Feb 23 2006

The email argument (2)

Further to my discussion of the email challenge in Monday’s post, I read Silicon.com’s leader, Living with info overload, yesterday with interest.

It says: "the issue is not only how to monitor digital communications … but also how to search and archive the millions of emails we send and documents we create each day," before continuing: "IT managers in financial services companies admit their email and document management systems aren’t capable of dealing with the strain". As the leader suggests, if the highly regulated financial sector can’t cope, what hope is there for other organisations?

As you would probably expect, my argument in respect of the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) sector is that we can take some modest steps to reduce email overload by using alternative technologies such as web-hosted collaborative platforms (‘extranets’) with email-type functionality and inbuilt powerful reporting, search and audit tools. For those that still want some kind of archive (for legal, insurance or regulatory compliance purposes, say), the technology vendors can also provide offline storage devices capturing all the communications involving a particular project or a particular company within that project (for example, see BIW Technologies’ archive service).

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/02/the_email_argum_1/

Feb 23 2006

Collaboration consolidation (3): Citadon targets Constructware users

It’s taken just over a week, but at least one US competitor to the combined Autodesk/Constructware offering (see previous posts) is trying to tempt any disaffected customers away. Citadon is offering a "Special Migration Program for Constructware Customers and Partners".

Citadon aims to help firms "respond to business challenges" resulting from Autodesk’s recently announced plan to acquire ConstructWare, with 25% price discounts on Citadon CW and consultancy services (only for the first year’s subscription and for upfront training and consultancy). The company claims CW offers Constructware users:

"greater flexibility in managing the document review and approval processes, contract commitments, and correspondence necessary to complete major construction on time and within budget.  In addition, Citadon CW can also be integrated with any cost management or scheduling system, so clients are not dependent on Constructware’s proprietary cost management system."

Citadon CW is the successor of ProjectNet (see my 30 September 2005 posting: ProjectNet: old technology?). In the US, its successes seem to be based on adoption as an enterprise solution in large engineering client organisations such as Parsons Iraq Joint Venture (oil and gas), Ameren Corporation (energy) and NanoSpheRx (biopharmaceuticals), or consultancy businesses in the same sectors – eg: ThermalTech Engineering.

ProjectNet was adopted by a wide range of organisations engaged in conventional architectural, engineering and construction (AEC) projects, but Citadon CW seems to have had less success in penetrating the AEC sector (the only major announcement in this space concerns its adoption by EC Harris – see my 5 October 2005 post). I have spoken to a few experienced UK collaboration users who have been approached by Citadon and they tended to dismiss CW as "too complex and too expensive" for AEC organisations.

Citadon’s "migration program" is clearly aimed at capitalising on any unease that Constructware customers might have about the impending Autodesk acquisition (Citadon’s dedicated Constructware webpage says: "AutoDesk is planning to acquire Constructware.  What does this mean to you?  No one really knows, and that’s the problem. You can wait and see, or you can expand and explore your options in the meantime. Take a look at Citadon.").

As a marketing ploy, though, it is surely doomed to failure: it is asking customers to stop using a proven AEC-focused product (Constructware) and switch to an enterprise solution more at home in the major utility and facility engineering world. Autodesk’s Buzzsaw solution is also well-proven in the AEC sector, and is respected as a cost-effective product; for many AEC users – particularly designers – better integration with Autodesk’s CAD tools will also tend to be more attractive than Citadon’s open integration with cost management and scheduling tools. As a result, most Constructware customers will, I think, wait to see how the integration with Buzzsaw progresses. If they remain uneasy, there are other solutions in the US collaboration marketplace that may be more appropriate to their AEC needs (and budget) than the Citadon CW proposition.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/02/collaboration_c_2/

Feb 20 2006

ISO27001 certification

Soon after my earlier post "The perils of vendor questionnaires", I started updating BIW’s website in connection with the issue of compliance with international standards (I link the two items as standards compliance frequently features in vendor questionnaires).

Updates were necessary as British Standard BS7799 Part 2 was superceded last October by a new global information security standard, ISO/IEC27001, and on 10 January 2006 Attenda, the managed service provider used by BIW to host all user interactions with BIW Information Channel, was one of the first IT companies in the world to be certified by the British Standards Institution as achieving that standard (see BIW press release). As far as I know, that makes BIW Information Channel the first (and so far only) web-based construction collaboration technology to be hosted on a ISO/IEC27001-compliant system.

