At Inforbix, we maintain very close working relationships with our future end-users (e.g. design partners & beta customers) and the industry community at large. A frequent topic of discussion we have with them is how to describe what Inforbix does in simple and straightforward words. This blog has the same intent. To help our readers understand not only what Inforbix is, but how it works. And btw, thank you for your comments and emails, please keep them coming. We always appreciate your thoughts and views.
Over the last six months, we’ve been presenting Inforbix to many people (e.g. end users, industry watchers, analysts, and software vendors). What struck us is how consistent one particular analogy kept being mentioned when they described Inforbix in their own words. The analogy we often hear is: Inforbix is next generation Product Data Management (PDM), without Management.
It is easy for engineers to create product data by using CAD and other tools. But… guess what? Nobody likes (or wants) to manage data. Moreover, most people in manufacturing companies, especially small to mid-sized ones, simply want to find, re-use, and share up-to-date product data. They don’t want to invest time or money managing data… many of course do, but as we’re learning, many wish there was an alternative to managing data.
Inforbix’s technology collects product data information by crawling and indexing different sources of product data (CAD files, Excels, PDF, etc.). It links these disparate sources of product data together (and infers data relationships) without the need of databases or peoples’ involvement. By doing so, it solves the original problems that were targeted by PDM years ago:
- finding product data
- re-using product data
- sharing up-to-date product data
I want to quote something I caught on Solidsmack blog:
So, I’ve used Inforbix. I’ve done searches with it. I found data and sorted it this way and that. Ultimately, the goal was to find the information and use it. I thought, ‘This does the same thing as the search I use in a PDM program.’ I was wrong. Everyday I use PDM to carry out my search for relevant information. I insert a document into PDM, and from then on, it can be found via a search. Inforbix search, however, takes the opposite approach. You don’t put anything into it. It pushes everything to you. It crawls everything (you want it to) and makes it accessible.
Here’s my conclusion. Inforbix offers a new technology to simplify access to product data located in disparate sources – files, databases, PLM, PDM, CRM, ERP. It addresses and solves some of data problems PDM was originally targeted to go after – find, re-use and share product data. But it does so in a fundamentally different fashion. It is why people refer to Inforbix as “next generation data management solution” or “PDM without the management”. PDM is more focusing on control and changes of data. Inforbix allows you a ubiquitous way to consume data by all people in an organization. The combination of both can be interesting. Learn more by signing up for our Beta program.
Best, Oleg
