Pro/User 1999 Conference

Please note: this newsletter is not the official views of Pro/User, PTC, Sun, or any other organization or company. It is written just to let people who weren't able to attend the conference still learn of some of the activities and events. It can't replace coming to the conference and experiencing it yourself.

Last two years I was able to write daily email reports directly from the conference. Due to engine trouble in Vermont and two cancelled flights, I didn't even arrive this time until the end of the first day. Plus security at the Sun room was extreme, couldn't use a system there after hours. So this year there will be just two issues, this one on change at PTC, then a second over this weekend, details of some of the sessions.

• Major Change at PTC (Continued from 1998)
• Top Ten Reasons Not to Trust PTC
• Dick Harrison Apologizes
• Intralink Stand Down
• A Real Code Freeze
• Legacy Data Changed
• PDM Vendor Record
• Division Group
• CV History of Change
• Attitudes Hardest

Major Change at PTC (Continued from 1998)

Last year's conference newsletter began with the subject, Major Change at PTC. Most of the changes mentioned were acquisitions, purchases. Those are visible changes for any company, but this year the changes seem deeper, PTC itself beginning to change, procedures and attitudes beginning to change. That seems essential if PTC is to achieve the goal Dick mentioned last year of being an enterprise data management company.

Top Ten Reasons Not to Trust PTC

As an example of the need for PTC to change, before Dick Harrison even gave his PTC overview talk, he had to hear a list read out of Top Ten Reasons Not to Trust PTC. Because of my engine trouble in Vermont, I wasn't there to record this list. But Tuesday another list was read out of another top ten reasons not to trust PTC, right before the PTC Management Panel session. Here it is:

10. "Bugs that were fixed in a previous release will not reappear in the next release".

9. "When you get an error message that your drawing view has lost its references, it's all your fault".

8. "PTC follows Microsoft Windows design specifications".

7. "An Undo function will be provided in the near future".

6. "R20 documentaion is not in print, please consult the on-line doc".

5. "This problem is not a SPR (bug), but just intended functionality".

4. "Select 1 to leave a voice message, and get a call back within 2 hours".

3. "Pro/E will cost you little money, and is easy to learn".

2. "New functionality in existing modules will be provided at no extra charge".

and finally:

1. "PTC sales representatives are not arrogant or concerned with end of quarter figures, they just know what's best for you".

These quotes obviously reflect some individual experience and opinions, but probably shouldn't be difficult for most current PTC customers to understand the feelings.

To be an enterprise level data management company it seems PTC has to change those feelings among its own customers at least. Usually the people who buy enterprise data management software at companies are quite conservative, they expect to trust their key vendors, they aren't going to joke about top 10 lists. And they don't want scepticism and doubt and distrust when they select a vendor to trust with the enterprise data.

That's a hard job, to change feelings, but it can be done, companies do it, over time. Key probably is concrete visible facts indicating change. And there were some facts visible at the conference, evidence of change beginning to take place. Substantial change at a company the size of PTC probably takes a few years, but next year's top 10 list might be a little different.

Dick Harrison Apologizes

Dick Harrison apologized in his talk, said he was sorry that Intralink was released too early. Now that's an indication of change, nothing in that top 10 list above indicates that you'd expect a PTC representative to say they are sorry.

But everyone makes mistakes, companies and individuals. And there's not much hope of change from past behaviour if they do not acknowledge the mistakes and their effect on others, customers in particular. For the CEO to say he's sorry is probably a good sign, that's what companies do when they face up to mistakes. However, you might wait for your PTC sales rep. to start saying they are sorry for this or that mistake of their own, before you assume the CEO's attitude has filtered down through the organization.

Intralink Stand Down

Here's a real fact, a sign of internal change.

In the military, when accidents are increasing, like aircraft accidents, commanders can order a stand down. In a stand down, all normal activities halt, and everyone involved stands back and takes a look and tries to understand how they themselves may have contributed to the problem. It's an extreme measure.

So apparently the Intralink development team did a stand down. Not for a day or a week, but 12 weeks---almost 3 months. That's very extreme, it meant probably a 3 month delay in all Intralink schedules and deliverables. But obviously from what Dick said about Intralink, management realized there were substantial problems not being addressed in the usual way, and a stand down was needed.

That's probably what many PTC customers would have liked to see a long time ago: a major emphasis on quality before schedule. Most CAD users (SDRC, Unigraphics, Pro/E, CATIA, etc.) have for some time had complaints about schedule being placed before quality. If PTC can sustain quality above schedule, they should be much better placed for that data management market.

A Real Code Freeze

Another sign of internal change is this story: a senior development team submitted a major piece of new code to be included in Pro/E 2000i at the last minute---and were denied, their submission was refused.

The way this story was told suggests that last minute submissions of code into new releases has been customary at PTC. And this denial, this refusal, was remarkable. That probably does match well the experience of many users. For example, people who faithfully tested Pre-Production R20, and then found the production release visibly different. Probably then it was those last minute submissions that made the difference.

One single denial probably won't fix years of last minute habits, but it certainly sends out a message that change is needed and will be supported.

Both the Intralink stand down and the 2000i code freeze were just mentioned incidentally in sessions, even accidentally. If PTC is to get credit for changing (or even just trying to change, that's important too), PTC might makes such events more public, which can in turn reinforce and encourage internal forces for change.

Legacy Data Changed

Used to be when you heard a PTC representative talk of "legacy data", they meant anything that wasn't Pro/E. Computervision and Unigraphics and SDRC and CATIA and every other CAD package were all "legacy data". Suggestion seemed to be they were all destined for the dustbin of history. Sort of a holy war, Pro/E on one side, and legacy data (everyone else) on the other side.