Cadweb used to make a big thing about its compliance with IS0/IEC17799, and it still makes the erroneous claim that "Cadweb is the only e-project management system that fully complies with ISO/IEC 17799." This is wrong on three counts:

  1. Strictly speaking, Cadweb should have talked about BS7799 Part 2, as this formed the specification against which BSI could assess compliance – there is no certification in respect of ISO/IEC17799.
  2. The standards covers security of information assets, and are applied broadly to digital information, paper documents, physical locations and supporting assets (computers, networks and media) and the management of employees. They do not relate to particular software applications, so it would be wrong for Cadweb (or anyone else) to believe that their application was compliant with BS7799, ISO/IEC17799 or ISO/IEC27001 – which is probably why Cadweb use the more vague "system".
  3. Finally, Cadweb’s claim to be "the only" standard-compliant e-project management system is wrong. As long ago as 22 March 2002, BIW pointed out to Cadweb, and the readers of professional journal New Civil Engineer, that the Attenda infrastructure hosting BIW Information Channel had also been assessed by the BSI as compliant.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/02/iso27001_certif/

Feb 20 2006

The perils of vendor questionnaires

The NCCTP recently considered a questionnaire produced by the DTI-funded Avanti project (the questionnaire itself was apparently based on similar ones issued by a couple of major UK contractors as invitations to tender, ITTs) to get basic information about UK extranet vendors, their hosting, and system functionality. One outcome would be the publication of this information on an Avanti website – something likely to cause palpitations among most of the UK vendors.

As vendors (I obviously speak from experience at BIW Technologies), we are often asked to complete similar questionnaires in order to get onto short-lists for particular projects, customers, etc, and I am sure we all share the same gripes. These are my top moans:

  1. Confidentiality – Much information provided in response to a questionnaire may be commercially sensitive. Vendors will not want some responses to be in the public domain (ie on a website) and viewable by their competitors.
  2. Information gets ‘out-of-date’ – Particularly as application service providers (ASPs), the software can be updated several times a year. A questionnaire response will often, therefore, be out-of-date within weeks or months. As an example, a few years ago most of the NCCTP members provided some very basic information for CNPlus’s extranet section, but it quickly got out-of-date.
  3. ‘Tick in the box’ syndrome – asked if a system has a particular functionality, most vendors will answer ‘yes’ whether their system genuinely offers that functionality “out-of-the-box” or not. For example, it may be achieved through a ‘work-around’, it might require consultancy input (a little or a lot?), or it may warrant some customization or additional development that might be undertaken if the vendor wins the job!
  4. Evaluating qualitative answers – some topics (security features, infrastructure, etc) may require long and detailed technical responses, and many AEC project teams are ill-prepared to understand the differences.
  5. Expense involved in responding – ITTs and similar questionnaires can take many man-hours to complete (no two questionnaires are ever the same!), and the volume of additional information (eg: customer lists, case studies, etc) can be substantial – with no guarantee that it will ever be read, let alone properly evaluated as part of the selection process.
  6. Poorly drafted, imprecise or ambiguous questions – For example, when looking at a vendor’s financial background, should responses relate solely to the extranet service or will the vendor ‘gild the lily’ be reporting on the wider interests of its parent company?
  7. Inappropriate or irrelevant questions – For example, no point in asking about folder structures if the vendor’s system architecture is based on a relational database.
  8. My gut feeling is that in the end, outside a few more enlightened organisations, it all boils down to price. In a low-margin industry, the decision can end up being made on the basis of the cost of the service, regardless of the credentials of the vendor, the quality of the hosting environment, functionality, support, etc. Accordingly, we try to get prospective customers and end-users to view a detailed presentation of the software, talk to existing customers and end-users, and try out the functionality for themselves.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/02/the_perils_of_v/

Feb 20 2006

The email argument

So ubiquitous has email become that many people cannot imagine working without it. Indeed, it has become such an integral part of everyday corporate life that it has now become widely regarded as business-critical (witness the increasing use of Blackberries and similar devices by those who simply cannot bear to be out of email contact).

