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.

First, I apologize for the long silence on our blog. We’ve been busy — Vuuch is going places fast and I am sure you all know how time flies when you are having fun. Still, we shouldn’t have been quiescent on the blog for so long. I’ll try better.

Vuuch 4.0…foster[s] social interaction between extended product development teams and partners, providing access to key deliverables and communications around projects in a manner similar to what you might see on Facebook. However, unlike Facebook [...]]]> Beth Stackpole, writing for designnews.com, has covered the launch of Vuuch 4.0. Here’s my favorite section of the story:

Vuuch 4.0…foster[s] social interaction between extended product development teams and partners, providing access to key deliverables and communications around projects in a manner similar to what you might see on Facebook. However, unlike Facebook or conventional social networks, Vuuch technology “knows” the product and what people are connected to the product and deliverables, therefore it serves up relevant information and discussions in the context of the product as opposed to conventional and consumer-oriented social networks that can flood people with information and material that is often irrelevant.

The whole team here at Vuuch wants to express our gratitude to our customers, who have designed many of the new capabilities in Vuuch 4.0 [...]]]> A new release of Vuuch, Vuuch 4.0, is now available. Because Vuuch is SaaS, current customers can take advantage of the new features that are detailed in the attached press release immediately.

The whole team here at Vuuch wants to express our gratitude to our customers, who have designed many of the new capabilities in Vuuch 4.0 and who have allowed us to work with them to implement these exciting new features.

Attached to this post is a recording of a webinar originally presented on December 2, 2010 detailing how SolidWorks can become the source of social system activity across the enterprise. The webinar, about an hour in length, details Vuuch social technology for product development, including the first-ever public demonstration [...]]]>

Attached to this post is a recording of a webinar originally presented on December 2, 2010 detailing how SolidWorks can become the source of social system activity across the enterprise. The webinar, about an hour in length, details Vuuch social technology for product development, including the first-ever public demonstration of a new feature in Vuuch 3.5: import of an entire SolidWorks assembly directly into the social system.

We had a blast presenting this and hope you will enjoy seeing it if you missed the live presentation and/or reviewing it.

All file formats contain the same content; they differ only in codec and size, with the .avi being the largest, the .m4v in the middle and the .wmv the smallest. The last file attached to this post is a PDF of the slides presented in the overview.

In a recent blog post titled “Do we really need structured workflows if we have visibility and status?” Christine Longwell writes, “One of the major objections to implementing a PLM system is that it is going to tie a creative organization into a structured workflow that can [...]]]>

In a recent blog post titled “Do we really need structured workflows if we have visibility and status?” Christine Longwell writes, “One of the major objections to implementing a PLM system is that it is going to tie a creative organization into a structured workflow that can slow down their process and ability to react.”

Computers are machines that do exactly and precisely what their programming tells them to do. They aren’t flexible; they aren’t responsive to changing conditions. Situations the developers don’t anticipate are impossible to manage using the software and, sometimes, can even crash it. This means that PLM software that attempts to automate workflow must “choose” in advance what to understand and support. It can automate only what it knows about. Its “workflow” is a simply series of pre-determined choices. To allow for the largest possible number of pre-programmed possibilities, developers model intricate cases or permit scripting of the PLM system. But at the end of the day, PLM “workflow” is like a trolley: the destination is wherever the tracks have been laid. As long as your team’s destination matches where the trolley is going — and you can stand the ride — all might be well.

Unfortunately, this is the antithesis of what teamwork is about. Teams do not work on linear paths. They go back and forth. They go sideways. They debate and diverge. They revisit decisions in light of new information or requirements. Teams, because they are collections of human beings, are infinitely flexible. They often must go “off the tracks” to solve a problem or tackle an issue. The bottom line is that trying to automate the ebb and flow of teamwork in a PLM system is fundamentally quixotic. Pre-coded PLM “workflows” and real teamwork are oil and water: they just don’t mix well.

End users intuitively understand the limitations of PLM “workflow.” They “feel in their bones” that PLM imposes limitations that will impede creativity. This unease is what Christine is talking about in her blog post. And it’s why users outside R&D steadfastly refuse to use PLM tools. So, PLM systems end up being used for what they are actually good at: “cold-storage” of the final decisions the team has made. But the “messy,”  human process of arriving at those decisions is not stored anywhere. And so the actual design intent, along with all the history of how a decision was made, is lost.

But let’s rethink the problem of using computers for teamwork: if we can’t pre-program a computer to handle the entire universe of workflows that a product team may need, what could we have a computer do for that team? What is a computer really good at that would enable teams to do what they want, how they want to do it?

It’s a shockingly simple answer: computers are good at managing lists. And how do product development teams want to manage their work? They want to list things.

Wikipedia points out that linked lists “…provide an easy implementation for several important abstract data structures…” There’s no news here. Consider your own personal life. It revolves around the power of lists. We list our to-do’s and grocery lists. We have “TV listings” and “top-ten lists” of all kinds. We list the best- and worst-dressed people. We make lists of things we want for holiday gifts. We list and list and list. And because lists are so important to us as individuals, it’s a natural, shared metaphor used by teams to manage their work. After all, nobody has to explain to a new team member what a list is and how a list works.

The intersection of lists and the power of computers to manage them doesn’t mean that we should all use Excel or Notepad all the time. Far from it. But it does mean that any software that attempts to support product development workflows must have a list metaphor at the heart of its design. Rules, steps and states…all the things PLM “workflow” says are useful for teamwork…are as unnatural as the four-armed man at the carnival. This is the obvious truth Christine has blogged about: structured workflow, as classically implemented in PLM, can never be a natural teamwork metaphor.

In a future blog post, I will explain how Vuuch enhances lists with social technology to implement a social system that works the way teams expect it to instead of demanding they change what they do.