Occasionally, we record the webinar for the convenience of customers in time zones distant from the east coast of the US and for those who want [...]]]> As you may know, we present a live webinar every week at noon ET. You can always sign up for the next week’s webinar by visiting http://www.vuuch.com/webinar.

Occasionally, we record the webinar for the convenience of customers in time zones distant from the east coast of the US and for those who want to be able to stop and start the demonstrations. We also vary the content fairly often, so there’s usually something new in each webinar.

Today, we presented a webinar I thought had some excellent questions from the audience and in which we showed Vuuch 4.5 running in the cloud (check out the performance of the system in the demo. It screams!)

We hope you enjoy this webinar recording. Also, please note we are always happy to schedule a live webinar at convenient time for you. Just fill in our contact form and we’ll get right back to you.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Well, [...]]]> Some people believe that generational shifts mean that email has peaked as a communications medium. After all, even grandma now has Gmail, doesn’t she? Social networks mean that a new generation is used to their friends’ activity streams, further obviating email. The handwriting is on the wall for an eventual decline in email, right?

Well, maybe. Our experience is that in businesses, email still reigns supreme as the only non-specific application for many different processes, from sales to product development. Email is prized for its immediacy and the fact that it can do what the sender wants it to: one moment it is about a party; the next about a customer question. Try that with Windchill, SAP, Oracle or ENOVIA.

In Vuuch, we have always understood the crucial role email plays in product development, both inside the department and as a way of interacting with other departments in the company. In this post, I present a series of annotated screen shots to show you how Vuuch both embraces and extends email. A Vuuch email is jam-packed with useful information.

Consider this message, which is an invitation to participate in a Vuuch discussion. Notice how compactly and efficiently the information is delivered – linking this person to the social system while respecting their “inbox time.”

A Vuuch email invitation (click to enlarge)

1. The “From” address tells you who sent the message, of course, but also lets you know that this person has decided an issue, task, or discussion is important enough to track in Vuuch. IOW, this email isn’t about the office Xmas party — it’s about something the team is working on and the sender has decided you should be part of the team working on this issue or deliverable.
2. There are three important elements in the subject line. To the left of the “|” is the name of the item that is being tracked in Vuuch — in this case a plastic button on an electronic device. To the right of the “|” is the name of the Vuuch activity that you are being invited to participate in. Here, there’s apparently a problem with a vendor who makes the button. Third, in parentheses, you will see what has happened to this topic in Vuuch. In this case, since you are being invited, this is your initial notification. Other things you’ll see here include “reply,” meaning someone has added their comments and “archived” meaning that this topic or issue has been resolved.
3. Just in case you missed it in the subject line, this email repeats the name of the page this activity is on. Even better, because there are good reasons to track an activity in different places, if this vendor issue is also on other Vuuch pages, you’ll see them listed here, too.
4. Suppose you have just come back from a meeting and now know that the button color has to change. That’s a different issue than the vendor problem, but still related  to the button. Just click here to go to the web to start a discussion about this new issue.
5. Here are the other people who have been invited to participate. You can always know who you are interacting with by checking here. Notice that “marketing” (me in this case) is also on the list. You know how some people never learned about “reply all” and sometimes leave out important people in an email discussion? Vuuch never lets that happen.
6. Finally, you can look at the whole discussion up to this point by clicking on the first link or you can use email to participate in the discussion just by hitting reply in the email.

Keeping up-to-date on Vuuch activities in email (click to enlarge)

1. Now, email will help you stay up-to-date on everything happening with the vendor issue on our plastic button. Every time anyone working on the vendor issue updates this activity, you’ll know about it instantly. Here, we see that a reply has been added to the discussion in which the designer tells us he was able to overcome whatever issues he was having with the vendor and that he’s been able to satisfy a marketing requirement, to boot.

Using email to participate in Vuuch discussions (click to enlarge)

1. Finally, as we noted above you don’t necessarily ever have to leave Vuuch to fully participate in the social system. I am a marketing manager who prefers using email. So, I decide to thank the development team for resolving this important issue by simply replying to the message from Vuuch. When you click “reply” on a Vuuch message, you can see it goes to a special address at the Vuuch server. Enter the text you want, then, just before you hit send…
2. …check to make sure you want everyone in the list to see what you are saying, then simply send the message. In a minute or two, Vuuch will append your comment to the full discussion. No more dragging messages to folders to organize them: Vuuch automatically does this for you.

Cool, isn’t it? Vuuch has taken a mundane, hard-to-manage but crucial tool — email– and made it better for interacting across departments and in the product development team. Even if the people forecasting that email is dying are right, the people who will hold on to it with their cold, dead fingers will always be welcome in the Vuuch enterprise social system.