Working for a vendor of web-based construction collaboration technologies (project ‘extranets’), I often get asked if our system will allow them to use email. Why?

After all, as I often point out, email users seem to delight in being overloaded by email (it seems an over-full in-box is almost an indication of how vital the user is), with spam, email bounce-backs and out-of-office alerts adding to the burden, along with inefficient senders who don’t indicate whether their message is urgent, which project it concerns, what action is required, or whether the attachments are large or small, nice-to-know or need-to-know.

As a result, I sometimes revel in pointing out that use of email is intentionally limited in the BIW system. BIW Information Channel processes are based upon users "pulling" rather than the system using email to "push" information around the supply-chain. For most regular users, it is only in exceptional circumstances (eg: to urge team members to fulfil overdue actions) that email is used; for occasional users, email may also be used to make them aware that documents have been issued or forwarded to them.

Another major issue concerns the audit trail associated with email. Short of someone interrogating the recipient’s email system, the rest of the project team will have no way of discovering whether an email sent outside the collaboration system has been received or when (this may be critical in the event of a dispute – I have seen multi-million pound estimates associated with lawyers’ email document discovery processes). The BIW solution therefore incorporates an email-type application which can be used to send and receive messages that would otherwise have been sent by email, and, being integrated with the core application, the associated audit trail is preserved.

I was reminded of such debates when reading an article by Phil Wainewright (and some of his contacts): "What’s the true cost of running email in-house?". I particularly liked the concluding remarks from Mi8‘s Patrick Fetterman, who urged people to think about integration and regulatory requirements (among other issues), before pointing out:

"Email has become mission critical for most companies, just like the phone system and an Internet connection, but like these other systems it is NOT a core business function of the company; rather, it is an infrastructure service."

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/02/the_email_argum-2/

Feb 16 2006

Application Service Provider integration research

Having undertaken a PhD and been involved in numerous other research projects, I usually do my best to assist other researchers. I have been contacted by Robert Johnson, a doctoral student at Brunel University, who wants people to help him with his research into ASPs.

Robert says he is: "looking at the perceptions that are held of ASPs and the ability to integrate them. Analysing these perceptions will contribute to ongoing research into addressing the issues raised with ASP integration. To this end, I have produced an online questionnaire and am seeking participants to take part and provide me with their opinions. The questionnaire will take no more than 6 minutes to complete and is all based online, completely anonymous and strictly confidential. It would be greatly appreciated if you could take the time to complete it and provide your views." If you want to help Robert, go to http://www.questionpro.com/akira/TakeSurvey?id=316981.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/02/application_ser/

Feb 15 2006

Autodesk, Asite and Aconex PR push

It seems hardly a month goes by without Autodesk adding another press release to its Buzzsaw UK/Ireland news page. The latest talks about a PFI schools project in Exeter with Mowlem, and comes hot on the tail of an almost-monthly series of news stories about PRP, Broadway Malyan, Waterman Group, Kajima and an Irish motorway widening project – all repeating the same message about Buzzsaw being "simple to use", "straightforward", etc. However, while the Constructware acquisition (see previous posts here and here) gets a big splash on the US Buzzsaw webpage, there is no mention at all on either the UK Buzzsaw pages nor the parent Autodesk UK/Ireland site.

Of course, it could be an oversight. More likely, as the $46 million acquisition concerns a US competitor almost unknown outside north America, Autodesk UK doesn’t see it as significant or relevant (it could, of course, also raise questions – such as what is Buzzsaw lacking in the cost, bid and risk management department? Or why did Autodesk feel the need to buy someone with greater strengths among contractors and in the public sector?).

Meanwhile (as already mentioned briefly on Monday), Asite has also issued a news release, regarding version 2.0 of its Project Workflow product. Reading this as a full paid-up member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, I was struck by the lack of focus in the release on the new product (just three of the eight paragraphs tell you anything about what is new in v2.0 – the rest is background and stuff about support services). And, having wondered (2 December) when a UK vendor might start shouting about AJAX, it was no surprise to find Asite doing so (not least because Asite CTO Nathan Doughty picked up on my post in his Free collaboration blog soon after). Take away the paragraph about AJAX and it appears there isn’t really much to say about v2.0 (or at least not much that Asite wants the market at large to know).