Thinking to trap a PTC rep. in the exhibit hall, I asked if CV was still legacy data, now that PTC owns CV. And he said no. Then he added that Unigraphics and SDRC and CATIA and the other packages weren't necessarily legacy data either. He said that legacy data was just any CAD data, from any system, that you were not currently using.

I was surprised by that reasonable definition, no hint of a holy war there. But he surprised me even more, by saying that Pro/E data could itself be legacy data. If you have Pro/E data stored, that you're not currently using, that's legacy data.

Well, that looks like a pretty mature view of the CAD market, and how companies use different CAD systems. Any CAD data, Pro/E included, can be legacy data. That is acknowledging that Pro/E is one of a variety of alternatives. True, the old Pro/E crusader zeal, us vs. everyone else, was stimulating at times. But it probably was just too dogmatic and one-sided to endure since the world is usually more ambiguous.

And, of course, this kind of change, a new interpretation of legacy data, isn't going to happen to all of PTC all at once. You could still find your sales rep. still using the old definition a year or more from now. And there's still the Pro/Legacy package in the product list, which obviously uses legacy in the old sense too---everyone else, everything that's not Pro/E, all the rest of the CAD world.

PDM Vendor Record

Just as an illustration of some of the tasks at PTC, imagine that PTC was just a data management vendor (forget Pro/E), about 5 years old now. They've brought out two products, Pro/PDM and Pro/Intralink.

Question is: with those two products, Pro/PDM with the proprietary database, and Pro/Intralink released before its time---would PTC still be in business now as a data management vendor?

Seems the answer is, probably not. And that's an indication of the change needed at PTC to become a viable data management vendor. The Pro/PDM proprietary database probably isn't an issue any more, but the question of schedule vs. quality which has followed Intralink has to be still a problem. Not a simple one to fix either, years of habit. A problem of course that every hi-tech company has to face too.

Division Group

Here's a different kind of problem, Division. PTC bought up Division last year (after Division had just merged with ObjectLogic). Now Division had nicely positioned itself right in the middle of all the CAD vendors, a sort of universal visualization tool, so you could see all your Pro/E and CV and UG and CATIA and SDRC parts in one single assembly (assuming you were lucky enough to be using 5 different CAD systems at once).

Some very large PTC customers were looking to buy Division just because of those generic visualization capabilities. You don't have to be using 5 CAD systems yourself to appreciate a tool that lets you view in work from other systems easily in one context. But these large customers are concerned now that under PTC Division might just become another PTC product, and lose the generic capabilities.

PTC has it seems recognized Division's special status: Division is being called "the Division Group", and people there still have a division.com email, and the PTC home page still calls the unit Division, Inc. But just names doesn't seem to be enough reassurance that Division will be still placed in the middle of the CAD vendors, instead of solidly in the PTC camp. At the conference, PTC reps talked of future special ties between Division and other PTC products, which sounds like bringing Division into the PTC camp. It's a problem, Division, no easy solution.

CV History of Change

Computervision underwent the same change that PTC wants to undergo, from a CAD vendor to a data management vendor. CV was probably partly at least inspired by the fact that their CAD product, CADDS5, wasn't as competitive as Pro/E for many customers, so CV was looking for another product line.

But still it took CV about 5 years to make that change, from perhaps 1987 to about 1992. To develop skills, and even more to understand the data management market, to start talking like a data management vendor (Electronic Product Definition was the CV phrase).

And CV had its own data management tool too, Optegra. And Optegra took about 10 years of development to reach accepted maturity, from about 1984 to about 1994. Strange, seems it takes most data management tools and most CAD tools equally about 10 years to reach maturity. You'd think over time that period would get shorter for newer tools, but then expectations increase too over time, so perhaps the 10 year period remains constant.

Just buying up Computervision doesn't probably shorten the time for PTC to become an enterprise data management company, or the time to get Windchill mature. Some things can't be hurried: in a different context, PTC did acknowledge at the conference that the transition of PTC customers under $10mil in revenues to Rand Technologies support was "too fast". So the CV data management history could very well be the PTC future story too: five years to become a data management company, ten years to develop mature data management tools.

Attitudes Hardest

Managers can make some changes by executive action. But some of the hardest changes have to be attitudes, like the famous traditional PTC arrogance, well illustrated in the top 10 list. Data management customers look for data management vendors to be somewhat neutral about the data itself and the data content: people buy data management systems to store and manage all kinds of data. And arrogance doesn't seem to go well with neutrality, or even with just understanding customers.

In the Management Panel session, one question began this way:

"PTC appears to have conflicting groups working on data management products ..."

And the initial reply from a senior PTC Vice-President was this:

"That's wrong!"

He did go on to say more. But to deny someone their perceptions, to say that what they see, how things appear to them, is just wrong, would probably be accepted by most PTC customers as arrogance.

Now Dick Harrison would probably have answered the same question differently, he might even have said he was sorry for the impression of conflicting groups. And that would probably have been a better way to answer the question, a way that invites understanding rather than rejecting it.

There might be conflicting approaches and attitudes at PTC for some time. No group of several thousand people like PTC is going to change all at the same time. In the Management Panel, it was mentioned that sales reps. who don't understand the new company goals will have to be laid off. But sales reps. are usually treated like cannon fodder anyway, they may be even used to that. All the other people in the company who don't understand new goals or don't agree with them can't be laid off too, otherwise you might not have many people left. So they need to be encouraged to change, and supported, and directed, and that's hard to do, will probably take time.