It’s not a trick question. The real answer [...]]]> All around us, computing is moving into the cloud.  But what, exactly, is cloud computing? Is it email you access in a browser? The apps you use on your smartphone? A corporate data center? A set of APIs for connecting to computing services? All of these?

It’s not a trick question. The real answer is the definition of cloud computing depends on your application. In that sense, cloud computing is just a synonym for a utility,  much like an electric utility or wire-line telephone company.

However, there are some things that vary markedly based on how you apply the utility computing. Security is a primary concern and top’s everyone’s list of questions about cloud computing.

In the first Vuuch white paper (I hope to have more soon), we describe how Vuuch was designed and architected to leverage cloud computing with security in mind from the start. In fact, this paper actually makes the assertion that compared to email — and its potential for social engineering attacks and “weaponized” email — Vuuch is actually more secure than what many development teams are doing today with their shared intellectual property.

We are very interested in your reactions to this white paper. I would very much appreciate any comments you might make here, on your blog or directly to me at alex@vuuch.com.

Update June 17, 2011:

In our white paper, we talk about how Amazon EC2 delivers additional security to Vuuch. I though readers might be interested in the details of EC2′s approach to security. This PDF on EC2 security is fascinating reading. I think it makes the case that running on a world-class cloud infrastructure offers better operational and system security than many large enterprises (think Sony — or even RSA) build into their own systems

It’s just a single letter, but what a difference it makes. With the power to block unintentional leaks and intrusions while you’re online, that letter could mean the difference between compromised IP [...]]]> Commenting on the release of Vuuch 4.5, Kenneth Wong writes in his Desktop Engineering blog:

It’s just a single letter, but what a difference it makes. With the power to block unintentional leaks and intrusions while you’re online, that letter could mean the difference between compromised IP and protected IP. I’m talking about the lowercase s that follows the http in a URL.

Kenneth has focused on something hugely important to users: the need to have 100% of their transmissions encrypted, 100% of the time. However, many don’t realize the importance of this requirement.

It wasn’t that long ago that SSL (or, as it should more properly be called, TLS) was something a web server switched a client to only for login, usually to protect a password entry. The logic was that TLS was “expensive” because it required — relative to unencrypted transmissions — a lot of computing power to set up and negotiate. While that may have been true in the early 2000′s, given the period’s computing resources and network capacity, it is certainly not true in the age of gigahertz processors and 4G speeds over the air.

The consequences of not encrypting transmissions have led to things like Firesheep, a Firefox plugin designed to be used in public WiFi hotspots that can hijack Facebook and other common applications. (Please do not do something important at Starbucks unless it’s over Vuuch or you are using a VPN.) Because the Internet was never designed to be secure, unless the application you are communicating with takes security seriously (which Facebook of course does not), users are exposed in ways that are subtle, but extraordinarily dangerous, as Firesheep so chillingly demonstrates.

On the other hand, for the “price” of forcing a 100% TLS connection all the time, an application ensures that as long as the certificates are valid in the browser, that anyone intercepting communications (a “man in the middle” attacks) will see randomness in the captured packets. And that randomness will be so impervious to even brute force attacks that it’s impractical to try to decrypt the communications. Plus, TLS provides authentication so users know they are communicating with the server they intended to access.

We are very pleased that Kenneth chose to focus on this aspect of Vuuch 4.5. Personally, I think it’s something that’s not only important to the growing base of Vuuch users — it’s something we should demand of all our providers. 100% SSL (TLS) all time: look for it in Vuuch and your other applications.

…The real problem is the CAD-based work processes to which most product development slavishly clings. Vuuch requires potential users to think outside the box about their product development methods.

We have been [...]]]> Writing about the release of Vuuch 4.5, GraphicSpeak pinpoints the real issue preventing product development teams from improving their core processes:

…The real problem is the CAD-based work processes to which most product development slavishly clings. Vuuch requires potential users to think outside the box about their product development methods.

We have been on the soapbox for some time that legacy “collaboration” solutions in which PLM systems simply bolt on SharePoint simply cannot work. Now that PTC has thrown in the towel on just such a misadventure, we believe the time for true social technology has arrived.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Sign up for a Vuuch trial today if you aren’t already using Vuuch.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Vuuch 4.5 Enterprise Social System Announced
New Release Offers Enhanced Security, Performance and
Usability Improvements

Sudbury, MA, June 6, 2011 – Vuuch, creator of the first enterprise social system (ESS) for manufacturers, today announced the availability of Vuuch™ 4.5. Like the conductor of an orchestra, Vuuch social technology allows all the various parts of a company to work together better. Vuuch delivers numerous benefits to product development teams, as well as across the enterprise, including improved time-to-market, reduction of risk in product development projects and better innovation for both current and future products.

