different "functional domains" - sales, marketing, engineering, manufacturing, support etc.

3. We want to provide an easy way to retrieve product data in a meaningful way, which means:

-- combine pieces of information coming from multiple places

-- search across multiple data sources

-- allows navigation between connected pieces of data (i.e. 3D CAD, Excel with BOM, 2D drawing in manufacturing, emailmentioning, BOM in PLM, sales order, support request in CRM)

-- allow slice & dice data in different forms - mashup data (i.e tables).

Our current phase is "design partnership". We work with design partners. For the moment, we are not saying names. We plan to provide this information later. We are looking for additional design partners (there is a form to submit on the website). We have few candidates inthe pipeline. The next phase will be a beta version. You can mention that system will be available first on cloud with additional components installed inside of company network.

We want to avoid two potential misinterpretation of what we do:

- This is NOT yet another "search system"

- This is NOT yet another "PLM"

PLM Think Tank and Beyond PLM will continue to be industry blogs completely independent of Inforbix and everything I will write on Beyond PLM / PLM Think Tank is my opinion and not represents my employment in Inforbix".