Sep 05 2016
Silos (both company and IT) have long inhibited collaboration in construction. Newforma’s ‘Connector’ strategy seeks to break them down. I recently wrote (16 August: Newforma now playing cloud catch-up?) about Newforma’s Cloud Services initiative, which has seen the vendor expand its extranet-type capabilities, complementing its original core on-premise, behind-the-firewall application. I spoke last Thursday to Newforma CEO …
Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2016/09/newforma-gets-connected/
Jul 15 2016
Last week’s ThinkBIM conference focused on the transition of data from construction to facilities management. FM is getting more involved with BIM from the earliest stages of a project, and will collaborate more frequently during project delivery. The latest ThinkBIM half-day conference (on 6 July at Squire Patton Boggs’ new offices in Leeds, and sponsored …
Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2016/07/collaboration-bim-and-fm/
Mar 21 2016
While Conject reassures its customers, competitors (past and present) react to Aconex’s acquisition of the Europe-based SaaS collaboration vendor. After the 17 March 2016 announcement of Conject‘s acquisition by Aconex, the UK business’s managing director Steve Cooper sought to reassure the company’s SaaS construction collaboration customers and users about the business’s future. In an email (18 March), he …
Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2016/03/aconex-acquires-conject-industry-reacts/
Oct 23 2015
Digital Construction Week 2015 has ended. DCW15 officially opened with a (for some) Guinness-fuelled flourish at a packed Irish Embassy reception on Tuesday evening and petered out at London’s Business Design Centre at 4pm yesterday afternoon. Autumn is a difficult time to run any event – perhaps doubly so for an ambitious new multi-day event and its attempt …
Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2015/10/dwindling-construction-week/
Sep 02 2015
OpenECX and its WebContractor application provides an end-to-end – purchase order to payment – SaaS-based process management platform. The UK construction e-commerce sector isn’t one I’ve looked at that closely, particularly when it comes to managing buyer/supplier financial transactions between construction businesses. I have tended only to give it a brief mention if it involves a …
Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2015/09/openecx-targeting-subcontractors/
May 15 2015
Following its late 2014 management buy-out, Reading, UK-based SaaS collaboration vendor Business Collaborator was quick to launch the first version of its building information modelling module. The next iteration, BIM module v1.1, has just been released, promising “data-driven, semantic BIM software to help customers procure, design, construct and maintain assets and infrastructure efficiently”. According to BC’s …
Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2015/05/bc-launch-semantic-bim-1-1/
Feb 16 2015
Delivering BIM in the browser is now part of think project!‘s technology roadmap and it is on track to start its first BIM project in early 2015. Late last year, I had a long conversation with two executives from Munich, Germany’s think project! about its plans to augment its existing Software-as-a-Service collaboration capabilities with building …
Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2015/02/think-project-thinking-bim/
Feb 03 2015
Using social media for customer support is commonplace in many global corporations but old-school construction SaaS vendors lag behind new start-ups in its adoption. Use of social media for customer service has been on my mind a bit recently. Last week, I provided some Twitter training to CIOB branch administrators and one of the questions related to …
Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2015/02/saas-social-support/
Jan 05 2015
Paul Wilkinson dusts off the ExtranetEvolution crystal ball to see what 2015 might bring: more mobile collaboration, BIM-as-a-service and ‘Big Data’, maybe. In the noughties, I wrote several New Year blog posts with predictions about SaaS and collaboration in the coming year. In January 2008, for example, I predicted: Further polarisation of the UK construction collaboration …
Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2015/01/more-mobile-bimaas-big-data-and-ma/
Dec 08 2014
Newly independent Business Collaborator has announced the latest release, v6.3, of its core Software-as-a-Service, and its first BIM module, including a “state of the art” model viewer. Less than two weeks after Business Collaborator announced its management buy-out, the Reading, UK-based construction collaboration technology provider has announced the latest release, v6.3, of its core Software-as-a-Service …
Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2014/12/business-collaborator-bim-1-0-released/