“Many enterprises used to deal with complexity and risk in product development projects by using program coordinators – people whose jobs consisted of ‘chasing down’ the numerous people and things that a project manager needed to deliver a product on time,” said Chris Williams, CEO, Vuuch. “Today’s leaner companies have mostly eliminated this role and distributed those functions directly to individuals. This has enormously complicated the process for everyone involved. Vuuch 4.5 addresses the chaos that reigns in many projects with an easy-to-use, easy-to-deploy, affordable system. And because using Vuuch is easy and even fun, team members will use it willingly. That contributes to better products, sooner.”

New and improved features in Vuuch 4.5

Performance, scalability and security enhancements. Vuuch 4.5 now runs on Amazon Web Services’™ Elastic Compute Cloud ™ (EC2™) cloud computing platform. With this

migration to EC2, Vuuch offers users enhanced performance, almost limitless scalability, significantly improved reliability and increased operational security. As a result, Vuuch users can expand Vuuch usage across their enterprises and around the world with the confidence that Vuuch will match their stringent performance expectations.

Vuuch 4.5 also now encrypts all data transmission to and from users’ browsers and to and from Vuuch plug-ins using the Secure Sockets Layer specification (SSL, also known as TLS or Transport Layer Security). The Vuuch server will negotiate the strongest possible encryption cipher with browsers for each session, up to and including AES 256-bit encryption. Users who attempt to connect to Vuuch 4.5 using a non-encrypted session are immediately redirected to a secure session. Vuuch 4.5 makes it possible for users to deal with important intellectual property issues in the product development process with the knowledge that it would take decades – if not centuries – for a man-in-the-middle attack to decrypt communications between Vuuch clients and the Vuuch 4.5 server.

Click to enlarge

Another benefit of this change is that users can also verify that their browser has connected to the real Vuuch 4.5 server by checking their browser’s address bar. Browsers vary in the way they present authenticated sites to users in the address bar, but all modern browsers indicate a secure, authenticated connection in some way in the address bar. Now, with a quick visual check users can be certain they are communicating with Vuuch 4.5 and not a “phishing” or malware imposter.

New functionality and usability enhancements in Vuuch 4.5

Vuuch 4.5 offers many new and improved capabilities that streamline the project management and product development processes, including:

A new Home page with activity streams and RSS feed capability. Vuuch 4.5 features a redesigned home page that now offers an activity stream. The Vuuch 4.5 activity stream is a time-ordered list of changes to the projects and deliverables the user is involved with.

Click to enlarge

Unlike consumer social networking sites and their business-targeted clones, Vuuch 4.5 activity streams are specific to the projects and people that the user is currently working with. By “narrowing the focus” to just the things the user cares about, Vuuch 4.5 eliminates the need for users to manually filter the social system’s content to get value from it.

Starting with Vuuch 4.5, users are able to take advantage of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to have Vuuch events sent to any RSS-capable client.

As shown here in the Pulse RSS reader for iPhone® (Android® and iPad® versions are also available), Vuuch 4.5’s RSS capability delivers a new level of real-time awareness to the project team. Vuuch 4.5 offers multiple RSS feeds, including feeds for specific deliverables and for product structures.

Click to enlarge

Improved end user access and functionality. Vuuch 4.5 offers users many new ways to interact with each other and the team to reduce project risk and coordinate product development. Now, users may attach any kind of content to a Vuuch page, enabling a “social collection” of all content about a specific deliverable, including notes, files, links and who is or has been involved with that deliverable.

Email – a crucial part of team interaction and a way to include suppliers and customers in projects – has been used in Vuuch for notification and to permit replies to be added to activities. In Vuuch 4.5, the email format and text has been streamlined to make it easier to tell at a glance which part of the project the message relates to.

Vuuch pages – the social collector of things the team cares about during a project – can now be archived. Vuuch 4.5 page archiving allows the team to avoid visual clutter while permitting the process improvement from previous projects to be applied to subsequent projects by simply recalling the archived pages.

Vuuch 4.5 can now help users connect with each other across the enterprise by suggesting potential contacts. Based on its understanding of the social nexus – that is, who is working with whom on which products – Vuuch can actually suggest additional users who might help make a product better or resolve an issue faster.

“Social platforms originated based on the recognition that people — customers, employees, business partners, and suppliers — emerge as the most valuable assets to business and require informal, unstructured and easy-to-use communication tools that scale beyond a team for enhanced productivity,” said Sanjeev Pal, research manager, Product, Project and Portfolio Management Solutions,  IDC Manufacturing Insights. “To realize the real benefits of social computing, PLM end users need to adopt a specialized social platform that provides task-oriented, structured innovation and follows the various processes involved in the life-cycle management process.”

Pricing, availability and supported systems
Vuuch is available as an annual subscription. Users who create Vuuch pages and activities require a paid license. Other users may update pages and activities without a paid license. Pricing is $300 per year per Vuuch creation subscription.