While on the subject of PR activity, Aconex has been busy, issuing five press releases in just 14 days up to 13 February: a new office in Singapore, a new board member, a project announcement in Vietnam and adoption of Aconex by Cox architects in Australia are the substantive releases, all sandwiched around a rather self-indulgent release celebrating Aconex’s six years in existence.

Finally, thanks to 4Projects for helping to publicise the NCCTP’s forthcoming market research project – the news should shortly be added to the NCCTP site, but you can read it here too.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/02/autodesk_and_as/

Feb 14 2006

What makes on-demand better?

Phil Wainewright’s latest post outlines six characteristics of on-demand applications that make them superior to conventional packaged software:

  1. Ready to run
  2. Pay as you go
  3. Short learning curve
  4. Codeless customisation
  5. Loosely coupled integration
  6. Constant monitoring and feedback

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/02/what_makes_onde/

Feb 13 2006

Collaboration consolidation (contd)

Perhaps a factor in Autodesk’s decision to acquire Constructware (see previous post) was Carl Bass, set to take over from Carol Bartz at CEO of Autodesk in May. Bass was previously COO at Buzzsaw so will have some detailed first-hand knowledge of the US collaboration market, and will have been aware of the relative strengths of the different US products (with Constructware CEO Scott Unger apparently set to “play a key role in the new combined organization”, I hope there is good interpersonal chemistry between the two former rivals).

Snooping around for further background on the deal, I found an AECcafe.com article in which Unger – adds some detail. From his comments, it seems a key driver was the strength of Constructware’s ASP solution – perhaps indicating a current shortcoming in Buzzsaw so far as on-demand is concerned. However, when asked ‘What does Constructware have that is lacking or yet to be realized in Buzzsaw?’, Unger skirts round the question a bit, focusing diplomatically on how complementary the two companies’ solutions are, before re-stating the rationale given last week: “This acquisition enables Autodesk to rapidly expand its existing collaborative project management solution, Autodesk Buzzsaw, with Constructware’s leading cost, bid, and risk management capabilities.”

It is clear that the deal will boost the user base. Unger says: “There are a limited number of clients who use both Buzzsaw and Constructware products simultaneously – very little overlap.”

Meanwhile, at Cadwire.net, Randall Newton expands slightly on his previous AECnews.com analysis, suggesting “Autodesk is ‘marrying up’ in the construction business by buying Constructware, in three big ways”:

  1. It is acquiring the most mature web-based construction collaboration tool in the [US] market, with a feature set heavily influenced by customer input.
  2. Constructware is popular with [US] owners, who appreciate its provable rapid return on investment and the company’s clever ROI calculator.
  3. The acquisition gives Autodesk a better [US] customer base when it eventually releases construction simulation tools currently under development.

Randall continues: “Autodesk is the big dog in the [US] market among the A/E firms who create construction documentation. But construction companies per se historically have not been a big part of Autodesk’s market. This acquisition is part of a larger effort by Autodesk to reap a significant share of construction IT automation spending.”

I have stressed that Randall’s analysis should be seen as somewhat US-centric, not least because Constructware has no European presence. However, that does not mean we should ignore the deal on this side of the Atlantic. As I said in my previous post, the new integrated functionality may make Buzzsaw more attractive beyond its core of design community, but how attractive will depend on (a) whether this functionality can be tuned to the exacting demands of many UK-based contractors, project managers and clients, and, if so, (b) how quickly the integrated solution can be delivered.

To echo Randall’s assessment, Autodesk is a major player in the UK market among designers, but it has yet to make significant inroads into other parts of the AEC supply chain. If it wants to grab a bigger share of the UK market, then it may have to find a UK equivalent to Constructware with similar characteristics. In other words:

  1. a mature and well-respected solution developed with strong guidance from contractors and other customers
  2. a solution popular with ultimate clients
  3. a company with many AEC customers and users drawn from beyond Autodesk’s design community
  4. strong on-demand/ASP credentials
  5. complementary functionality

A few of the leading UK providers could fit the bill, and no doubt the directors and investors in one or two of them will be salivating at the prospect of a similar-sized deal ($46 million is, by my reckoning, roughly £27 million), assuming, of course, that Autodesk has both the appetite and the cash. For example, those involved with troubled Asite (see my post Asite books more losses) may see this as a possible way out. However, I am not sure a solution launched in 2004 could really be classed as mature (by the way, I notice that Asite has just launched version 2.0 of Project Workflow, and – judging from todays’ website – it also seems to be having some ASP infrastructure problems). More realistically under the above criteria, UK candidates might include, in alphabetical order: 4Projects, BIW or BuildOnline.

 

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/02/collaboration_c_1-2/

Feb 08 2006

Collaboration consolidation in US: Autodesk to acquire Constructware

At this morning’s NCCTP marketing meeting, Nathan Doughty (Asite/Free Collaboration) and I talked about today’s news regarding Autodesk’s $46m acquisition of US on-demand extranet provider Constructware (see news release; something also picked up by AEC bloggers Ralph Grabowski and Randall Newton).

Since the merger-mania of the post-dot.com bust era, this is perhaps the first major consolidation of the collaboration sector, and while largely focused on the US market, its ripples will no doubt spread much more widely (the news certainly caused a few eyebrows to rise among the NCCTP members’ marketing people – which for the first time included Aconex’s Rob Phillpot and Yuval Attias).

When I first saw the headline, I wondered how Autodesk planned to manage Constructware alongside Autodesk Buzzsaw, but it seems from the news release that Autodesk plans to take some bells and whistles from Constructware’s application and add them to Buzzsaw:

“the acquisition enables Autodesk to rapidly expand its collaborative project management solution, Autodesk® Buzzsaw®, with Constructware’s industry leading cost, bid and risk management capabilities…”

“Autodesk plans to invest in supporting, enhancing and integrating the Constructware products with Autodesk’s collaborative project management solution, Buzzsaw, and design applications including Revit and Civil 3D…”

The strategic rationale is that:

“[Constructware] is well established in the construction industry with general- and sub-contractors and has demonstrated significant traction in the public sector among government and education organizations. This is complementary to Autodesk Buzzsaw’s customer base in home building, and the retail and hospitality segments of the commercial real estate market.”

Further to my recent musings on how many users the two vendors had, the Autodesk news release says Constructware had “over 29,000”, while Buzzsaw had over “137,000 users” (so, if nothing else, Autodesk will at lleast be able to add a few thousand users).

Reading Autodesk’s FAQs document, it seems the long-term plan will be to absorb Constructware’s branding into Autodesk, presumably within the Buzzsaw offering:

“Autodesk recognizes the value Constructware has established in their product brands. Over time, you will likely see an integration of the brands under the corporate brand identity of Autodesk.”

What do I think this means for the UK AEC collaboration market? Not a lot at the moment, but, in case this is the first of a series of Autodesk acquisitions, some vendors will no doubt be considering what – if any – strategic fit there may be between their solutions and user bases and those of Autodesk Buzzsaw in the UK.

If Autodesk’s European operation was looking for an acquisition target on the same basis as in the US, several of the NCCTP members could offer a strategic fit so far as their user bases are concerned. Buzzsaw’s UK user base has grown partly through the marketing opportunities afforded by Autodesk’s high profile among the AutoCAD design community (it is a tool favoured by some architects, such as Broadway Malyan, for example), but it is does not tend to feature quite so frequently among contractors, project managers and client organisations.

Assuming Autodesk is successful in integrating Constructware’s ‘industry leading cost, bid and risk management capabilities’ into Buzzsaw, then perhaps we might also see new fronts opening in the battle for hearts and minds in the UK construction collaboration market? Such process management capabilities will certainly broaden Buzzsaw’s appeal in the UK marketplace – if (and it may be a big ‘if’) the Constructware functionality can be adapted to suit the business processes commonly employed in the UK AEC market. Alternatively, perhaps Autodesk will look for a UK equivalent to Constructware with similar but UK-oriented capabilities and seek to acquire them?

(Posted from a favoured Dobo wifi hotspot – see post – in London Bridge railway station)

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/02/collaboration_c-2/

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