Vuuch 4.5 runs in the cloud, so there is no installation or setup needed. The Vuuch 4.5 web application supports major browsers, including Microsoft® Internet Explorer®, Mozilla Firefox® and Google® Chrome®. The Vuuch web application also supports Apple® iPhone, iPad and iPod touch mobile browsers. Optional Vuuch add-ins allow team members to access the Vuuch enterprise social system directly from within Microsoft Office® 2007, SpaceClaim™, SolidWorks®, Autodesk® AutoCAD®, Autodesk Inventor® and Pro/ENGINEER®.

About Vuuch
Vuuch (www.vuuch.com), the first enterprise social system (ESS) for manufacturers, is revolutionizing the way products are developed. Vuuch’s social software is the only manufacturing-specific social technology that connects product development teams together with their deliverables, cutting time-to-market and the cost of developing products while improving quality and innovation. Founded in 2009 by a team of CAD and PLM industry veterans, Vuuch’s people-centric PLM capabilities offer manufacturers a new way to improve productivity that is compatible with existing investments in CAD, PLM and desktop applications. Vuuch is privately-held and based in Sudbury, MA.

###

Contact:
Alex Neihaus
alex@vuuch.com
+1 617 500 8100 x103

Vuuch is a trademark of SRD Systems, Inc. All other company and product names are the property of their respective owners.

Our new office is located in the bucolic farm area where Sudbury and historic Concord, Mass. meet. Our [...]]]>

Click to enlarge

I am very pleased to announce that Vuuch has moved offices to 144 North Road in Sudbury, MA. We’re moving up in the world thanks to the growing success of Vuuch with our customers.

Our new office is located in the bucolic farm area where Sudbury and historic Concord, Mass. meet. Our neighbors include a holistic health center, a daycare center and — get ready for this — a hush hush neighbor. I don’t think I should tell you who it is, but it does have a code name: CSI:Vuuch. Email me if you can’t stand a mystery and I’ll be happy to tell you who this neighbor is.

Better yet, come see us. It’s worth the trip. We can meet for lunch in Concord Center or if you are a real foodie, you can get something very fresh from the famous Verrill Farm. Both are just minutes from our office. This time of year, New England is spectacular, but if you can pick your time to visit, come in October when our neighborhood will be at the peak of fall colors. This part of New England will be on fire with fall colors.

We didn’t miss a beat in our office move. We leased an office with no Ethernet connections in the walls. Because being capital efficient is in our DNA, CEO Chris Williams volunteered to wire the office. The photo you see here is Chris and David taking a break from setting up the office to consult with a customer about their implementation of Vuuch. Imagine if you will what it’s like to fish cable through the walls one minute then in the next help a customer with Vuuch. Then right back to punching down that cable and testing it for connectivity.

That’s what the day was like — and that’s what Vuuch is like. We’re geeks. We breathe technology. And we get our hands dirty so your product development team doesn’t have to.

We are (obviously) true believers in Vuuch. That’s useful because in the beginning of any [...]]]> One of the things startups relish most is analyst coverage. That’s for obvious reasons: what we say about ourselves is one thing; but what others say about new technologies and companies is more important.

We are (obviously) true believers in Vuuch. That’s useful because in the beginning of any major shift in the way technology is used, new ideas run into a wall of market inertia. Sometimes that’s a good thing, as too much change, too fast can decrease productivity and increase costs. But mostly, it’s because inertia can be comforting. So, it’s up to the true believers to convince the market that inertia should be (must be) overcome. Analysts play an out-sized role in identifying and assessing important new technologies and in being a trusted source of which new products are worthy of overcoming inertia.

And so it is with social technology in the PLM world. There are the PLM purists (customers and analysts) who think that bolting-on a legacy collaboration system like SharePoint solves the problem of team interaction. At the opposite extreme are those (usually from outside the manufacturing world) who believe that anything labelled “social” is perfect for manufacturers who have collectively invested billions in PLM systems.

And then there are people like IDC’s Sanjeev Pal who published a report for IDC’s Manufacturing Insights on Vuuch. IDC clients can download the report — but for those who are not clients, the pull quote on the report page sums up what’s valuable in social technology for PLM users:

To realize the real benefits of social computing, PLM end users need to adopt a specialized social platform that provides task-oriented, structured innovation and follows the various processes involved in the life-cycle management process.

Clearly, we agree with Sanjeev (and we thank him for this astute observation and for taking an interest in Vuuch). But if you think hard about what IDC said, it’s not just about Vuuch — it’s a call to overcome the inertia that so far has prevented PLM users from achieving the full benefits of social technology.

Update July 13, 2011: We have licensed the report from IDC; you can download it here.